Cat Video Festival at ArtPrize to unite cat owners

This Friday, September 27, the Walker Art Center will bring the second edition of the Cat Video Festival to ArtPrize. They will show a 75 minute film of cat videos, separated into seven different categories. The last category is a people's choice award, which announces the winner and best video of the festival. The festival, which started out as a casual experiment to see how many people would get involved, has been increasing in popularity since it started. 

"We weren't really sure a lot of people would come, but 10,000 people showed up to the first event," says Scott Stulen, producer of the Internet Cat Video. Since the first festival last year, the video has continued to travel, even internationally. Recently they had a festival in Dublin, Ireland. This showing, in Grand Rapids, will include a section that is unique to ArtPrize and this particular showing. 

"There is not a place for people to gather as cat owners. There's no cat park, people don't walk their cats with other cat owners," says Stulen, "This new cat culture is a way for people to come out and celebrate them together. That's been a huge driving factor behind the festival." It's not just the video that is focused on cats, it's also the viewers. In previous years people have brought their own cat or even dressed up like one, face paint and all.

"The initial popularity and the continued popularity was a huge surprise. Now I'm not sure I could be surprised by much of any of it anymore," says Stulen, "its all gotten very surreal and strange, in some ways."