{"id":397553,"date":"2025-11-22T19:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T19:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/397553\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T19:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T19:23:10","slug":"philadelphia-teens-craft-immersive-art-show-about-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/397553\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia teens craft immersive art show about censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Halloween is now in the rearview mirror, but one more haunted house is opening this weekend.\n<\/p>\n

A youth arts program called \u201cNot Safe\u201d For Teens<\/a> has transformed the former worship space at the Calvary Center for Culture and Community in West Philadelphia into the immersive art experience \u201cYou Are Here,\u201d a hive of switch-backing hallways and small rooms featuring over 100 works of art by 30 young artists set against dramatic lighting, sound design and unsettling live performers.\n<\/p>\n

Enter, if you dare, into the mind of a teenager.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to do a haunted house around Halloween,\u201d said Rosie Smith, 17, a founding member of NSFT. \u201cBut as we got these submissions, we dug deeper into the idea of the haunted house as the teenage mind.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

A video monologue in the lobby of Calvary gives a face to the teenager, played by Demetrius Pratt, 16, who also performs in person in the first room, the Dream Room, sleepwalking in a bedroom.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI am made of what I imagine,\u201d reads a red scrawl on the wall over the bed. \u201cDreams are private myths,\u201d reads text in a video projection.\n<\/p>\n

But cracks in the dream are apparent. Pratt is joined by another performer wearing a feather boa and pig ears constantly preening into her phone camera. Another message on the wall reads, \u201cWe asked for dreams: this is all we got.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou Are Here\u201d becomes increasingly dystopian further down the makeshift hallway. The Control Room features portraits of fragmentation and distress. A performer wearing clown makeup cowers in the corner shadowboxing at a video projection.\n<\/p>\n

The main part of the former church opens up with the \u201cHellscape,\u201d a media landscape of dire news stories, advertising and social media.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many things being shot at his brain,\u201d said co-curator Pepper Jaffe, 16, about the fictional character at the center of \u201cYou Are Here.\u201d \u201cAll these things are swirling around in his brain, and they\u2019re swirling around in our brains.\u201d\n <\/p>\n