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July 17, 2008
Santa Monica's Cultural Future to Glow
It's the first event of its sort in the country, Santa Monica officials say about this weekend's all-night festival, Glow. For two years, the city's Cultural Affairs Division has been working towards this Saturday night, where an expected 25,000 to 50,000 people are to attend the from dusk to dawn beachside event featuring lots of art and music.
"Visitors will have to be strategic on how they spend their time," explained Jessica Cusick, the division's manager. "If you want to experience everything that night, you have to stay up all night. Some things will only happen once."
Over 30 artists have been commissioned to do art that will allow attendees to participate. From Machine Project's orchestra playing from the new Ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier to Shih Chieh Huang's "Neptunian lair" beneath the pier, there will be magical moments to be shared by all. "Every project will be participatory in different ways and at different levels," Cusick described.
Glow, which will be Santa Monica's biennial, was born out of the city's long range cultural plan called Creative Capital (.pdf). The plan identified arts as important to self identity as the economy. Three key areas were to be focused on by the city: supporting innovation, enhancing participation and building sustainable infrastructure. Glow fits into each of them.
The concept behind the festival comes from European Nuit Blanche festivals. The phrase translates to "white night," which is slang for staying up all night. The name Glow is based on grunions that wash up on the beach, tying the event to physically to California.
With so many people expected to attend, travel to the area, even late at night will be harder than usual. For those who bike, bike valet will be provided. After parking lots are full near the pier, shuttle service will be offered to various locations in the area.
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First in the country ever? Chicago has for the last two years done "Looptopia" an all night arts and music fest, also based off the nuit blance festivals.
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The first one that means anything; is consequential...
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And how are you judging that?
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It's the first event of its sort in the country, Santa Monica officials say...
It's a quote. If you have a beef, take it up with Santa Monica city officials. Maybe it's the first one on a pier. Maybe it's the first one with a Neptunian lair.
I, for one, will be too busy partying with the gang singing sea shanties all night to give a damn!
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I went, and felt the event was mostly a disappointment. First, I couldn't believe how hard it was to get there -- the parking situation was beyond bad. The streets around Santa Monica were the worst I have ever seen them. Very little planning went into the expected rush of people. And I love the fact that public transportation to the event is confusing and next to non-existant.
Second, the arts were mostly geared towards serving one person at a time. Yeah, you could have your EKG read, or get a custom poem, as long as you didn't mind waiting two hours for it, because the 44,000 other people there had the same idea. Even if the result of the art was projected, it usually wasn't that impressive.
There were little to no directions posted to the exhibitions, save the program, and that wasn't particularly specific. My group wandered around for four hours and never found the sea shanty singers or some of the artworks that were promised.
Then the big fountain, the best art exhibit of the night, broke down around 1:30-2:00, and the bouncy thing on the sand shut down as well. Such a let-down.
Honestly, the best part of the whole night was watching the Grunions. I wish the festival focused more on them because they would be the only reason to come back the next year. Honestly, I felt the festival mentioned them as a side note.
Santa Monica should really think long and hard again before hiring such incompetent planners to put on a festival. By the time I left at 2:00, there was a 15 minute wait to get off the sand and up the stairs, and everyone was talking about how terribly disappointing the event was. Anyone walking into the event asking, "How is it?" Was met by a chorus of answers ranging from, "Boring," to "It blows!"
Did I have fun? Yes, because I was with good friends, and sat with them in strategic places to people watch, but it was sad to see so much public money spent in such a frivolous way, when I know there are better and more effective ways of putting that money to good use.
Just put on a Grunion festival and celebrate the fish. I would accept that and have a good time. Don't make it some weird, cerebral, non-accessible festival where you have to wait in line the whole night to do anything and are confused about what the hell is happening.
I would give this festival a 2/10. I will not going back next year. I will, however, visit a different part of the beach, South of Santa Monica to watch the Grunions.
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The problem with making this all about the grunions is that they were a serendipitous addition to the event. You can trundle your butt out to beautifully dark and empty beaches at the right time and fail to see any at all. I was delighted to see them for the first time last night, and amazed that they showed up with so much light and noise on the beach.
I kind of enjoyed the random nature of everything; sure, the map sorta showed an area where something might be, but it was up to you to go out and discover what kind of wonderful stuff was happening out there. The way to make this better would be to encourage more folks to come on out and show off their stuff.
I absolutely agree about the parking, though. It'd be great to have more formally organized parking directions and suggestions and more info about public transportation. I wind up in Santa Monica fairly often, but never with 50,000 of my best friends at once, so it was suddenly pretty tough to figure out where to park.