by Nikki Lickdyke

    VooDoo Experience is back for its eleventh annual October blowout in City Park, this year with yet even more surprises. Of note, Voodoo has, for the first time, partnered with Life is Art Foundation and its free-spirited founder, Kirsha Kaechele, to present an exhibition of large-scale, site-specific art installations. With more than twenty artists converging upon the festival from around the world to create massive sculptures, environments, and performance pieces that interact with the landscape of the park and the culture of the music festival, this new dimension promises to heighten the sensory experience for all fest-goers.
    According to the festival’s producer, Stephen Rehage, “We look at the festival’s production as being a work of art, so this feels like a natural. With the city’s art community flourishing, this seemed like a good time for VooDoo to honor another aspect of New Orleans’ culture in an interactive way.”
    Installations include Malibu artist Mark Griffin’s Ladder, a 108-foot sculpture that appears to rise up into infinity; Illusion by Eyetrap, a field of enormous balloons that float high into the air and light and dim according to music (they will open with Justice on Friday night); and Great Piñata, a massive treats-and-tricks filled form created by TungstenMonkey Collective, to be broken open Halloween night (elaborately costumed performers will swing from trees to break the sculpture open).
    Another highlight is London based artists Mathias Gmachl and Rachel Wingfield’s Pavilion of the Four Winds. An expansion on their piece exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the spacious sculpture is an interactive light environment. The artists will expand and adapt the constantly illuminating and changing piece to the park. After Voodoo, it will move to the Botanical Gardens and be planted with living vines.
    In a different vein, New York based artist Daphane Park and the Zapara people of the remote Amazon Rainforest have collaborated to create Hammock Mother, a giant hammock for 25 - 30 guests. Park and the Zaparas are using traditional weaving methods to create the immense hammock, what they’ve deemed “a platform for encounter and communal happening.” Kaechele sees the sculpture as building awareness on multiple levels, “A physical expression of their native understanding of life, the piece communicates this way of seeing, while bringing awareness to the plight of a very beautiful people struggling to maintain control of their territory.” Only a century ago the Zapara were numerous in the region, numbering over 20,000; today they are 350.
    Following Voodoo Experience, many of these sculptures will move into the Botanical Gardens for a public exhibition through Celebration in the oaks.
    Kaechele’s fresh and original curatorial approach paired with Rehage Entertainment’s propensity for pushing the limits will no doubt result in the most unforgettable festival yet.