Granfalloon takes place across multiple days at multiple venues around Bloomington and the IU Campus. Below is a handy at-a-glance schedule of everything that’s going on during the festival.
Many festival events are free, though some are ticketed.
We’re also starting the Granfalloonery early this year with several pre-festival events throughout the spring.
Discussion @ 7pm, Dancing @ 8pm, Music w/DJ Angst @ 9pm
The Back Door, 207 South College Avenue
Free event!
A Vonnegut-themed kick-off to the festival week with a queer-focused talk on Vonnegut’s writing, dancing, and music.
Talk @ 4pm, Performance @ 7pm
Monroe County Public Library, 303 East Kirkwood Avenue
Free event!
Join WFHB legend Jim Manion along with Mark Bingham, Dale Sophiea, and others for a panel discussion on the DIY music scene in Bloomington, what made Bloomington such a fruitful place for music production, and stories of the scene. Jim will also be talking about the current oral history project that is ongoing, with a viewing of some our interview footage.
In 2017 Mark Bingham debuted an exclusive Hoagy Carmichael set in the Fountain Square Ballroom in Bloomington for a WFHB event celebrating Hoagy’s birthday. With guitarist David Gulyas, Mark brings some of Hoagy’s least-known songs to life. Join us at the Monroe County Public Library to celebrate the great Hoosier songwriter.
Performance @ 8pm, 21+
The Bishop Bar, 123 South Walnut Street
Free event!
From rock songs to ballads to surf instrumentals, join us for a Mark Bingham feature night, exploring the highlights of all of his music from his 50 years of recording and performing. A can’t-be-missed reunion of titans from the Bloomington music scene in the 70s and 80s.
Discussion @ 5:30pm
FAR Center, 505 West 4th Street
Free Event!
Join us for an engaging discussion with the members of Son Lux on a range of topics including how the band crafts their experimental sound, the unique experience of scoring music, and the social power of music. The discussion will be moderated by IUPUI’s Mitchell L. H. Douglas.
Performance @ 7pm, 21+
Blockhouse Bar, 205 South College Avenue
Free event!
Mark Bingham, David Gulyas, Dave Conrad, Tom Marron, and Jerome Deupree will join Mark Bingham for a blast from the past as they recreate the sounds of psych rock band Screaming Gypsy Bandits. They’ll be performing the entirety of the band’s 1973 album In the Eye,plus songs from Back to Doghead and some of Caroline Peyton’s recorded songs. David T. James opening!
Performance @ 9pm, 21+
The Bishop Bar, 123 South Walnut Street
Free event!
A night of music, literature, and visual art inspired by the work of Kurt Vonnegut. Musical performances by Salo Pallini, Billy Pilgrim and the Earthlings, and Jordan Munson.
Performance @ 8pm
Buskirk-Chumley Theater, 114 East Kirkwood Avenue
Oscar-nominated experimental music group Son Lux to perform at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater with opener KAINA.
Performance @ 8pm
The Bluebird Nightclub, 216 North Walnut Street
Tickets are $20
American singer-songwriterLanghorne Slim will perform at the Bluebird Nightclub with opener Pat Kearns Duo.
Performance @ 3pm
100 South Grant Street
Free event!
The GirlsRock Bloomington Granfalloon showcase will feature original solo and group songs from former GRB camp and after-school program participants and volunteers. Featuring kids on drums, vocals, guitar and keys- get ready to be inspired by local girls, trans and non-binary youth ages 8-14!
Performance @ 5pm
200 East Kirkwood Avenue
Free event w/premium ticket options available
The Granfalloon Main Stage Concert will take place outdoors on East Kirkwood Avenue and feature musical performances by The Flaming Lips, Arrested Development, and MICHELLE.
Discussion 6:30-8pm, 21+
Upland FSQ, 1201 Prospect Street, Indianapolis, IN 46203
Free Event. Online event details here.
Join Indiana Humanities and Granfalloon for a special edition of the Books, Booze & Brains series. IU arts and humanities faculty will guide conversation and share insights about the novel that inspired this year’s Granfalloon, Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. Player Piano is the first novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. The novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus navigating a dystopian world of automation partly inspired by the author’s time working at General Electric. Vonnegut uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in his later works, to describe the negative impact technology can have on quality of life. This event is free and open to the general public. Find the book at your nearest library or bookstore and join us!
