Change not yet able to be articulated. Or, art.

Things written for saying look weird when put down for reading. Like little deflated balloons. But I’m sure you’ve all got theatrical imaginations, so here is my speech from the 2012 Next Wave Festival launch on Thursday night. It was a totally excellent party and if we’re starting as we mean to finish, it should be tops!

**

I started this festival with a challenge, not a theme. I wanted to ask questions and stir thoughts. I wanted our artists to articulate how they were navigating their world.

This was at the end of 2010.

It was clear to me then, that the next generation of artists had a different – and difficult – relationship with politics as it appeared on the nightly news. A generation who have known only the harsh absolutes of John Howard; and the hesitations of Labor. A generation who have grown up as the Internet has grown up. Who assume access to information, are comfortable with multiple meanings and know it’s tremendously more powerful to talk, not tell.

I offered a provocation that queried whether art could be both beautiful, and effective. We titled it “the space between us wants to sing.” Art that was needed now, and required less ego and more empathy.

We did all of this before 2011 turned up. An unexpectedly dramatic year. We made our Festival in that context – while millions took to the streets, in more and more countries, seeking out change without knowing how to articulate it yet. It wasn’t united; it wasn’t consistent; it wasn’t a movement. It was a moment. A feeling. That something needed to be different.

Now – good artists understand their context. And so the strange shifts of 2011 influenced us deeply. To me: these times, and these politics, represent the very best environment for us to be making art. Because art has the ability to articulate things we don’t understand yet. The things that words will misconstrue, that actions will obstruct.

The 2012 Festival presents art that reinterprets our social, political and civic humanity, using a range of new and unexpected tools. This is art that draws upon the arsenal of the subconscious to reveal what it is to be more human, humans. This is art that makes arguments for difference without resorting to the structures that previously existed. This is art that exists outside and above tribalism and tradition, while tackling those topics head-on.

These artists ask questions, but not like a journalist. They investigate matter, but not like a scientist. They tell stories, but not like a historian. They expose inconsistency, but not like a Judge.

Over the past two years, our artists have made their works in collaboration with:

• Religious leaders, for their views on marriage and ritual
• Birders, for their understanding of migration patterns
• Dairy Farmers, for their knowledge of culture and the good life
• Nail Salon workers, for their perspectives on setting up a new life here
• Scientists, for their facts on the pressures we place on the Antarctic
• Flood and bushfire survivors, for their experiences of destroyed collections and misplaced objects
• And architects, for insight into the urban planning failures that threaten beautiful old buildings just like this one.

An unbridled curiosity about the real world is not new. But for this Festival, I think we have found an extension of what John Cage was doing when he created 4’33. In composing that work he didn’t want people to listen to silence. He wanted us to give the world the same attention that we would usually reserve for art. He made the very ordinary – wonderfully extraordinary.

And that’s what the next wave of contemporary art is about.

This is a festival where you eat breakfast, get your nails done, go to a wedding, attend a dinner party, visit the Queen Vic Market, shoot an episode of a crime TV drama and take a museum tour through the end of the world.

This is a festival where your thoughts on climate change are reconsidered via a sweet ride in a dinghy down the Yarra. Where your thoughts on feminism are ignited by our memories of our first computers.

It’s a festival in which people who really don’t appear in contemporary dialogue gain a voice; people who have strange imaginations and protracted fantasies. Where the capacity of all of our senses comes under deep analysis: how our eyes deceive us, our tastebuds are mocked, our ears become lazy with old forms of sound.

Perhaps we’ll see how little we see.

The centrepiece of our explorations in generosity and urgency is our keynote project, Wake up and wait for the sun to rise; 500 methods for a new beginning. Part exhibition, part club, part theatre, this will be your home base throughout the Festival – situated at the wonderful Westspace, on Bourke St. We chose five very exciting collectives: Lucky PDF, Applespiel, Tape Projects, Claire Finneran and Hossein Ghaemi, and Tully Arnot and Charles Dennington. Between them they represent every possible artform you can and can’t imagine. In a residency prior to the Festival they’ll be creating new works designed to bring us together. So you can imagine parties, protests, dinners, shows, workshops, television broadcasts and more. There’s one more twist though: as you have now come to understand – this is a Festival driven by a curiosity for new people, new places and new ideas. So to inspire these artists we asked 100 of the most interesting people we could find to each give us five methods for a new beginning.

