The Art of the Giant Dung Beetle

Have you ever seen a 30-foot-long dung beetle? I have. It was black and icky and flipped on its back, jagged legs reaching uselessly upward. It was in City Hall. Thankfully, there wasn't a corresponding 100-foot-high pile of dung anywhere nearby. The giant beetle is still there in Kitchener City Hall, presumably yearning for a big poop ball to roll about, since such is the unfortunate Sisyphean fate of the lowly dung beetle.

The enormous beetle is among oodles of peculiar and pretty awesome installations that are part of CAFKA (Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener & Area).  All over the region, local and international artists have created wonkily provocative works of art to challenge, engage and entertain onlookers. CAFKA officially opened with a ceremony last Friday at City Hall, and although the opening speeches were preposterously boring, the artworks in CAFKA are anything but. Check out a video tour of the exhibits and installations.  There's far too much cool stuff to list here, so I recommend you just get out there and explore CAFKA before it wraps up on Oct. 4. 

Also happening right now around the K-Dub is IMPACT 09, an international festival of physical theatre. The 10-day festival features theatre troupes from four continents performing original and daring plays at venues around Waterloo Region.  I recently attended a rehearsal of Edna's Archive, an original play based on the contents of a discarded box of memorabilia that once belonged to a Kitchener woman named Edna Bear. It's a very cool concept for a play, and all the other shows in IMPACT 09 look equally off-kilter and engaging.

In short, there's tons of oodles of scads of cool stuff to see and experience right now in K-W.  So get out there, or I'll send the dung beetle after you.

Comments

[Terre]

Poop ball. Hah!!!