Discussion 6:30-8pm, 21+
Morgenstern’s Books, 849 South Auto Mall Road, Bloomington, IN 47401
Free Event. Online event details here.
Join Indiana Humanities and Granfalloon for a special edition of the Books, Booze & Brains series. IU arts and humanities faculty will guide conversation and share insights about the novel that inspired this year’s Granfalloon, Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut. Player Piano is the first novel by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. The novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus navigating a dystopian world of automation partly inspired by the author’s time working at General Electric. Vonnegut uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become hallmarks developed further in his later works, to describe the negative impact technology can have on quality of life. This event is free and open to the general public. Find the book at your nearest library or bookstore and join us!
Discussion 6:30-8pm, 21+
Switchyard Brewing Company, 419 North Walnut Street
Free Event. Please RSVP Here.
Join Monroe County Public Library and Granfalloon for the May edition of Books On Tap. It's the book club with a twist! Enjoy fantastic drinks, a comfortable atmosphere, and a great discussion on a variety of compelling books. This month, we’ll be celebrating the upcoming Granfalloon by reading visiting author Ted Chiang's Exhalation: Stories.
Discussion, 7pm
Morgenstern’s Books, 849 S Auto Mall Rd, Bloomington, IN 47401
Free Event.
Join Morgenstern’s staff member and host, Matthew Woods, for this month’s Sci-Fi and Fantasy Book Club discussion of Ted Chiang’s first collection of stories, Stories of Your Life and Others.
Talk @ 5pm
Gayle Karch Cook Center, 750 East Kirkwood Ave
Free Event – Part of Player Piano Exhibit Opening
Professor of English and Vonnegut scholar Christina Jarvis will present her talk “EPICAC, Orange-O, and Wolfgang: Vonnegut’s Prophetic Questions about Humanity and Technology.”Drawing on intensive study of Vonnegut’s manuscripts at the Lilly Library, this talk explores the compositional stories behind Player Piano, early 1950s short stories, and Timequake. These works not only highlight Vonnegut’s prescient critiques of postwar consumerism, automation, and isolating digital technologies, but still offer useful wisdom and humor for our increasingly networked, AI-powered lives
9am – 5pm
Gayle Karch Cook Center, 750 East Kirkwood Avenue
The Indiana University Writers’ Conference is the second oldest, continually-operating writers conference in the United States. This year marks the 82nd anniversary of the conference which has stood for literary excellence since its inception. We are proud to boast a faculty that has included lauded writers of the post-WWII years, such as Katherine Anne Porter, Lillian Hellman and Stephen Spender, as well as 20th century icons Raymond Carver and Kurt Vonnegut.
Each summer, the conference invites gifted writers of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to teach workshops and craft classes over the course of four days. The workshops consist of three-hour sessions held each morning in which students exchange manuscripts and offer feedback on the work of their peers under the guidance of their instructor. At the end of each day’s workshop, students are invited to lunch talks where the faculty discuss their publishing experiences and answer questions from attendees.
The afternoons are comprised of three, one-hour classes led by additional faculty on topics ranging from story structure and the ethics of writing nonfiction to crafting compelling images in poems. Each evening is capped off by a reading and from conference faculty.
Reading @ 7pm
Buskirk-Chumley Theater, 114 East Kirkwood Avenue
The IU Arts and Humanities Council is thrilled to be hosting Ted Chiang as part of the 2023 Granfalloon Festival. Chiang’s fiction has won more than two dozen prizes -- including four Hugo, four Nebula, and four Locus awards – and has been featured in The Best American Short Stories. The Oscar-nominated film, Arrival, was based on his novella, “Story of Your Life.” Given this year’s festival themes of technology and creativity, automation, and the rise of the computer age (taken from Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano), Chiang’s prescient and immensely thoughtful science-fiction is a perfect fit.
For more information on Ted Chiang, please visit www.prhspeakers.com.
Class @ 1pm
Gayle Karch Cook Center, 750 East Kirkwood Avenue
Free event!
A free and fun way to bookend the festival! Join us for a discussion of Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano, with IU Writers’ Conference Director Bob Bledsoe and IU Arts and Humanities Council Director Ed Dallis-Comentale.
Performances @ 7:30pm
Ted Jones Playhouse, 107 West 9th Street
On The Line: A College Football Play, explores both the humanity and the inanity around what is arguably many universities’ most visible and beloved product – college football. Set against the backdrop of adoring fans and the money that flows through the sport, this play tells the story of star athlete Anthony Teague and how the machine that is college football enmeshes him and those around him.
