A Festival of Spectacular Cultures
29 August – 8 September 2013
Curated by Morbid Anatomy, Preserved! and Strange Attractor
From fun fairs to freak shows… magic lantern lectures to flea circuses… cyclopian artists and mediumistic Drawings to severed heads and anthropomorphic taxidermy… riotous fireworks and the bright lights of an otherworldly Blackpool to the dark recesses of old operating theatres and clandestine archives.
The Congress for Curious People is a week long festival of spectacular cultures, followed by a two-day symposium, co-curated by Morbid Anatomy, Preserved!, and Strange Attractor.Founded in 2010 as a scholarly sideshow to the Congress of Curious People – a theatrical celebration of the carnivalesque at the Coney Island Museum in New York – the Congress for Curious People finds itself this year in a series of hidden locales and out-of-the-way venues across the U.K.Presenting talks, screenings, performances and walking tours, the festival will bring together over 40 international contributors specialising in eccentric customs, alternate histories and medical anomalies to explore ideas of spectacle and curiosity in some truly fascinating locales.See a full schedule of events here
A two-day symposium on ‘Reclaiming Spectacle’ will include panels of academics, rogue scholars and artists discussing the intricacies of collecting, the politics of bodily display, non-human oddities, religion and the occult. The Congress will create a forum not only for discussing, but also for experiencing spectacle, combining the niche and the popular, the scholarly and the entertaining.
See a full schedule of events here