Join us on Sunday, December 6th from 1:00 – 3:00pm on Helms Walk, our pedestrian plaza on Helms Avenue, for Diana Wyenn’s interactive performance Compassio\N. Compassion is an ancient idea upon which all the major religions place great importance. Compassion is also quickly becoming a new age buzzword.

Investigating the historical and contemporary uses, references, and definitions of compassion through the lens of Climate Change, this series of short mixed media performances directed by Diana Wyenn confronts our relationship to the term and the ambition, as well as its actual embodiment and exclusion in local, U.S., and global culture today.

Performed outside in unexpected places at unexpected times and using movement, text, screens, intimacy, and humor, Compassio\N surprises and compels its unsuspecting audience to ask: What form does compassion take in our capitalist society? If compassion is the response to the suffering of others that motivates a desire to help, who is suffering? And how much motivation is needed before one helps?

Parking is located at the Free Valet in the lot on Helms Avenue and Venice Boulevard.

The Helms Bakery Festival events run Thursday, December 3rd through Wednesday, December 9th.  We hope you join us for a film screening or discussion, enjoy an art installation or theatre performance, or come to all of the events around our campus. The Festival umbrella brings together a collective of artists who have much to share about shaping a better future. For a complete Festival calendar, click here.

About VisionLA
The VisionLA ’15 Climate Action Arts Festival is the first-ever multi-disciplinary arts festival throughout the greater Los Angeles area organized to give artists a voice in the increasingly urgent conversation around climate change, resource use and environmental social justice. The festival is an all-volunteer, grassroots effort organized by artists for artists, and for the Los Angeles community as a whole. This first year, the festival is timed to coincide with the UN’s COP21 Global Climate Conference in Paris, from November 30 through December 11, to raise awareness of this important milestone in the international call for strong carbon emissions standards.