One of the great advantages of being a biennial Festival is that you have time. The time you need to look at how things are done, and see if there’s a way they can be done better. The time young artists’ need, to create the most extraordinary, most complex, most wonderful piece of work they’ve ever made. The time to rally your community and find the most exciting set of donors, sponsors and supporters – who really get you, who understand why this is worth it.

The result is that we’re doing a few things quite differently this year.

This is not a festival where you flip through a glossy guide and head along to three shows over the three weeks. Where you visit a gallery during the day, and see a theatre show at night. Australian festivals have been offering that experience for over fifty years; surely we are ready for something new.

In 2012, Next Wave invites you to take part in whole-day journeys into the next culture of new ideas. We want to hold your hand. We want to show you just how current artistic practice has busted open genres – and we want to create an experience that’s appropriate for this kind of bold, interdisciplinary work. So you begin at Breakfast Club at the Wheeler Centre, discussing how the world and art collide; then, led by an informed and passionate guide, you’ll venture through a cross-section of visual art, performance, dance, live art, audio works, installations, public art and more – with plenty of stop-overs for food, drinks and discussion.

I think it will be so exciting to go from an exhibition exploring iconic feminists, onto a boat down the Maribyrnong infused with new instruments, to a faux Pan-Asian Embassy, that plays with every possible Asian-Australian stereotype to look critically at what it means to grow up here with mixed heritage. It’s a hypercharged version of how we move through life and how we encounter the biggest ideas. A balance of provocation and openness; good friends and new perspectives.

We’ve also changed how we’re communicating with you. We really think we can get better at talking about art. It’s hard to articulate the unknowables; but if you have the privilege of working within your passion, then I reckon you have to try.

So we haven’t made a Festival Guide. We’ve created the very first Next Wave Magazine. With the guidance of Editor Alice Gage, we created a publication that introduces a new collection of people. That doesn’t try to sell you something. That doesn’t assume that you should know these artists – of course you don’t, they’re the next wave! Our magazine has our artists explain why they make art, how they’re coming to understand generosity, why what they have been making feels urgent. I am really proud of it and so grateful to KIN, the wonderful designers who collaborated with us to realise this wacky idea. We’re putting the info you need most in the place you will most likely seek to find it. So a magazine is for reading. And online, where we do nearly all of our research these days, is where you’ll find the detail, planning and sharing of experiences.

Thirdly, we reconsidered our international position. For the sustainability of the environment and also the sustainability of our own artistic practice, every international discussion we’re having this year is premised on the principles of long-term exchange, deep mutual interest, collaboration and more time spent in a place. We’re excited to work with Arts House to co-commission the next generation of Castelluccis in Dewey Dell, collaborating with the next Leigh Bowery, Sydney artist Justin Shoulder. These artists will begin working alongside each other in 2012, and over the coming years will build a sympathetic and collaborative body of work. Similarly, we’ve begun a wonderful three-year collaboration with the Fierce Festival in Birmingham. This partnership involves artist exchanges, producer exchanges and by 2014, a joint commission that will manifest in both cities. And finally, in the spirit of new beginnings, we’ve invited 10 of the most interesting emerging curators and festivals directors from across the planet to do a residency in the Festival. Their primary purpose is to get to know our context – to understand this community. Again, we reckon this is something done best on the dance floor or over a meal.

Finally: the last piece of the puzzle is a new project titled Preview 2014. Expressing our wishes for the next Next Wave, this special commission features the first stage of a new collaboration. The inaugural work will support the expansion of cutting-edge contemporary arts practice by young artists with a disability. We’re doing this to ensure that a genuine diversity of people apply to be part of Kickstart 2013. Our first Preview project is the development of a solo dance work by Paul Matley.

