Sculpture derby, Art in the Open, and feminist flamenco

It’s looking like a rainy weekend, so don’t ask me what May showers bring, but I don’t think they’ll keep the competitors or fans of the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby away from this one-of-a-kind annual spectacle, happening this weekend on Saturday, May 19, from 12 to 6pm.

The derby (presented through the partnership of New Kensington CDC, East Kensington Neighbors Association, and Philadelphia Federal Credit Union) invites teams from across the city to navigate a nearly three-hour trek in outrageously designed human-powered vehicles. The course makes a rough figure 8 through Kensington and ends when everyone charges into a giant mud pit. Last year’s competitors included everything from a team of weirdly subversive adult Care Bears on matching bikes to DIY Stormtroopers in a pedal-powered AT-AT Walker.

There are prizes after everyone squelches out of the mud, with roaring crowds lining the street: People’s Choice Award, Best Engineering, Best Breakdown, Best/Worst Pun, and many others. The derby kicks off at noon at Trenton Avenue and Dauphin Street, with a 2:45pm mud-pit finale in the same spot. You can watch anywhere along the way: check online for the full details, including the race route, a huge line-up of arts and craft vendors, and food trucks. (Drive if you must, but the best way to get there is to take the Market-Frankford line to Berks Station.)

Art outside and in

For others willing to brave the forecast but looking for something a bit more sedate, there’s the biennial Art in the Open event on the Schuylkill River Trail from Friday, May 18, to Sunday, May 20, 9am to 5pm. Mosey from the Fairmount Water Works to South Street, and witness about 40 jury-selected individual artists and artist teams making river and community-inspired art in real time, with many interactive projects and displays.

If you’d rather stay inside, Friday is International Museum Day, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art is celebrating with free admission all day, also including the Rodin Museum, the Perelman Building, and the historic Cedar Grove house in Fairmount Park, which is packed with sartorial, architectural, and design details going back to the mid-1700s (spanning Baroque, Rococo, and Federal styles).

Over at the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), The Last Place They Thought Of, an interdisciplinary group exhibition from Torkwase Dyson, Lorraine O’Grady, Jade Montserrat, and Keisha Scarville, is up through August 12. Spanning photography, painting, video, and performance, the show’s projects “interrogate the historical and contextual specificities of black women’s locations and displacements throughout the diaspora.” Drawing its title from the story of Harriet Jacobs (in the telling of writer Katherine McKittrick), an escaped slave who hid for seven years in an attic crawlspace, the show traces the “cartographies” of the auction block, the transatlantic slave trade, and the Underground Railroad, “illuminating histories of black women’s liberation, resistance and concealment throughout the black diaspora.” ICA has Friday hours from 11am to 6pm, and 11am to 5pm on Saturday and Sunday. It’s always free to visit.

‘My Voice, Our Voice’

If dance is your thing, Pasión Y Arte’s (PyA) latest, presented by Intercultural Journeys, is worth a look. My Voice, Our Voice | Mi Voz, Nuestra Voz, coming up on Friday, May 18, and Saturday, May 19, at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral, combines classical flamenco form with 21st-century feminism. PyA, helmed by artistic director and choreographer Elba Hevia y Vaca, has more than ten years on the scene in performance, education, and community engagement through modern feminist flamenco. The group “empowers women through self-expression by embracing bold experimentation that challenges traditional flamenco gender stereotypes.” My Voice, Our Voice mixes classic pieces with the debut of a collaboration between the artistic director and dancer/choreographer Annie Wilson. Tickets ($8-$40) are available online.

Above: Pasión y Arte artistic director Elba Hevia y Vaca. (Photo by Mike Hurwitz.)