Cherryblast, the annual closing party of the Cherry Blossom Festival, sponsored lovingly by Philippa Hughes and her Pink Line Project, was, unsurprisingly, a blast this past weekend in Anacostia.  The art, the games, the shows, the people were all part of a new and exploratory DC.  There were the usual suspects: aerial trapeze artists, a Bluebrain collaborative feature (pretty cool: in a four story elevator shaft), and an all-girl drum corps.

The not-so-usual suspects dropped in: The Floating Lab Collective, a group of artists who work to “expand the space of art into public space and to expand the discourse about contemporary art.”  Cool right?  As I walked into their van (I know, I know), the artist told me that there were paper bags of Mobile Memorials.  Anyone could take one (become a ReDistributor), providing they put it somewhere public and “check in” its location on the website.  Hopefully I’ll start seeing some of these objects around town!

The old DC Police evidence warehouse has effectively become Lightbox, an open and roomy space especially suited to video installations.  Listening to acoustic guitar strummed by a hipster-chanteuse while standing next to the old Medication Room and looking out the broken glass windows at downtown DC was…surreal.  And a ton of fun.

I’m eager to see how Anacostia develops as a new art hot spot in DC, “activating abandoned spaces with the arts“.  For more info, search #lightboxdc on Twitter.