Overview
Giant illuminated rabbits are lurking beside the Park Hyatt. Snakes have entwined themselves around the MCA. My colossal face sits proudly in Martin Place. Launched with an oversized novelty button on Friday night, Vivid Sydney has flicked on the lights for another year, infusing the CBD with New Year's Eve vibes and lightsaber-wielding kiddies for the next two weeks.
Between eating up all the Vividery; having mad chats, merry chinwags and Freud-fuelled pow-wows with Vivid LIVE's best and brightest; and strapping on our sexy, sexy thinking caps; there's life rollin' on elsewhere in the somewhat less light-drenched parts of town. Australian drink-n-gamers received some squealworthy bar news and Scandinavian films got their own Aussie festival, while the shiniest light of all, Ryan Gosling, made a film that royally sucked at Cannes. Things are looking pretty glitter-glued around here of late.
Shannon Connellan /// Deputy Editor
If you do one thing: The Music of Moroder: The Heritage Orchestra
Presented by those constant bringers of Internet-hyped gigs, Red Bull Music Academy, this is one tribute show that’s sure to end up on everyone’s Instagram feeds.
Paying tribute to the legendary music of Giorgio Moroder with new arrangements and special guest vocalists, 40-piece British rulebreakers The Heritage Orchestra will revisit every last gem from the career of 'the godfather of EDM', from his disco-fuelled hootenannies with Donna Summer to his 1977 landmark album From Here To Eternity.
More info here.
The other seven days
Tuesday: The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival
Go to the movies and feel good doing it. Now in its seventh year, The Human Rights Arts & Film Festival will once again shine a light on contemporary human rights issues through a carefully curated lineup of socially conscious films.
Rich Hill takes place in the titular Missouri mining town and follows three young men struggling with poverty, mental illness and the turmoil of adolescence. Praised for its empathetic touch, the film won the Documentary Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year.
Everyday Rebellion has a somewhat broader subject, highlighting nonviolent protests happening all around the world. From Occupy Wall Street to the Iranian democracy movement to topless activists in the Ukraine, it's a truly global story about people united by courage.
More info here.
Wednesday: Spice Temple's Some Like It Hot Dinner
Behind the mysterious billowing silk that marks Spice Temple's iconic entrance is a shrine to the chilli to which every lover of the sweet burn must make pilgrimage, and there's never been a better time to do so than Wednesday, May 28.
Masters of the chilli Neil Perry and Andy Evans are presenting a one-night-only Some Like It Hot dinner, showcasing the fiery fruit in dried, fresh, salted, pickled and fermented forms in a menu that's set to sizzle. From crispy chicken laced with heaven-facing chillis to red braised pork belly with dried chillis and quail eggs to whole fried chillis with lap yuk and Sichuan black beans, one thing's for sure: this dinner is not for the faint of heart.
More info here.
Thursday: Cain and Abel
Some people are going to be very unhappy with Belvoir. After one recent play in which two women constantly murdering each other prompted loud revulsion (not from us), here is another female ensemble repeating the same act. For longer. More gruesomely.
In all fairness, though, it's totally different. The two companies take distinctly separate approaches to the theme of violence in life and on stage. Cain and Abel, from The Rabble, is aesthetically rich, mercilessly cerebral, and earnest in that very Melburnian way. Recently, the interstate experimentalists have turned pornography into art (The Story of O) and staged The Portrait of Dorian Gray as a presentational maze (Room of Regret). They don't go easy.
Full review here.
Friday: I'm Not Racist But...
Titled I’m Not Racist But..., it’ll be an interactive evening during which four speakers give top-speed ten-minute talks before host Tom Tilley opens up the floor for discussion. The special guests are comedian Ronny Chieng, Australian Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson, Co-Chair of the National Congress for Australia’s First Peoples Kirstie Parker and John Safran, who recently published his first book Murder in Mississippi.
Presented by the NSW Reconciliation Council in conjunction with Sydney Ideas, the event hopes to inspire open, critical discussion concerning racism in Australia.
More info here.
Saturday: Electrolapse BYOB
All that ideating of Vivid can really take it out of you. Fortunately, on its second weekend, the Vivid Ideas throws up this two-day event to engage us visually rather than intellectually. Get set to see the cavern of Pier 2/3 in a whole new way.
BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer, not booze) is an international event movement where artists congregate with their projectors in tow, filling every wall space with their latest digital imaginings. Feats of 3D projection mapping, interactive interfaces, animations, games — they all play out on the walls while you circulate the room square-eyed. This local iteration is being put on by the knowledgeable folks from Electrofringe, and they've even roped in original BYOBer Rafael Rozendaal — the New York-based founder and internet artist — for the lineup.
More info here.
Sunday: Elizabeth Street Gallery new exhibition
Towards the end of 2012, a bunch of Fairfax photographers decided it was time to do something about one of the Sydney CBD’s most unappealing stretches. Without seeking official permission, the aesthetic vigilantes added more than 40 photos to a wall on Elizabeth Street (near the corner off Goulburn Street) and waited to see what would happen. As it turned out, the Lord Mayor was a supporter and the 'Elizabeth Street Gallery' has remained a fixture.
Two years on, the photos have been tagged and dirtied to a point of near-obscurity. So last Thursday, the team — comprised of Nicholas Walker, Andrew Quilty and Dean Sewell — replaced them with a brand new series. This time, however, they received a $30,000 City of Sydney grant to make it happen.
More info here.
Monday: Under the Skin
Director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast, Birth) puts mankind under the microscope in his enigmatic sci-fi thriller Under the Skin. Unfolding like an arthouse version of Species, the film stars Scarlett Johansson as an extraterrestrial creature who travels around Scotland seducing human men. A cold, disturbing, impenetrable piece of filmmaking, it’s a movie that will understandably alienate mainstream audiences, even as it carves a place for itself as a modern-day cult classic.
Reversing typical images of sexual predation, Glazer puts Johansson — a pale-skinned, dark-haired female — in the driver's seat of an anonymous white van. The bulk of the film takes place in the vehicle, as Johansson cruises the outskirts of Glasgow in search of her next victim. What happens to the men once they're ensnared is one of many pieces of information Glazer initially withholds, playing with our fears and assumptions and cultivating a sickening sense of dread.
Full review here.