So that’s a taste of our beautiful, wondrous Festival. I’m incredibly proud of it. I’d like to thank our artists: what’s so very special about this festival is there is a shared statement of faith. Our artists are trusting us to experiment with festivals, with communication and for me, to direct my first Festival. Likewise, we put our faith in their complex bravery and extraordinary minds. I think that alone is a significant contribution to how we live this life. I’d also like to thank Paul Gurney, our Executive Director. He’s a fantastic collaborator and from the first time we sat down together we’ve always been incredibly honest with each other, and not afraid. I value this deeply. Finally, thanks to the Next Wave Board and our brilliant Chair, Janenne Willis – they are a truly rigorous group of people who devote a huge amount of their hearts and great intellect to our cause. Thank you, friends.

FINALLY. This may all sound over-the-top – and I know that I can too much sometimes – so you can definitely buy just one ticket. You can go online and see the details, and find the intricacy of that one beautiful project. You can make your own way through this Festival, immersing yourself in our artists’ bravery.

But what I hope will feel most different about this Festival is how much we have thought about you, our community. Festivals are political. They insist we’re better together than we are on our own. That a series of experiences are better than isolated encounters. So I would love you, our people, to help us create that charged temporary space. Together, in that condensed humanity, we will find the radical new.

Before the storm

On Thursday night I’ll be launching my first Next Wave Festival. We had a ‘soft’ launch last week for supporters and media, which quelled nerves and gave me time to refine what I’m going to say to introduce this most incredible piece of focused energy, extraordinary commitment and partyparty. I have an amazing shirt-dress-fairyskirt combo via the wonderful girls at Above. And our superstar graphic designers Kin are working around-the-clock with our team towards Dear Patti Smith being an absolutely beautiful space for a bang-up party. Which is all a nice cushy set-up for some much more explicit political passion that’s been stirring within myself and my collaborators as we have made the Festival.

This passion is articulated with greatest force in the works the artists’ have made. One of the things I love most about our program is its manifest generosity. The countless new collaborations that have formed with communities not normally considered part of an artistic discussion. The robust interrogations into artistic form that mean our artists are using the best possible tool to articulate their idea. The way these works combine rigour and depth with radical process, resulting in questions that are urgent.

Over the past few weeks I have come across a number of strong pieces of writing that evoke themes pertinent to our Festival. Mostly for my purposes, but also because my ongoing interest is in polyphony, here are they up against each other. I might add a few more to this post as I re-excavate the internet wormhole.

***

“What about the international scene? In some places, just making art — even a beautiful painting — is a political act.

Yes, if you talk about Beirut, for example, even carving out a space for free expression is a political act. Life there is so politicized already that having space for freethinking is hugely powerful. In China, it is radically different, and in Latin America — particularly after the “Bolivarian revolution,” with a lot of leftist governments coming to power — the relationship to cultural power is very different. So, of course, these things are geopolitically specific.

At the same time, what is increasingly universal is the fact that culture is a thing that is made by people. When Joseph Beuys said that everyone is an artist, everyone was like, yeah, sure. But today you look around and everyone is a photographer, everyone is a videomaker. People routinely make culture. And they don’t even think, I’m an artist. It’s just how they make their life. Look at the Arab Spring, the European protests, Occupy Wall Street. I hate to go on and on about social networking, but it is a vehicle for people to produce their own culture collectively, and that is hugely powerful.”

Nato Thompson interviewed by Daniel Kunitz, for Art Info

***

“Participatory art under state socialism in the 1960s and 1970s provides an important counter-model to contemporaneous examples from Europe and North America. Rather than aspiring to create a participatory public sphere as the counterpoint to a privatized world of individual affect and consumption, artists working collaboratively under socialism sought to provide a space for nurturing individualism (of behavior, actions, interpretations) against an oppressively monolithic cultural sphere in which artistic judgments were reduced to a question of their position within Marxist-Leninist dogma. This led to a situation in which most artists wanted nothing to do with politics—and indeed even rejected the dissident position—by choosing to operate, instead, on an existential plane: making assertions of individual freedom, even in the slightest or most silent of forms.”