By Jonathan Michaelsen and Ansley Valentine.
Screening @ 7pm, 18+
The Bishop Bar, 123 South Walnut Street
Free event!
Cicada Cinema presents Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes as part of the Granfalloon Film Series: The Human and the Machine.
Screening @ 7pm
IU Cinema, 1213 East 7th Street
Free but ticketed.
IU Cinema presents Arrival as part of the Granfalloon Film Series: The Human and the Machine.
June 2 @ 6:00pm, June 3 @ 2pm
Rose Firebay Theater, The Waldron Arts Center, 122 South Walnut Street
Tickets are $10.
Constellation Stage and Screen brings to the stage a never-produced screenplay for Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano.
Screening @ Dusk
Hopscotch Coffee Roastery & To-Go, 212 North Madison Street
Free event! This event is outdoors so bring your own chair!
Cicada Cinema presents Metropolis (2001) as part of the Granfalloon Film Series: The Human and the Machine.
Screening @ 1pm
IU Cinema, 1213 East 7th Street
Free but ticketed.
IU Cinema presents The Iron Giant as part of the Granfalloon Film Series: The Human and the Machine.
Screening @ 7pm
IU Cinema, 1213 East 7th Street
Free but ticketed.
IU Cinema presents the 2023 Oscar Winner for Best Picture, Everything Everywhere All at Once, as part of the Granfalloon Film Series: The Human and the Machine. Ryan Lott of Son Lux will be present to speak about his experience scoring the film.
Screening @ 7pm
Backspace Gallery, 112 West 6th Street
Free event!
Cicada Cinema presents After Yang as part of the Granfalloon Film Series: The Human and the Machine. Alexander Weinstein, writer of the story that inspired the film, will be present for a reading a discussion.
Performances @ 10:30am & 1:30pm
100 South Grant Street
Free event!
Join us for a fantastic cirque performance that features local artists! Acrobatics, juggling, flow arts, and more will all be represented as we celebrate Bloomington's longstanding presence as a circus town. Then head down the street to People's Park for a chance to try some juggling and hooping for yourself. Everyone is welcome!
Gayle Karch Cook Center, 750 East Kirkwood Avenue
Process Gallery, Monday through Friday from 12-4pm
Age of AI features artwork facilitated by or in reaction to artificial intelligence. Offering a unique opportunity to explore and engage with responses to AI, the show features digital art, paintings, sculptures, and interactive works. The artists explore how to invent a future with, through, or even against, artificial intelligence.
Join the Secret Circus Society on a self-guided walking tour/scavenger hunt to discover the circus history of Bloomington.
There was once a circus here—a big one. Founded by Henry B. Gentry in the 1880s, the Gentry Bros. Canine and Equine Paradox would one day travel across the entire North American continent with its huge group of human and animal performers, but it always came back here, to Bloomington, where they could always be counted on to hold their opening show.
We have chosen five places around town to host a Secret Circus Society Marker, which will include a QR code that links to the circus story in that location. But this is the circus, after all, and what’s the circus without a little game? Follow the clues on the website and follow the history of the circus around town. Be sure to join us on June 10 for a real-live cirque performance!
People’s Park, 501 East Kirkwood Avenue
As part of Platform: An Arts & Humanities Research Laboratory’s Bloomington UnBound, artist W. Dorian Bybee will be installing FLTNG in People’s Park.
FLTNG is meant to activate this familiar space in Bloomington in an unfamiliar way, encouraging residents to reconsider how they view their everyday spaces. Specifically, this project references (among other things) instances of racial hatred in Bloomington, including the fire-bombing of the “Black Market” that had existed on the site of the People’s Park many years ago. The project aims to acknowledge these difficult moments in our shared history, while encouraging conversation, as opposed to inciting anger or conflict. There will be a small fold-up stage integrated into the project, which will be a platform for people in the community to tell their stories, recite poetry, or perform music.
If you wish to book the stage portion of this exhibit, please contact the city and request a Park Special Event Permit.
