Pestival 2009

[SimonS]

In London, 3rd-6th Sept

http://pestival.org/

In case i'm not the only one who hadn't seen this

[Nina Stanczyk]

Hey, I was manning a stand at pesival (seeing whether people were attractive to mosquitoes), and was wondering if anyone came along? If so, what did you think?

[SimonS]

Generally? Or just your stand?

[Nina Stanczyk]

Both really. What people thought of the event in general, and if anyone could give me any feedback on the mosquito stand specifically.

Thanks!

[SimonS]

Well, your stand must have worked as you were inundated with munchkins! The sticker thing seemed to work very well for all ages. And you had a Big Giant Head (not you personally) which probably helped.

Depends what you were after. You seemed to be intentionally avoiding conventional text-based presentation (which might have caused a bottleneck with the space available anyway). Not for me to say what got over to the general public.

As for the event itself, I thought the proportional mix of art/science/campaigns/etc. was about right. I'd hoped for a broader coverage of insect visual art: it was pretty much all conceptual/3D without the illustrative (or literary) side of things coming into it. The Oxford museum has had plenty of interesting 2D exhibitions in recent years in the upper galleries (painting, photography, etc).
But maybe that's all sooo last millennium.

Seriously though, that sort of thing wouldn't take up much space and would link the whole thing together better spatially. Possibly my mindset is more 'museum' than 'gallery', but you did ask.