Elm Street Interactive Area

Saturday, October 12, 1 to 5p

We’re closing Elm Street to cars and turning it into a dynamic arena for interactive art making and activism. Please join us – use paint and stencils to craft a message, leave a note on the Day of the Dead altar, take a look at your consumption habits and make a pledge to reduce your carbon footprint! Work with our amazing HONK! artists to create something for yourself or to get involved with an activist cause!

DECLARING A CLIMATE EMERGENCY: A PLACE FOR MOURNING AND FOR RESOLUTE ACTION
We’ve invited a group of artists and activists to collaborate in bringing their response to the climate emergency to HONK!’s Elm Street Art Area. Rosalba Solis of La Piñata will build a TZOMPANTLI : Monumento a la 6ta Extincion – Monument to the 6th Extinction – inspired by Mexican and Central American traditions of the Day of the Dead. This altar offers a sacred space to feel grief, connect with the spirits around us – of humans, animals and nature – and celebrate the cycle of life. Sophy Tuttle has designed a paper “offering” for you to write your own message for the altar and pavement stencils for you to leave your message on the streets. The artist/activists of Extinction Rebellion bring their Art Build to HONK! Block print your own patches or T-Shirt or help make large endangered sea creature prints for banners and flags. Then join the rebellion – march on Sunday in the HONK! parade and join future X/R protests.

6:30 PM: CANDLE-LIGHTING CEREMONY AT THE ALTAR
Join us at the TZOMPANTLI : Monumento a la 6ta Extincion – Monument to the 6th Extinction – for music and dancing as we light candles in tribute to the spirits in the world around us.

PLAYFUL SYMBOLS OF AN ALARMING SITUATION: THE BABY VIRUS AND DATA CONSUMED LAB
Returning from the Somerville Arts Council’s ArtBeat Festival, Wen Yu‘s colorful inflated sculpture of a giant virus and a team of Consumption Scientists urge you to examine your consumption habits – how do your daily choices impact the environment? Design a personal pledge to reduce your carbon footprint and stop global warming – thrift and bike more, eat meat and drive less! Commemorate the moment with a photo (with your pledge) and the Baby Virus, a symbol of the ancient viruses that will be released from frozen ground as the glaciers retreat. Commissioned by the Somerville Arts Council and Somerville Office of Sustainability and Environment.

CREATE A PARADE BANNER: ACTION NOW! A compilation of actions we can take now.
In Boston we are fortunate to not yet have felt the radical effects of resource depletion and extreme humanitarian injustice that are affecting many parts of the globe. On a recent visit to Haiti, street artist Julia “Julz” Roth felt the force of its impact, combined with the long-term effects of post colonial ecomomic inequality, corruption, and racial injustice that are fueling the climate crisis. This experience opened her eyes to the urgent need for change; Julia chose the message “Action Now” to urge all of us to take another look at our patterns of consumption and our daily choices. We have the power to act – individually and collectively. You are invited to make your mark; layered stencils will address actions we must take now! Climate activists from Mothers Out Front are helping to realize this project and will carry the banner with Julia in the HONK! Parade on Sunday.

DIY: ROLL UP YOUR SLEEVES, ROLL ON SOME INK, AND MAKE YOUR VIEWS KNOWN!
What sparks you to action? U.S. treatment of immigrants and refugees? Cambridge/Somerville’s vanishing affordable housing? Gun violence? Economic inequity? War abroad? Mass incarceration and for profit prisons? Create a stenciled bandana, flag or badge with the awesome League of Just Us, a Worcester-based artist/maker collective. Wear it with pride during HONK!¬ and bring your message our Sunday Parade – join an activist group and march!

New Possibilities: The Diagonal Life
The amazing activist artists of Bread and Puppet Theater – founded in 1963 and based in Glover VT – will transform Elm Street with an installation of a new large scale artwork entitled “The Diagonal Life.” Their vision: “The Diagonal Life is a masonite-cut series showing the diagonal as a potent and promising opposition to the dominating verticality of our culture. We inhabitants of Western modernity are no strangers to verticality. From the architecture of our cities to the “ladder(s) of success” we’re asked to scale to the incessant wakefulness required of us, postponing the horizontal pleasures of sleep. ‘Diagonals are created from the leaning power of hurt verticals,’ says Peter Schumann, founder and director of Bread and Puppet Theater. Come see our beautiful, new prints as they line Elm Street on Saturday at the Honk! Festival.”

BUILDING UTOPIA WITH DUCT TAPE, CARDBOARD AND IMAGINATION
What do you think keeps your neighborhood strong, diverse, and interesting? Affordable housing, parks and playgrounds, language labs, skate board ramps and artist studios? Contribute your ideas and build a utopian city from cardboard, duct tape and paint with Parts and Crafts, the artist/makers of Somerville’s first fab lab! Advocate for neighborhood resources by carrying a sculptural city in the HONK! Parade on Sunday with members of the P&C collective. Learn how we can make Somerville inclusive and affordable for everyone to live in!

CARNIVAL: A FANTASTIC WORLD OF JOY AND BEAUTY
Every year the Cambridge Caribbean Carnival International fills neighborhood streets with the exuberant spirit and outrageous artistry of carnival traditions, which have origins in Africa and Europe and celebrates emancipation from slavery in the Caribbean, America and Brazil. The groups of dancers in sequins and feathers, dancing to Afro-Caribbean beats, put on an unforgettable display of community pride. Meet some of the organizers, see a costume up close and hear how – and why –it’s made. Get your face painted or craft something inspired by carnival. Do you want to give your old umbrella new life? Bring it to the Carnival tent for a makeover! Then on Sunday, have fun twirling it yourself with other performers or watch it as it is featured in the HONK! Parade. “That’s what Carnival means to us – a joyful shared experience of commemoration, creativity and merriment!”

BUTTON BEE: Put anything you can imagine on a button!
Join local artist/activists Resa Blatman and Susan Berstler and make your own activist buttons. Want to ban plastic? Practice kindness? Impeach someone? Shout it out with markers, colored pencils, rubber stamps and other art materials, and then have your 2” masterpiece turned into a button.