NEoN 13 been & gone
So NEoN 13 has now been and gone – it was awesome wasn’t it? We had so much fun bringing our festival to our beautiful city, there are almost too many highlights to mention but let’s give it a try.
This year we welcomed the wonderful Francesca Persona to Dundee who created the magnificent Liminal Cities exhibition at the Hannah McClure Centre. Francesca also hosted the Liminal City Lights workshop and moonlight walk, where a group gathered for an afternoon’s sculpture workshop followed by a night time guided walk around the city to learn about old Dundee and to place the LED sculptures made in the workshop around the town. Francesca’s exhibition at the Hannah Maclure centre explores the context of the changing landscape of Dundee and is on until the 13th of December, so if you haven’t already, be sure to check it out!
This Much We Know chronicling Dundee’s creative and cultural history was ledby locals who have been part of this city’s changing dynamic over the past several decades. This was a really super event, hosted by our friends at Creative Dundee, as we learnt about Dundee’s creative journey and how the events and experiences of the past have shaped and created our present. The highlight of the evening was hearing more about The Witches Blood production which was held in the Rep Theatre in 1987.
One of the highpoints of the whole festival this year was undoubtedly Wet Sounds which was held in our beautiful new leisure centre, Olympia. Wet Sounds was a live performance and immersive installation by Joel Cahen in which sound and light were played and projected in and under the water of the swimming pool. We had loads of swimmers keen to experience this spectacular; this has got to be the most unique events NEoN has hosted over its five year history!
Forever Falling Nowhere was also a standout event for this year’s festival. Hosted in the Vision Building, Forever Falling Nowhere was a collaboration of dance and digital. The dance performance by Small Petit Klein Dance Company was fused with digital kaleidoscope projections and sounds based on the story Kaleidoscope by Ray Bradbury. Forever Falling Nowhere was a haunting and beautiful performance which married wonderfully with the digital projections and sound.
Our aim is to bring you a vibrant mix of events, performances and exhibitions in NEoN week and we are really proud of what we have achieved this year. I’d like to give a big shout out and thank you to our awesome volunteers who were brilliant in marshalling and organising throughout the week. Also a massive thanks and well done to Clare, Donna and Raz who really do a splendid job of organising our festival – no mean feat!
