LE FLASH Performance Art Overtakes Castleberry Hill ATLANTA, GA (WABE) - Tonight, the downtown district of Castleberry Hill will light up with sights and sounds of LE FLASH.

From dusk to midnight, artists will flood a five-mile radius, with a variety of works, everything from moving images to moving bodies. Susan Mittleman has more on what promises to be a unique cultural experience.



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As the sun begins to set on Castleberry Hill, a parade of bicyclists wearing headlights and reflectors will cruise en-mass through the downtown neighborhood - signaling the beginning of "Le Flash." Stuart Keeler is co-curator of the event.



"Le Flash is an evening where art experiments with light and the neighborhood of Castelberry Hill becomes a new cultural landscape."



For the next six hours, this historic district will be transformed.



Using existing walls, boutiques, garage doors, sidewalks, alleys and abandoned spaces as their palate, some 60 artists from the Atlanta area and around the world, many of who gathered earlier to share their conceptions, will present light-inspired installations, sculptures, performance art, music and more.



Twice throughout the night, etherial dancers will flow in procession down the streets.



"We're starting at top of this hill, start of le flash."



Glo-Atlanta choreographer Lauri Stallings created this site-specific work, she says, to bring together individual vision and community response.



"We're trying to blur lines, trying to bring demographics together. We're going down this street, then down ally, then pour into Castleberry point which is ntended to be center point for community exchange."



Throughout the night of Le Flash, expect to find both the obvious, and non-sensical: a traveling flashlight,' giant moth lanterns, fire flowers, bonfires, iron-pours and even video drive-bys.



Of course, there will be ghosts and vampires and video projections on decrepit buildings and tattoo parlors with experimental music such as Carl Di-Salva's "We are survival Machines".



"I'm doing a video installation on zombies and robots. They come out at night, they're the absence of light, or life."



You might wander into light images of dark humor,as Taiwan-born artistYin Shin Tzeng projects close-up images of her mouth, as she takes a long, torturous breath.



"I try to torture myself and my viewers at the same time. I just think it's so funny."



Artists like Jason butcher and Don Hassler experiment with the sound of old synthesizers, to create light imagery from sound waves.



Other artists, like Avantika Bawa, will focus on silence, just the glowing celluloid of silent videos submitted from artists around the world.



"Because it's on the 2nd of October, which is also the birthday of Mohatma Ghandi. Ghandi was silent once a week, and in his silence, he attained a lot."



Now in its second year, Le Flash says Keeler, was inspired by Nuit Blanche.



"Throughout the world, Nuit Blanche, which means white night, happens in Paris, in Toronto, Madrid, New York, Chicago has Luptopia. And Le Flash is Atlanta's notion of a Nuit Blanche."



Le Flash's other co-curator Cathy Byrd loves the growth of the public art genre.



"It's a combination of a response to a specific site, to a specific community and an engagement of a larger community of the artists and the public that might not otherwise access contemporary art."



Le flash also marks the opening event of "Atlanta Celebrates Photography", which runs throughout the month of October.


FOR WABE, I'M Susan Mittleman.
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