Claire Bishop, Zones of Indistinguishability: Collective Actions Group and Participatory Art, for E-Flux

***

“My generation tries to create lives that seem to match our values, but beyond that it’s hard to locate a place to put our outrage. We aren’t satisfied with point-and-click activism, as Friedman suggests, but we don’t see other options. Many of us have protested, but we — by and large — felt like we were imitating an earlier generation, playing dress-up in our parents’ old hippie clothes. I marched against the war and my president called it a focus group. The worst part was that I did feel inert while doing it. In the 21st century, a bunch of people marching down the street, complimenting one another on their original slogans and pretty protest signs, feels like self-flagellation, not real and true social change.

When Friedman was young and people were taking to the streets, there were a handful of issues to focus on and a few solid sources of news to pay attention to. Now there is a staggering amount of both. If I read the news today with my heart wide open and my mind engaged, I will be crushed. Do I address the injustices in Sudan, Iraq, Burma, Pakistan, the Bronx? Do I call an official, write a letter, respond to a MoveOn.org request? None of it promises to be effective, and it certainly won’t pacify my outrage.”

“Generation Overwhelmed”, by Courtney Martin for The American Prospect

***

“We live in a world of increasingly networked knowledge. And it’s a world that allows us to appreciate what has always been true: that new ideas are never sprung, fully formed, from the heads of the inventors who articulate them, but are always — always — the result of discourse and interaction and, in the broadest sense, conversation. The author-ized idea, claimed and owned and bought and sold, has been, it’s worth remembering, an accident of technology. Before print came along, ideas were conversational and free-wheeling and collective and, in a very real sense, “spreadable.” It wasn’t until Gutenberg that ideas could be both contained and mass-produced — and then converted, through that paradox, into commodities. TED’s notion of “ideas worth spreading” — the implication being that spreading is itself a work of hierarchy and curation — has its origins in a print-based world of bylines and copyrights. It insists that ideas are, in the digital world, what they have been in the analog: packagable and ownable and claimable.”

How TED Makes Ideas Smaller, by Megan Garber for The Atlantic

Art’s intrinsic value. GO.

Recently I was invited to speak, with 24 hours notice, to a group of the city’s most vital philanthropic organisations. The topic: art’s intrinsic value. Ha! Holy shit! Here’s what I managed to drag together:

When I was asked to do this presentation, it presented a paradox: articulate the stuff that’s hardest to understand. Hone in on the feelings, memories, ideas, stories, VIBE of what we do. The reasons that we can’t quite articulate, but we feel in our guts. I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare this speech, but I wanted to do it because I reckon if you work in, around or for the arts then you should, at any given moment, be able to tell people why you do what you do. It’s a privilege to work for your passion, something not everyone gets to have. So I feel strongly that it’s our responsibility to always be able to (at least try) to articulate why art is interesting or worthwhile. And you shouldn’t need a lot of time to think about it; it should be that your actions – what you do – represent your values.

Nonetheless, it’s hard.

Because: I like art for its ability to articulate things I don’t understand and don’t have the words to understand yet. I think art can wrestle with change in a way that doesn’t involve words or actions. Art can access a whole world of subconscious and otherworldly tools. It can make arguments for difference without resorting to the structures or methods that previously existed. It can exist outside and above tribalism, politics or tradition, while simultaneously tackling these head-on.

Why do we need artists? Because they reinterpret our social, political and civic humanity with a range of tools that are not yet known. They ask questions, but not like a journalist; they investigate matter, but not like a scientist; they tell stories, but not like a historian; they expose inconsistency, but not like a judge. I firmly believe that artists – particularly contemporary artists, and those working at the edges, outside the mainstream – are the ones who shine a light on contemporary culture, and ensure that our everyday lives are rich, varied, complex, ennobling and unexpected.

