Dinosaurs, vinyl record pop-up, video art at the Barnes, and more this weekend

Can you believe we’re pretty much halfway through the year? Time flies, indeed, but there are some timeless things happening in the city this weekend. One of Stan Lee’s final collaborations lives on at Amalgam Comics, Marion Stokes’s extensive 30-year archive gets a documentary, video art exhibits at the Barnes for the first time, dinosaurs roam again, and Afrofuturism shows its form at the Clay Studio.

Stan Lee’s Alliances at Amalgam

Stan Lee’s Alliances: A Trick of Light, an Audible Original narrated by Black-ish star Yara Shahidi, is playing at Amalgam Comics and Coffeehouse, 2578 Frankford Avenue. One of Lee’s final collaborations arrives before its official release, and is a first-of-its-kind audio storytelling event. You can check it out now through Thursday, June 27, 2019, the audiobook’s official premiere date. The story synopsis reveals Nia and Cameron as they conspire to create a more righteous online universe in the face of a threat of galactic proportions that puts humanity’s existence in the balance. Ryan Silbert, Kat Rosenfield, and Luke Lieberman also collaborated on the project.

Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project

Lightbox Film Center is screening Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project. The film documents radical Philadelphia native Marion Stokes, who recorded American television from her Rittenhouse Square apartment 24 hours a day for 30 years from 1975 until her death in 2012. The taping was a form of activism, seeking truth while compiling a comprehensive archive of the media that would one day be invaluable. Her 70,000 VHS tapes are being digitized now. Director Matt Wolf and others featured in the film will hold a conversation after the screening. Go see it at the Lightbox Film Center, 3701 Chestnut Street, on Friday, June 28, at 7pm.

Dinosaurs in Philly

The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, is opening Dinosaurs Around the World this Sunday, June 30. Over a dozen animatronic dinosaurs will be on display, cultivated with a multilayered narrative, fossils, authentic casts, immersive design, and more to bring visitors young and old together for a colossal exhibit. Tickets are available online.

Video art at the Barnes

For the first time ever, the Barnes Foundation is presenting an exhibition devoted to video art. Pioneering American video artist Bill Viola is featured in I Do Not Know What It Is I Am Like, the first large-scale exhibition of Viola’s work to be presented in Philadelphia. The selection spans from 1976 to 2009, cultivating an exhibition that shows redefinition of the moving image “with a compelling and distinctive oeuvre that challenges the senses.” Curated by John G. Hanhardt, the exhibit opens on June 30 and runs through September 15.

Vinyl Tap Pop-Up at Amalgam

There’s more happening at Amalgam Comics! On Saturday, June 29, from 12 to 6pm, DJs and record vendors including Steve Ferrell and Corey Duncan will be slinging wax—new, old, rare, and familiar. Starfire will host and a live painting by Seper A. Torcasio will be raffled at the end of the event.

Funkadelic Awakening: A Futuristic Resistance

The group exhibition inspired by the work of Donté K. Hayes, Salvador Jiménez-Flores, and Jennifer Ling Datchuk wraps up in Funkadelic Awakening: A Futuristic Resistance at the Clay Studio, 137 North 2nd Street, this weekend. The exhibition features narratives that challenge European dominance, wrestling with multiple historical references and systemic erasure while using a fluid comination of ideals stemming from futurism and Afrofuturism. Check out the closing weekend of the exhibit through Sunday, June 30.