YES - Ypsi Experimental Space

10/24/2025

YES lives on thanks to Ypsilanti District Library! Special thanks to Shoshanna at YDL who hosts "Ypsi Stories" to shine a light across all kinds of interesting local histories. You can hear all kinds of YES reminiscences, ramblings & repartee in this episode, as well as find photos & videos on the page, too.

Hear Episode 26 of Ypsi Stories!

10/18/2023

Hey YES fans, even though YES is no longer, it doesn't mean we aren't still doing crazy, creative stuff in the world. If you like experimental art and performance and you want to get more involved, or you just want to be a spectator, fan, or supporter of all things Foolishly creative, please come along with us over to the "FestiFools Studio"!

Hi it's me Mark Tucker! Welcome Friends and Supporters of FestiFools and FoolMoon to our NEWLY Official page for Future Foolishness and Other Creative Projects set to come out of the U-M FestiFools Studio this coming year!

As you may have heard, the non-profit that used to produce FestiFools and FoolMoon (WonderFool Productions, a.k.a. Assembli)—went out of business. But that doesn’t mean that the artisans and creative minds behind FestiFools and FoolMoon have left the scene. Au contraire! In fact, now my students, artist friends, and community volunteers are ready to create our own special brand of large-scale FUN with more flexibility, more creativity, and more freedom than ever before.

I missed getting to make the giant puppets for FestiFools last year and I missed watching my students develop and grow while making these incredibly wonderful animated creations. And I missed YOU too!

So YES, this means that FestiFools is BACK! And I'm excited to make it even MORE FUN and Foolish than ever! We’ll be taking over the streets again this coming SPRING 2024 with a brand-new menagerie of crazy, exciting, outrageous and CREATIVE giant street puppets (or maybe even something completely different!) for everyone in the Ann Arbor/Ypsi community to come get Foolish with!

I’m going to use this page to post some fun and interesting photos and info highlighting the behind-the-scenes making of FestiFools and FoolMoon that I’ve gathered over the years– but never had a chance to share before.

I also want to highlight the many people behind the scenes that have come together over the years to make these clever events happen. And we'd love it if you wanted to use this space to share your photos, videos, and testimonials of what FestiFools and FoolMoon has meant to you, your family, friends, and fellow art friends, over the years. You can share your story with us here: https://forms.gle/tPivB1d4UEprp3kc7 :-)

I might also use this FB page to get down on my knees and ask you to help me out by volunteering—but that won’t be until sometime later this Spring. And I’ll also be inviting you to come to our cool luminary sculpture and puppet building workshops TBA this coming Winter. Definitely!

We'll also use this page to keep everyone up to date on our upcoming workshops and the dates/times and locations of FestiFools and FoolMoon 2024!

So let's get started! Email me (or send me a carrier pigeon) if you want to maybe get involved (again) or you want to come help out for the very first time. I'd love to reconnect and get to meet new friends, and friends of friends, and their friends too!

Photo Credit: Mark Bialek https://markbialek.com/

03/18/2023

The YES sign came down last week—the Ypsi Experimental Space is officially no longer. We've so appreciated all the artists and audiences who plugged into various hiccup-like happenings, burping some beautiful things, exploring the idea of YES and, most importantly, connecting across our community. We'll keep this page going for a while, but closing this chapter. Thanks again to everyone at Mix for saying *yes* some 7 years ago and letting lots of art events happen next door!

03/21/2022

It's the 60th Ann Arbor Film Festival, happening March 22-27, 2022! And YES is excited to be a community partner for "Rock Bottom Riser", screening on Thursday, 3/24 at 7:00 PM.
Use code "AAFF60_Yes" for $4 off tickets for this program.
https://prod3.agileticketing.net/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=722888~316d2c96-7be3-4c1b-82b1-d1a7143bdb35&

And so many more wonderful, experimentally-awesome films on tap all week at the AAFF—one of the longest-running independent film festivals in the world!

SPONSOR Necto COMMUNITY PARTNER YES Rock Bottom Riser Fern Silva Various, USA | 2021 | 70 | Super 16 to DCP From the earliest voyagers who navigated by starlight, to present-day astronomers scanning the cosmos for habitable planets, explorers have long made Hawaii the hub for their searching. Today....

03/07/2020

You've been curious about us lately, yes? Well, the Ann Arbor Film Festival has given us this special code [AAFF58_YES] as a 'community partner' to get discounts on tickets for one of their sweet short film programs: "Films in Competition 6" Thursday 3/26 at 9:00 pm. See you there for some adventurous, experimental cinema!

This program of recent experimental, documentary, and animated films opens with a performance by Pat Oleszko, and features an altar of toxic land, travel in the lost villages of northern Spain, a minimalistic road movie, the furthest point of a motorcycle trip, a statement against white supremacist....

10/10/2019

So great to host Roustabout Theater's latest production at yes! The Hewitt building, home to yes/mix, is probably haunted too--too much history in a building that dates back to 1851 not to be! Consider that Frederick Douglass spoke here twice, from a ballroom and from a balcony on the 3rd floor, [since torn down] to crowds of spectators on Michigan Avenue. 152 years ago!! Check out this WEMU radio show with local historian Matt Seigfried, then come to HAUNTED this weekend and see for yourself! (https://www.wemu.org/post/150-years-after-frederick-douglass-visited-ypsilanti-michigan-historian-reflects-his-speeches)

OK, so, a minor editorial snafu resulted in two critics being sent to the same show. ERGO, I won’t be offering up a full review of Roustabout Theatre Troupe’s new production of Joseph Z…

10/26/2018

When you’re at YpsiGlow tonight don’t forget to stop by Yes and say Boo! Cool exhibition by U-M students in Lloyd Hall Scholars Program’s Creative Communities class🎃