A huge celebration of cats and the amusing horrors they inflict upon the world will take place at the Minnesota State Fair in August.
Cats. They are the warp core of the internet. Without cats, we’d all be trapped in a dull, grey hell of productivity. Dogs love us unconditionally and obey our commands; cats break things, kill things, inflict grievous injury upon us and then expect to fed, after which they’re as likely as not to throw it all up on the carpet – and yet somehow, they’ve come out on top of the internet.
Last year’s inaugural Internet Cat Video Festival, described as “a social experiment testing the boundaries of online communities and crowd-sourced content,” ended up drawing more than 10,000 people to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, so this year’s event will take place at a much larger venue: the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand.
The Internet Cat Video Festival is serious business. This year, videos will compete for awards in categories including Comedy, Drama, Documentary, Foreign, Musical and Lifetime Achievement; Will Braden, who took top honors with the brilliant Henri Le Chat Noir #2, will return to the Festival to deliver a speech about his experiences as an “internet cat video producer” and to present the 2013 Golden Kitty Award for the People’s Choice “Best of Festival.”
Along with cat videos, the event will also feature music, community art projects, booths, special guests and will wrap up with a fireworks show, all of which sounds pretty fantastic to me. Tickets to the second Internet Cat Video Festival are ten bucks, and it all goes down on August 28. For more information, check out walkerart.org.