Where this all gets exciting is that these days, many many more people than previous are determining our cultural activity.  One of my art idols, Curator Nato Thompson, recently said:

“what is increasingly universal is the fact that culture is a thing that is made by people. When Joseph Beuys said that everyone is an artist, everyone was like, yeah, sure. But today you look around and everyone is a photographer, everyone is a videomaker. People routinely make culture. And they don’t even think, I’m an artist. It’s just how they make their life. Look at the Arab Spring, the European protests, Occupy Wall Street. I hate to go on and on about social networking, but it is a vehicle for people to produce their own culture collectively, and that is hugely powerful.”

***

Last night I googled “intrinsic value” to see what would happen; I realised it’s a term that is grounded entirely in economics, that the arts have borrowed. And the wrestling between ‘purpose’ and ‘art for art’s sake’ is pretty old now: “Brecht thought that art should always be embedded in people’s lives, in politics; while Adorno said doing that is instrumentalizing, and utilitarian.” (Nato, again).

I sit somewhere in the middle. Inza Lim, who runs the Seoul Marginal Theatre Festival, recently said art for art’s sake is beautiful, but ineffective. I like that a lot; to me art is something that truly come into being when it’s shared.

And the truth is that a good artist doesn’t ignore their context. Indeed:

…if you don’t appreciate that your art is being made within a given economic framework, then you’re failing at art, I think. Art is a way of doing things, not the things we have produced. And if you try and divorce the two, one from each other – the context and the process – then you’re not doing it right.” (Andy Field)

It’s true: it’s impossible to separate art from its economic and political frame.

As we made the 2012 Next Wave Festival, we thought a lot about what it meant to bring people together. Festivals insist that we’re better together than we are on our own. I think this is quite a political idea. Over the course of 2011 people gathered on the streets in ever-larger groups, in more and more countries; seeking out change without knowing how to articulate it yet. Change not yet able to be articulated, to me – is a pretty apt description of art.

***

Right now Arts Victoria is undertaking a review of the small-medium arts sector. At my recent board meeting with Theatre Network Victoria, we wrestled with the political vs artistic elements of what we try to do. On the one hand, an organisation’s business plan is becoming its most important document in securing ongoing investment from government. Sometimes it feels like it’s more important than the art we create. When Paul Gurney and I were creating Next Wave’s business plan for 2012-16, some of the more radical people we spoke to for advice thought the idea of a four-year business plan was ridiculous – the world is moving so quickly that to suggest we can know our context in four years’ time, and make predictions based on this, is absurd. But one context constant is: Treasury puts pressure upon arts ministries to articulate their economic value to the taxpayer. Yet no matter how good your communication skills, nothing will ever encapsulate the depth of impact, nor the scope of possibility, that Next Wave has on young artists’ lives.

So the struggle is this: I don’t want art to have to subscribe to a particular set of goals or aspirations. But I’m curious about whether things can be both beautiful – and effective. When art leaves its own field and becomes visible as part of something else. When it is political, relevant, responsive and immediate.

What is delicate, and must be protected, is the point of departure. What prompts the work to be created in the first place.  It’s dangerous to ask artists to fix racism. They’re not social workers, mental health experts or conflict negotiators. But what they do have is a complex arsenal of subconscious, unmentionable, indescribable, unknowable tools, that can be used to reveal what it is to be more human, humans.

Art is something you do, that happens to you

A few months ago I lightly grilled Andy Field with a few questions about his diverse practice. The interview was first published in the current issue of Real Time, and now: below! A happy adjunct is that if you’re in Melbourne for the 2012 Next Wave Festival (May 19-27, program released this Thursday March 15 OMG!), you will have the great fortune of meeting Andy and grilling him yourself. Alongside a sweet group of other superstar emerging curators and festival directors, Andy will be doing a residency at the Festival. It will be brilliant to have inspiring friends from afar providing an alternate perspective on what we have made.