Gayle Karch Cook Center, 750 East Kirkwood Avenue
“Those who live by electronics, die by electronics.”: The Making of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano
The Arts and Humanities Council partners with the Lilly Library and the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library to host an exhibit of manuscript drafts, personal letters, rare editions, and other memorabilia related to the creation and reception of Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano (1952). Track Vonnegut’s post-war thoughts and experiences as he assembled one of literature’s most famous critiques of the computer age and the rise of automation as it reshaped industry, labor, art, gender, family, and many other aspects of American culture. The exhibit opening will feature talks by curators Isabel Planton and Chris LaFave as well as a keynote lecture by Christina Jarvis, author of Lucky Mud & Other Foma: A Field Guide for Kurt Vonnegut’s Planetary Citizenship.
Event @ 7pm
WonderLab Museum of Science, Health & Technology, 308 West 4th Street
Celebrate this year’s Granfalloon with a deep dive into the murky waters of humans and machines. Explore the science of Kurt Vonnegut’s foreboding book Player Piano. Enjoy an obsolete technology petting zoo. Interact with social robots and a Vonnegut Chatbot. Consider the morals of technological innovations. Dissect technological conundrums with IU Luddy School professors. Get jiggy with live electronic music.
Activities and Presentations by IU Luddy School Faculty:
Live and original electronic music by Jonathan Rickert, a graduate of IU Jacobs School’s Center for Electronic and Computer Music:
Event @ 5-8pm
Gayle Karch Cook Center, 750 E Kirkwood Ave (other locations list here)
Free Event!
Stop by the Gayle Karch Cook Center during the June Gallery Walk! This month’s exhibits will include two exhibits presented as part of Granfalloon. The Process Gallery will host Creativity in the Age of AI. The 100 Suite will host Player Piano, an exhibit of archive materials related to Vonnegut’s debut novel from both the Lilly Library and the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library.
Event @ 5pm
Gayle Karch Cook Center, 750 East Kirkwood Avenue
“Those who live by electronics, die by electronics.”: The Making of Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano
The Arts and Humanities Council partners with the Lilly Library and the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library to host an exhibit of manuscript drafts, personal letters, rare editions, and other memorabilia related to the creation and reception of Kurt Vonnegut’s first novel, Player Piano (1952). Track Vonnegut’s post-war thoughts and experiences as he assembled one of literature’s most famous critiques of the computer age and the rise of automation as it reshaped industry, labor, art, gender, family, and many other aspects of American culture. The exhibit opening will feature talks by curators Isabel Planton and Chris LaFave as well as a keynote lecture by Christina Jarvis, author of Lucky Mud & Other Foma: A Field Guide for Kurt Vonnegut’s Planetary Citizenship.
More about keynote talk featuring Christina Jarvis
EPICAC, Orange-O, and Wolfgang: Vonnegut’s Prophetic Questions about Humanity and Technology
Drawing on intensive study of Vonnegut’s manuscripts at the Lilly Library, this talk explores the compositional stories behind Player Piano, early 1950s short stories, and Timequake. These works not only highlight Vonnegut’s prescient critiques of postwar consumerism, automation, and isolating digital technologies, but still offer useful wisdom and humor for our increasingly networked, AI-powered lives.
Gayle Karch Cook Center, 750 East Kirkwood Avenue
Places & Spaces: Mapping Science
Drawing from across cultures and across scholarly disciplines, Places & Spaces: Mapping Science demonstrates the power of maps to address vital questions about the contours and content of human knowledge. An interdisciplinary and international advisory board chose each one of the works in the Places & Spaces: Mapping Science exhibit as an outstanding example of how visualization can bring patterns in scientific data into focus. The exhibit is curated by the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center at Indiana University. The exhibit has been on display at over 382 venues in 28 countries on 6 continents. It showcases the work of 248 mapmakers that hail from 17 different countries.
9am – 5pm
Monroe County Public Library, 303 East Kirkwood Avenue
You’re invited to bring in an item for repair free of charge at our third Fix-It Fair, Saturday, June 10, 2023 from 9 AM–5 PM at the Downtown Library!
10am-4pm
100 North Grant Street & 100 South Grant Street
Free event!
Before the concert starts, come out and learn about Bloomington’s summer arts offerings and engage in hand-on interactive arts activities.
10am – 4pm
300-500 East Kirkwood Avenue
Free event!
Bloomington Handmade Market is Bloomington's best indie craft show experience featuring independent makers from across the Midwest. The Summer Fair will be held in conjunction with the Granfalloon on June 4th from 10a-4pm on Kirkwood Avenue between Lincoln and Indiana Streets.
