CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/15/2017

Jorn Weisbrodt, Rufus Wainwright, Paul Holdengraber, Karen Hopkins & Charles Renfro launch Into the Culture Cave at Artbook @ MoMA PS1

Sunday, November 19 at 3PM, Artbook @ MoMA PS1 presents the launch of 'Into the Culture Cave: Generator of Art and Community, Emotions and Ideas' with a panel and signing. Author Jorn Weisbrodt will appear in conversation with Rufus Wainwright, Paul Holdengraber, Karen Hopkins and Charles Renfro.

The Luminato Festival's residency at the Hearn Generating Station - three times the size of the Tate Modern and higher than the Statue of Liberty - in 2016 was an enormous undertaking that rewrote the rules of cultural programming in Toronto, and served as an example of how contemporary culture can engage with idle urban spaces.

Now, the incredible story of the Hearn's transformation is detailed in former Luminato Artistic Director Jorn Weisbrodt's book "Into the Culture Cave: Generator of Art and Community, Emotions and Ideas". Composed of contributions from cultural thinkers, practitioners, and artists such as Richard Florida, Jack Diamond, Atom Egoyan, Charles Renfro, Karen Hopkins, Rufus Wainwright and Weisbrodt himself, the book not only discusses the immense production challenges Luminato overcame to turn the Hearn into a 17-day cultural space, but also Weisbrodt's vision of what a 21st century arts institution should be - a "culture cave" where all art forms are welcome, no internal barriers exist and diverse audiences meet.

For 17 days the Hearn was the largest multi-arts center in the world and was visited by 100,000 people. It was a live proposal for a new model of a cultural institution that reflects the society we live in and the cultural behavior of its citizens and does not need to retrofit ancient European cultural models to accommodate contemporary practices. The Hearn Generating Station draws inspiration from Cedric Price's unrealized "Fun Palace", Jane Jacobs dogma "New ideas must use old buildings" and Ariane Mnouchkine's hierarchy free "Theatre du Soleil". The New York Times called the project a "creative engine".

The book features critical essays, recipes from the temporary restaurant Le Pavillion that was named best new restaurant of 2016 by Canada's national newspaper Globe and Mail, short stories, comic strips and gorgeous photography.

JORN WEISBRODT currently serves as artistic advisor for The Music Center. In this role, his focus is on helping The Music Center create a major summer festival that will captures the unique qualities of Los Angeles, as well as explore programming opportunities in genres that are under-represented at the performing arts center’s campus.

Weisbrodt brings an international reputation for collaborating on landmark projects with some of the most prestigious arts organizations around the globe, including La Scala di Milano, the Spoleto Festival, the Barbican Centre in London, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Lincoln Centre Festival and the Manchester International Festival.

For the past five years, Weisbrodt served as the artistic director of the Luminato Festival in Toronto, North America’s largest multi-disciplinary arts festival. He is credited with transforming the Hearn Generating Station, a decommissioned power plant three times the size of the Tate Modern on the shore of Lake Ontario, into the largest temporary multi-arts venue in the world for the 10th anniversary of the Luminato Festival in June 2016. The festival attracted nearly 100,000 visitors in 17 days. The Globe and Mail wrote, “Inside the generating station, the festival finds a way to make the populist contemplative and the avant-garde accessible.”

During his time at Luminato, Weisbrodt collaborated and developed new work with artists such as Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Geoffrey Farmer, Laurie Sansom, Richard Florida, Ohad Naharin, Saint Genet, Tim Hecker, Kid Koala, Terence Koh and Anohnistation, among others. In 2013, Weisbrodt produced the 70th birthday tribute concerts for Joni Mitchell at Toronto’s Massey Hall. The legendary Los Angeles-based musician performed several of her own songs with a band for the first time in more than 10 years. He also worked with Samoan choreographer and artist Lemi Ponifasio on a new staging of R. Murray Schafer’s “Apocalypsis" station, an epic oratorio in two parts about the destruction of the universe and the possibility of a new vision. The piece, which was called “an artistic triumph” by the Toronto Star, was staged with 1,000 musicians and performers, most of whom were non-professionals, on the stage of Toronto’s Sony Center. In a profile piece, the Toronto Star called Weisbrodt “Luminato’s visionary-in-chief.”

PAUL HOLDENGRÄBER, the director of Public Programs at The New York Public Library, is the founder and director of LIVE from the NYPL where over the past decade he has interviewed and hosted everyone from Patti Smith to Zadie Smith, Ricky Jay to Jay-Z, Errol Morris to Jan Morris, Carlo Ginzburg to Claude Lanzmann, Christian Boltanski to Saul Friedlander, Maira Kalman to Art Spiegelman, Neil Gaiman to Brian Eno, Margaret Atwood to Christopher Hitchens, Werner Herzog to Etgar Keret, Gunter Grass to Norman Mailer, Lou Reed to Peter Sellars, Robert Wilson to Jessye Norman, David Grossman to Nicole Krauss, Elizabeth Gilbert to Mike Tyson. Self described as a curator of public curiosity, he has over the past dozen years orchestrated over 600 events at The New York Public Library. Prior to joining the NYPL he founded and directed The Institute for Art and Cultures at The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

RUFUS WAINWRIGHT, one of the great male vocalists, composers, and songwriters of his generation, has released eight studio albums, three DVDs, and three live albums. He has collaborated with artists ranging from Elton John, David Byrne, Robbie Williams Mark Ronson, Joni Mitchell to Burt Bacharach. His album “Rufus Does Judy” recorded at Carnegie Hall in 2006 was nominated for a Grammy. His acclaimed first opera, "Prima Donna," premiered at the Manchester International Festival in July 2009 and has since been presented in London, Toronto and BAM in New York. This summer it will be performed at the Armel Opera Festival in Hungary and Augsburg Theatre in Germany.

CHARLES RENFRO is a registered architect and a partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Since joining the studio in 1997, Charles has been a Principal Designer for many of the studio’s groundbreaking cultural and civic works, including the Blur Building—a pavilion made of fog for the Swiss Expo, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the transformation of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts’ half-century-old campus in New York, which included the expansion of the Julliard School. Most recently, Charles led the design of the 35-acre Zaryadye Park, the first large-scale park to be opened in Moscow in the last fifty years. Charles is also the Partner-in-Charge of two projects currently under construction in China: The Tianjin Julliard School and the Dissona Live-Work Complex in Dongguan.

KAREN BROOKS HOPKINS served as President of the Brooklyn Academy of Music from 1999 until her retirement in 2015, and was an employee of the institution since 1979. Hopkins served as the chair of the Cultural Institutions Group from 2002-2004, a member of the Mayor’s Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission and as a participant on Mayor de Blasio’s transition committee. From 2005-2010 she served as the Brooklyn Regent for the New York State Education Department. In 2013, Crain’s named her one of the “50 Most Powerful Women in New York,” and in 2014 she was one of ten selected into its inaugural “New York Business Hall of Fame.” From 2015-2017, she served as the Inaugural Senior Fellow in Residence at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation where her research focused on the impact of anchor cultural institutions. Hopkins is the author of the widely read book, Successful Fundraising for Arts & Cultural Organizations, which is currently available in a revised second edition through Greenwood Publishing.

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