No event in recent See & Do history has ever sounded so bizarrely intriguing as Art Against Fear, a selection of visuals and performances presented by a multidisciplinary group of Florida artists at the Ybor Cigar Theater this weekend. The main event, "Home Automation," sounds like a curiosity unto itself. Created over three years by David Karave in collaboration with more than 30 other artists, this kinetic project of protest features a family of anxiety-ridden robotic crash test dummies who, in response to the color code threat alerts on their home TV, viciously and (in some way) musically self-destruct. Other highlights: "Homeland Buffoonery" clowning workshops and performances/interventions by Beth Elkin and Derek Baxterm; "paranoid futuristic keyboard rhapsodies" by Alex Gendron, both together with Karave and solo; Rachel Bishop's "Silent Burning," a video projection and spoken word presentation on censorship; Erik Zimmerman's deranged wooden robots and a number of visual artworks, like color-saturated apocalyptic neo-psychedelic paintings by N.O. Bonzo and pharmaceutical artifact installations/sculptures by Desiree D'Alessandro. For more information, visit crashingart.com; to R.S.V.P. for a "Homeland Buffoonery" workshop, e-mail ftlbooking@hotmail.com. April 13-14, 6-11 p.m. Fri., 10 a.m.-11 p.m. Sat., Palm Avenue and 18th Street, Ybor City, $9, 813-413-4773.
This article appears in Apr 11-17, 2007.