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FORMAT Festival Kickoff Reception

Food/Drink Music/Performance Talk/Lecture
Great Hall
$40 ($32/members, other discounts available)
This event has passed
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art will be closed Monday, May 13, to prepare for the visit of Antiques Roadshow. We will return to normal hours of operation Wednesday, May 15.

Kick off the FORMAT Festival in style with artists Beeple, the Guerrilla Girls, DJ Isaac Ferry, and more

Celebrate the start of the FORMAT Festival with an evening packed with artist insights, unique engagements, and the chance to get to know your fellow art, music, and technology enthusiasts.

Held at Crystal Bridges on the evening before the three-day festival, the Kickoff Reception includes a full schedule of artist talks and engagements connected to FORMAT: Come hear from artist-activists Guerrilla Girls as they share about their work and their large-scale installation for the festival, The Art of Behaving Badly. Meet acclaimed artist Beeple, AKA Mike Winkelmann, as he introduces his NFT/multimedia work HUMAN ONE in the galleries. Explore the immersive world of Listening Forest by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, encountering surprise and delights along the way. And in between it all, spend time with other art lovers in a relaxed reception featuring a live set by DJ, producer, and FORMAT performer Isaac Ferry.

Bundled together with admission to Listening Forest in a single ticket and with discounts available for members of Crystal Bridges, the Momentary, and FORMAT ticketholders, this evening promises to be an unforgettable start to FORMAT.

See you there.

Tickets are $40 ($32 for Crystal Bridges and the Momentary members, $10 for students, FREE for FORMAT Platinum and VIP ticketholders (code emailed separately)), reserve your spot online or with Guest Services at (479) 657-2335 today.
Ticket includes registration for all events, admission to Listening Forest for the evening, and one drink ticket (good for beer, wine, or a non-alcoholic beverage). A cash bar will also be available during the event.

Evening Schedule

5:30 p.m. | Artist Lecture with Guerrilla Girls
6:30 p.m. | Reception in Eleven with DJ Isaac Ferry
8 p.m. | HUMAN ONE Gallery Engagement with Beeple
8:30 p.m. | Listening Forest Experience

About FORMAT Festival

FORMAT is a three-day festival featuring an eclectic music lineup, artist-built venues and interactive art experiences taking place on the grounds of the Momentary and surrounding area on September 22–24, 2023.

The 2023 lineup features Alanis Morisette, LCD Soundsystem, Leon Bridges, Modest Mouse, Jamie XX, Tash Sultana, Big Wild, Little Simz, Bob Moses, Poolside, Channel Tres, Paul Cauthen, and many more, along with unique performance, installations, and art experiences from world-renowned artists including Guerrilla Girls, JR’s Inside Out Project, Jeremy Deller, and Ragnar Kjartansson x The National. Learn more and get tickets at Format-Festival.com.

About the Speakers

About the Guerrilla Girls

The Guerrilla Girls are an anonymous group of artist activists who aim to expose sexism and racism in art, film, politics, and pop culture. They grew out of a protest of the Museum of Modern Art’s 1985 An International Survey of Painting and Sculpture, an exhibition that featured 148 men, 13 women, and no artists of color.

When traditional means of protesting failed to draw attention to this inequality, some of the protesters decided to form a group focused on guerrilla-style protest techniques. They wore gorilla masks in public and created versions of their messages that usually paired shocking statistics with eye-catching graphics to attract attention to their cause. The group has done hundreds of projects, including posters, billboards, books, exhibitions, and videos, all around the world. They continue to create work that addresses bias against women artists, as well as other discriminatory practices.

The group’s large-scale interactive installation, titled The Art of Behaving Badly, will be on view at the Momentary grounds during the FORMAT Festival.

Beeple

Beeple is Mike Winkelmann, a graphic designer from Charleston, South Carolina, USA, who does a variety of digital artwork including short films, Creative Commons VJ loops, everydays, and VR / AR work.

After he began releasing a set of widely used Creative Commons VJ loops, he has worked on concert visuals for Justin Bieber, One Direction, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Eminem, Zedd, deadmau5, and many more.

One of the originators of the current “everyday” movement in 3D graphics, he has been creating a picture every day from start to finish and posting it online for over ten years without missing a single day.

Beeple’s multimedia installation HUMAN ONE, which combines digital video, an NFT, and a three-dimensional sculptural form, is currently on view at Crystal Bridges.

About Listening Forest 

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Listening Forest, "Pulse Forest", 2022, Bentonville Arkansas / United States. Photo by Jared Sorrells.

Back for its third and final season, Listening Forest combines light, sound, and technical marvels to create an immersive world waiting for its final piece: you. The forest’s eight interactive installations, each designed by artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, invite us to play with tools built for surveillance and transform them into instruments of connection. Learn more.