Life-size puppets, robots and politics will become more alike in places other than the government when the annual CULTUREMART fest at HERE Arts Center opens with 17 uber-modern works of art utilizing a cocktail of puppetry, video, music, dance and theater. During the duration of the festival, anyone can check out Hal Eagar’s Automaton Repertory Project for free, which breathes life into a 1950s tin man forced to face the culture schlock of modern American reality in an installation of puppet theater more honest than Oz. Ponder your New Year’s resolution to lose 10 pounds with the work of Ellen Beckerman’s Food Project (Jan. 6-7), which highlights the American quest for happiness through endless food via interviews and found texts.
Musical offerings during CULTUREMART include the breezy duets of Removable Parts by Corey Dargel—which allow unrequited love to fester with hope that floats eternal. If the working hum of your dishwasher ever sounded like a muffled message, the obscure songs pieced together from sounds of household items and buzzing flies will validate your domestic suspicions at Campanella and Fleischmann’s Red Fly/Blue Bottle (Jan. 10-11). Don’t feel obliged to miss the rock opera of Wickets (pictured left, January 25-28) either, where a gaggle of 1970s airline stewardesses turn the plane upside down in a mile-high adaptation of Maria Irene Fornes’ Fefu and Her Friends.
Through Jan. 28. HERE, 145 6th Ave. (on Dominick St.), 212-352-3101; 8:30 (unless otherwise noted), $15.
