Trinity Arts Festival (TAF) will make its highly anticipated return tomorrow with a week-long celebration of art and arts-based societies on campus. As always, the festival invites societies to engage with their more imaginative and creative sides in a project that injects artistry and fancy onto campus through a series of collaborative projects. Throughout the festival there will be so-called “guerrilla gigs” taking place across campus, where an impromptu musical performance will take place at 1pm in a new random location every day. Each day of the festival will also feature at least one other big event, so there’s something to pique everyone’s interest.
Monday will see an LED show by the Juggling and Circus Society before a concert in the College Chapel. Budding artists can come along to a workshop on geometric shape, where they’ll learn how to make geometric diamonds. These eclectic decorations will then be hung up all around campus. Throughout the entire festival there will be a plethora of different workshops to attend, like beading, balloon art, make your own xylophone and the ever-popular Shamanic journey.
DU Comedy Society will be hosting their Women in Comedy gig in association with TAF in Whelan’s on Tuesday night. This is the product of three weeks of workshops, with the show kindly supported by Trinity’s Equality Fund. Also on Tuesday, TAF will be hosting pop star, comedy award winner and Eurovision 2018 hopeful Xnthony as well as former chair of the Central Societies Committee (CSC) and auditor of Trinity Orchestra, Rob Farhat. Farhat is the co-founder of Ensemble Music, a record label that supports musicians coming from a classical background and whose music spans several genres.
On Wednesday, the Murder Mystery in Henrietta Street will be taking place, channelling the infamously surreal 1972 Rothschild party. Promised guests include Salvador Dali, Brigitte Bardot and Audrey Hepburn. Wristbands for this labyrinthine evening will be given out in advance at the TAF stand in the Arts Block, just like their Fourth Week event. Pomo Menarche, a performance piece by Grace Morgan, Laoise Murray and Cliodhna Kelly, will explore the disgust and desire centred around the female body at 1pm in the Atrium. Photographer Dara McGrath will be addressing the Dublin University Photography Association (DUPA) and TAF at 6pm in the Robert Emmet Theatre.
Thursday will provide a more erudite endeavor, with a “liferaft” debate in which members from various artistic societies will contend why their own association trumps all others on campus. Also with the University Philosophical Society (the Phil), Brian McMahon-Gallagher will be giving a Bram Stoker paper reading, which will be part poetry performance, part discussion on poetry, at 11am. Cartoonist and television personality Don Conroy will be hosted in the Phil Conversation Room at 2pm. If you’re feeling particularly aquatic, Trinity Fashion Society will be hosting a mermaid crown workshop at 4pm.
While Friday’s main event will be TAF’s wrap party, two more guest speakers will be visiting: Anjuli Douglas at 12pm and Desiree Birch at 3pm, both in the Phil Conversation Room. With all this and inevitably more happening, TAF is teeming with excitement and will undoubtedly provide a much-needed escape from essays and lectures.