In the meantime…

“When John Cage created 4’33 he did so not because he wanted people to listen to four minutes and thirty three second of silence, but because he wanted them to listen to the world with the kind of concentration they normally reserve for art. A good space for art is a space that, like Cage, is sensitive to the kind of attentiveness that it generates; the way it is inviting people to look.”

I first came across Andy Field through his writing. His poetic, succinct observations and rocking passion for art, artists, spaces and people connected with me, as did the assertion in his biography: “I am a giddy over-enthusiast and unashamedly so.”

Conversations with Field are infused with political astuteness, intense curiosity, beautiful stories and a passion for innovation as cyclical, best informed by a historically broad perspective.

In August, I observed one component of his diverse practice first-hand, at Forest Fringe: the hot, passionate wild child within the Edinburgh festival cacophony, which Andy curates, directs and produces in partnership with Canadian practitioner, Deborah Pearson.

“My practice – in whatever guise it manifests itself – is to create contexts that bring people together to produce a different experience of the world. That’s the only way I can account for running a festival, organisation and venue – and making my own work. I understand them to be fundamentally the same thing; the constantly unfolding experiment that is running and curating Forest Fringe is a form of creative practice, and the ways in which we go about that are as meaningful a kind of artmaking as the more explicit ‘shows’ that I make as an artist.” Such sentiments echo with those of another renowned UK producer, Helen Cole, who notes, “a festival is as precarious as any artwork.” (RT 101)

“There is a creative resourcefulness to having to navigate your way through finance and money, that is an integral part of your art. And if you don’t appreciate that your art is being made within a given economic framework, then you’re failing at art, I think. Art is a way of doing things, not the things we have produced. And if you try and divorce the two, one from each other – the context and the process – then you’re not doing it right.”

“On the other hand, making work for free, trying to resist the financial imperatives; I often think this has a real radicality to it, that has a real value. I once wrote this kind of glib thing called The Gift Manifesto, which was the idea of radical giving as a significant political gesture – interesting examples being Youtube or street art or musicians who offer to download their work for free. I think this has a really special kind of power. It explains why some people get so angry with Forest Fringe – they say we’re devaluing the work by making it all free. And sometimes I think: well too fucking right, let’s devalue the work! Let’s take any economic value out of the work, and understand it on entirely different terms, as a means of social and political shift. You wouldn’t expect to be paid to go on a protest, why should you expect to be paid to do art?”

Field’s practice is informed partly by the theories and practice of John Cage, Allan Kaprow, Robert Smithson and Robert Morris via a current PhD researching 60s and 70s New York as it relates to contemporary UK performance. But just as importantly, through the education in play (not plays) he received as a child. “I never went to the theatre when I was growing up. Our village was a safe enough environment that the whole place could become a playground; and we gathered together to produce different readings or theatricalisations of that environment as a group – which is a very intellectual way of talking about dicking around in your own village! It’s that direct unconsidered relationship with the real fabric of place has always been really important, rather than the intellectual distance that comes from the relationship between an audience and something happening on stage. I’ve always been far more interested in the idea that art is the experience of something that is happening to you, rather than something that is happening over there within some circumscribed space –that you are just left to watch and consider.”

Field says that most interesting artistic moments are the product or generation of a particular community. “I think what’s happening in the UK now, is that there is enough interesting and interested artists making work that is both similar and different enough. Different people arguing in the same language; coming at the same questions from a variety of different languages; and making work in a bunch of very different ways whilst still being in dialogue with each other. And that’s really exciting. People like Chris Goode, Ant Hampton, Melanie Wilson, Stoke Newington International Airport; curators like Harun Morrison and Laura McDermott at Fierce Festival, David Jubb and David Micklem at BAC, Kate McGrath and Louise Blackwell at Fuel Theatre.”

