How do you delete a tree?
LETTER FROM THE FOUNDER
Black Box relishes remaining in permanent beta. I founded the festival in 2014 with the vision of it becoming a nomadic pulse for the region’s evolving arts and technology landscape. It’s not surprising then that each edition of the festival has a timely, ephemeral, and vanishing quality.
It’s also not surprising that Black Box was cancelled and revived no less than three times this year.
As many of you know, I recently joined the ace team of a tech startup (Pixvana) that is building software tools for artists, filmmakers, and creators to expand cinema into virtual realities. I'm loving it. The only hitch in my giddyup was that I knew it was not humanly possible to work at a startup and also run an ambitious arts festival.
What to do? With not enough grant funding to hire a proper staff, I accepted the seemingly virtual reality that perhaps the festival was not meant to last. How could Black Box endure?
This is how.
S. Surface introduced me to Molly Mac. And in three weeks, we had a program. The festival conceptual framework and architecture were already in place, old and new partnerships were being solidified, and Molly dove right in as festival curator and producer. I stayed on as an interim director and curator. Molly immediately understood Black Box - the chaos, the ambiguity, and the beauty of opportunity. This weekend, we’ll officially welcome Molly on board with a Q&A on the blog and post her curatorial statement.
We worked quickly with a community of extraordinary collaborators to pull together a festival in one month that includes over 125 artists participating in 7 festival programs and 8 partner programs.
Black Box 3.0 opens with a public exhibition of artworks created in just 48 hours in the old Value Village building on Capitol Hill during Art Hack Day: Erasure. Two weeks later, Black Box ends with a listening show (Shhhh....) and a screening at Seattle Art Museum about surgery and compost. The festival closes with a literal black out.
Will the lights come on again next year?
Julia Fryett
September 2016
Seattle