This news release was updated on June 6, 2023, after the keynote reading by author Meg Cabot was postponed.
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Music by the Flaming Lips, Son Lux and Arrested Development, as well as a keynote reading by author Ted Chiang, will be part of the fourth Granfalloon, an annual celebration of art, ideas and community inspired by Hoosier author Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
The June event kicks off the Bloomington summer arts and culture season, attracting thousands of visitors to downtown Bloomington. Granfalloon will partner and run concurrently with the Indiana University Writers’ Conference and the Bloomington Handmade Market.
Presented by the Indiana University Arts and Humanities Council, Granfalloon 2023 takes place June 7 to 11, with a number of pre-festival events planned in the weeks prior. Music and theater performances, readings, talks, exhibits, film screenings, interactive activities and more will take place at numerous venues on the IU Bloomington campus and throughout the city.
Several events, including the main-stage concert on Kirkwood Avenue, will be free and open to the general public. The event lineup and partner and supporter information for the festival can be found on the Granfalloon website. Tickets for ticketed events will be available March 22.
Grammy Award-winning band the Flaming Lips will headline the main-stage show June 10 in downtown Bloomington, along with Grammy Award-winning hip-hop trailblazers Arrested Development. Son Lux, the Oscar-nominated composers for “Everything, Everywhere All at Once,” will perform June 9 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. The experimental band is led by Jacobs School of Music alumnus Ryan Lott.
The festival celebrates local excellence in the arts and will host a number of nationally recognized guest artists with ties to the Bloomington arts scene, including a trio of performances led by music producer Mark Bingham that will highlight acts of historical significance in the Bloomington music scene, which he is a veteran of.
This year’s festival takes inspiration from Vonnegut’s first novel, “Player Piano,” highlighting themes of technology and creativity, automation, and the rise of the computer age. Accordingly, the festival will partner with the Jacobs School of Music, Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, and Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering to curate events and activities that bring the campus’s expertise and resources to the festival in a fun and engaging way.
Events that align with this year’s theme include:
- Award-winning science fiction author Ted Chiang, who will give a reading and discussion on the intersections of AI and culture June 8 at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.
- A trio of exhibits that explore Vonnegut’s novel, creativity in the age of AI, and the use of digital technology in the arts and humanities, at the Gayle Karch Cook Center for Public Arts and Humanities.
- A staged reading of a never-developed “Player Piano” screenplay produced by Constellation.
- An AfterHours event at WonderLab Museum.
- A film series hosted by local pop-up movie theater Cicada Cinema.
Additional festival events include:
- A screening of the Oscar-nominated film “Everything, Everywhere All at Once” at IU Cinema
- Girls Rock Bloomington showcase performance.
- Vonnegut-themed music, literature and art performance headlined by Salo Pallini.
- A restaging of the city’s own Gentry Brothers Circus, featuring performances by contemporary circus artists.
- Performances of “On the Line,” a new play by IU faculty Jonathan Michaelsen and Ansley Valentine about the machine that is college football.
- A series of book discussions in partnership with Indiana Humanities and the Monroe County Public Library.
More guests, events and supporters will be announced in the coming weeks.
Granfalloon is supported in part by a number of corporate and foundation supporters, including Graduate Bloomington, Visit Bloomington and City of Bloomington. Granfalloon is also supported in part by a number of IU offices, including the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice President, the Office of the Vice President for Research, IU Libraries, Jacobs School of Music, Department of English, and Platform: An Arts and Humanities Laboratory.
Additional programming partners from campus include IU Auditorium, IU Cinema, IU Theatre and the Lilly Library. Additional programming partners from the community include the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, Downtown Bloomington Inc., The Bluebird Nightclub, The Bishop Bar, The Orbit Room, Blockhouse Bar, Morgenstern’s Books, WFHB and Gallery Walk Bloomington.
For partnership and sponsorship inquiries, contact ahcounc@indiana.edu.