Participating in Field’s Edgelands flash conference in August, I can attest to the cut, thrust and vibrancy of that dialogue, and his unique ability to gather a diverse yet focused set of minds around a very big question. “It feels like there is a discourse taking place here, and a sense that artists are trying for the first time in a generation to step up to the plate, and understand and interpret the major economic, political, social and environmental shifts that are going on in our country. You’ve now got a generation of artists in their 20s and early 30s who aren’t old enough to remember Thatcherism anything more than as children; so for the first time, we can think about and reinterpret the ways we negotiate with power, with institutions, and the civic role of art. And out of that, we are seeing really good conversations – and some really good art.”

Andy Field writes regularly for The Guardian and The Stage, and also on his blog: www.lookingforastronauts.wordpress.com. You can also follow him on the Twit: @andytfield.

Harvest Festival / The Gathering

Making festivals is my practice. I’m interested in why we gather, how people gather and what makes people stay. And who’s not there. So when a new player arrives on the scene, announces an absurdly good line-up and calls itself “The Gathering”, my nerd-o-meter rocks out. An aspiration to include some kind of substantial arts content within its line-up triples my curiosity, anticipation and intrigue.

The programming and production of yesterday’s Harvest Festival was great. Some excellent bands played really terrific, generous sets – my particular highlights being Dappled Cities, Holy Fuck and Bright Eyes, with a nod to a pretty spectacular set by Portishead and another beautiful experience with The National. Changeovers were smooth, everything happened on time, and I thought the sound quality was great too (though I’m no expert there).

There were a few signs last week that the forward planning and care for the audience’s experience were a bit askew. The playing times for Melbourne were announced very late; there’s a bit of “he said/she said” going on, but it appears something fell down in the negotiations with Portishead. Much worse though – and an insight into things to come – was the email I received on Friday:

Dudes! You can’t sell 15 000 people (more on that later) a line-up that includes The Flaming Lips and then, just 24 hours before your event, inform them that unless they drive, they won’t be able to see the band. With an already complicated public transport situation, it’s just inconsiderate.

Upon arrival, I thought it strange there was so little directional signage and that the traffic marshals weren’t wearing Festival-branded gear but rather just their normal traffic management uniforms. I’m not convinced they were properly briefed; many friends got lost and our driver was very confused as to where we were headed. Without the stamped authority of being involved with and representative of the festival’s broader vision, the traffic management staff contribute as much to the festival as any old roadworkers on a freeway. When proceeding through the gates, I saw that the volunteers handing out programs were just wearing normal clothes – nothing that would identify them to a crowd as helpful sites of information. Though this appears to be purely a ‘branding’ issue – I think involving your staff in a broader statement about who you are as a festival is important, and the branding is actually an essential element of how you feel you’re at an event where someone cares, is in control, and if you’ve got an issue or someone is feeling unwell, you know who to talk to.

The rest of the day continued along the same balance I’ve just described: programming excellent / audience experience appalling. Social media has been pumping with criticism of the hours and hours of waiting in queues for coupons, drinks, food, toilets, and just to leave the place at all, after they seemingly forgot to employ traffic wardens to direct cars to leave the park. The coupons system was complicated and sprung on punters on arrival, resulting in two queues: one for ability to purchase drinks, then to purchase drinks. When the bars later ran out of beer, many felt scammed as they were not able to use the coupons for which they had queued. It’s undeniable that the event would have been a far better experience for everyone if they’d reduced the capacity by half.

It says a lot about the crowd that was there, and the absolute blessing that was the stunning weather, that something dangerous didn’t erupt. A good friend of mine, also a festival-maker, observed what appeared to be some pretty severe safety risks, with some 15,000 Flaming Lips fans exiting through one passageway, approximately 5m wide. I shudder to think what would have happened if someone had a heart attack at the back of that crowd, or if there was a fire, or if mass panic erupted as per the tragic events of Love Parade in 2010.

