Headless chickens and community-driven design at Folkestone Triennial

The 2014 event will present a series of design projects that help renovate disused and decrepit spaces; while a number of participating artists are showing designs addressing issued including sustainability, communication and technology, the environment and food sourcing.

Architect Muf will be working at Folkestone’s Payer’s Park area, looking to help turn the space from ‘a dilapidated area’ into a ‘new, functioning park that will connect different areas of the town’, according to the festival organisers.

The project has been informed by a series of events with people from the area inducing a silent disco, an archaeological dig and open air museum, tattooing, bread baking and rapping. Apparently, these seemingly disconnected activities ‘traced, enacted and revealed past occupations as snapshots of the future’, helping shape the design of a place ‘where there is space for difference and for the people.’

Over at the Foord Road Viaduct, Marjetica Potrc & Ooze Architects will be creating a wind-powered lift that will carry people to the top of the viaduct.

The aforementioned Steve sculpture by Sarah Staton will, we’re told, be formed of an enormous steel body with edible plants growing in and around it, which people can sit inside and around. The layer of material around the outside of the piece is being embedded with solar cells, which use sunlight harnessed during the day to give the piece a soft glow at nighttime.

One of the more unusual highlights looks set to be a rootoftwo’s strange take on weathervanes, The Whithervanes. Taking the form of headless chickens, the pieces look to show levels of fear floating around on the Internet, by searching for keywords relating to disaster stories on Reuters newsfeeds. The more fear found, the more the weathervanes spin and change colour.

The vanes will also share newsfeeds from around the world, and the project aims to demonstrate ‘how much our contemporary media, policy and political frameworks utilise fear as a persuasive method’, says Folkestone Triennial.

At the opening weekend of the Triennial the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Fair will be coming to Folkestone, with artists such as Tracey Emin, Gavin Turk and Mat Collishaw joining local artists to sell their work from the back of vintage and new Vauxhall cars.

Folkestone Triennial runs from 30 August – 2 November at various venues in Folkestone. For more information visit  http://www.folkestonetriennial.org.uk/