I guess this is interesting to me because it drives towards the essential elements of a large gathering of people having a good time. It’s not just about the art. The art leads the way, but after that you need a thorough vision of the entire experience. For this Festival, it felt like the organisers had only progressed two-thirds of a way through their thoughts, and the planning around audience experience was left undone. It’s unfortunate, because their press release stated the opposite: “…you limit the capacity and exclude rugrats to ensure comfort while substantially increasing the quality and quantity of the amenitities, services, food outlets and the variety of food and beverage options provided.” (Sourced here.)

There’s also that strange mystery of how you create a space where people develop their own rituals and sense of identity. Maybe that just takes time, and won’t happen with a debut. Yet another good friend, also highly experienced in Festivals-land, observed that “there’s so many people here it’s difficult to know what you’re part of.” And though I had fun, I didn’t get a sense of a personality from this Festival, what makes it distinct or interesting, why “we” 15,000 were drawn to this particular time or place. These are the more ephemeral components of Festival-making, that result in loyalty. Meredith and Golden Plains drip with personality, and I think it’s sometimes overlooked that a key part of Matt High, Greg Peele and Chris Nolan’s genius vision is openness, and a deep commitment to providing a space in which people can create their own magic. Obviously they’ve also had the strategy of a slow-burn evolution, so that 21 years on, they are able to deliver quality, intimate, special experiences to crowds of 12,000 each December. Indeed, the most common statement I heard from other punters whilst waiting in the queues was “this would never happen at Meredith.”

Perhaps the other missing ingredient was a healthy dose of risk, in the best possible sense. That spirit of adventure that comes from not being quite sure what you’re going to get. A great music festival is often characterised by the total surprise of loving a band you’ve never even heard of before, of totally rocking out to something brand new. I’ve had a pretty excellent year as live music goes, and had seen the shows by the Flaming Lips and The National already. But as music knowledge goes, there’s about a bazillion people in Melbourne who know more than me, and even they are usually surprised by some of the bands in the line-up at Meredith or Golden Plains. That’s when the magic happens, in a sweet combo of the things that you know and love, and the things you’re discovering for the first time.

So would I go again? Would I give Harvest another go to get right? The summer music festival calendar is chockas, with loads of excellent options and plenty of people vying for my dosh. With no loyalty, sense of identity or adventure established, it’s hard to say that I would…

PS: There’s some interesting commentary happening over at The Vine as well.

Excursion

Image courtesy of the internetz

UPDATE! All places are now taken. Apologies if you missed out – your best bet is to subscribe to the LALA list to keep up to date on any future excursions with Field Theory.

This Thursday, I’ll be hosting a memory walk of Melbourne, delivered via a series of anecdotes and discussions. We’ve marked out a little journey through the streets, and will collectively reflect on art that has occurred (and not occurred) in those sites. It’ll be pretty exciting I reckon, mostly because it is hosted by Field Theory, whose members comprise some of my favourite artists in the world. I’m hoping to share a bunch of  questions that have become consistent in the writing of this blog (and elsewhere) with those who attend: public space, spontaneity, Australian live arts practice, public protest, audience, participation, ethics, authority, who has the right to do what and how we respond when there’s a reaction we didn’t expect… yeah, just a few small things!

If you’d like to join us, better jump in quick as spaces are limited.

12pm – 2:30pm, Thursday 20 October.
Email rebeccaburdon@gmail.com to RSVP and for more information.

I’ll try my best to report back on this here bloggie. See you there!

#ctsummit

Why should people over in Chelsea care about this?

“Everyone should be concerned with what is happening in the world. If you are not interested, I can’t help you – you deserve the world you live in. But at the end of the day, I find that most people interested in art stuff tend to be interested in other interesting things. I feel very excited because I think this show poses more questions than anything I have ever worked on before. You really have to embrace the ambiguity in it, and I am hoping that people come to see the work and really test their thinking powers about how this all fits together.” -Nato Thompson

HEAVENS ABOVE.

I am not there, and if you’re like me and wish you were, I strongly recommend this Artnet interview with Creative Time NYC’s Chief Curator. Here you can watch some key thinkers, including Nato Thompson, deliver their talks.