Emerging Trends in Contemporary Festival
Practice
Exemplifying the modern festival through the praxis of
boutique festival initiation and management at the
Queensland Performing Arts Centre
By
Georgia Seffrin
BA (Hons)
Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Queensland
University of Technology (2006)
Keywords
Creative city, creative industries, cultural studies, festival, Queensland
Performing Arts, Out of the Box Festival, Stage X Festival, youth culture
Thanks
While there is one name on the title page, a number of people have significantly contributed to the realisation of this thesis. The two most obvious are
Professor Rod Wissler and Dr Jacqueline Martin, in whose supervision I found the perfect blend of sublime conceptual wisdom and eye for detail, and without whose support I can honestly say I would never have reached this point;
The “researched” at QPAC, in particular John Kotzas, Deb Murphy and most especially Susan Richer, whose generosity, openness, extreme cleverness and professional excellence made the fieldwork component of this research an absolute joy, along with the supreme research talents of Erica Hart;
And my extraordinary family, whose capacity to go above and beyond at all times has been truly humbling and enabling, ensuring that I kept this entire undertaking in perspective.
“…people increasingly want to find a source of meaning in their lives from outside themselves: a religion, membership of a community, taking part in a campaign, an attachment to a sense of history. That search will be part of modern identity, not a throwback to an older era” (Leadbeater, C. 2002. Up the
Down Escalator: Why the Global Pessimists are Wrong. London: Penguin).
Abstract
The Festival is a form that transcends cultures, histories and regimes. It is a construct that has been utilised in a variety of ways, for a variety of purposes, but its raison d’être is always community, sometimes as celebrated from a popularist level, at other points manipulated by the wielders of power. In its modern context, the festival has similarly been deployed as either a means of celebrating a sense of local community, or embraced by governments as a symbol of sophisticated cosmopolitanism.
This research aims to contextualise a particular kind of festival practice within both an historical and contemporary context. This is structured through three key areas: at the heart of the thesis is a study of a particular kind of contemporary festival model, the boutique festival, as produced by the
Programming Unit of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre. This festival construct is significant in its positioning of the audience as both producer and consumer in a playful and intelligent manner. This kind of model is different from the more conventional high arts or community arts festival models.
Secondly, the research explores how current renderings of the festival can be contextualised within historical functions, so as to highlight points of connection and departure. Thirdly, the study positions the boutique festival as but one example of a range of current local festival practices that highlight the manner in which the festival construct engages with contemporary life.
This portion of the study places these local renderings within Creative
Industries discourse, focussing on the notion of the Creative City.
The thread that ties the areas of focus together is the role of the audience in the festival. The trope of community remains central to contemporary festival practice, but it is a term that is becoming increasingly problematic and opaque, especially within an urban context. Through a variety of constructs, contemporary festivals encourage a cultural discussion about what community means in a current context, and in so doing, invite explorations of space, identity and authenticity as well.
“The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at any other tertiary educational institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.”
Signed:
Date:
Table of Contents
Chapter One - Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Background to the research project 3
1.3 Scope of the study 7
1.4 Literature review 9
1.4a Historical overview of the role of the festival 10
1.4b Fashion 18
1.4c Youth arts theory 19
1.5 Conceptual framework 23
1.5a The aestheticisation of everyday life 26
1.5b Patterns of consumption 28
1.5c The network society 29
1.5d The creative class 31
1.5e Key Questions 32
1.6 Conclusion 33
Chapter Two - Methodology 1
2.1 Introduction 1
2.2 Methodology 1
2.3 Components of the research 3
2.4 Position of the researcher 6
2.5 Qualitative research 6
2.6 Ethnography 11
2.7 Qualitative tools 17
2.8 Quantitative tools 21
2.9 Triangulation 22
2.10 Cultural studies 22
2.11 Reception studies 24
2.12 “Theatre talks” 28
2.13 The theatrical event 29
2.14 Conclusion 31
Chapter Three - History of the Festival in Brisbane 33
i 3.1 Introduction 33
3.2 The festival and the community 34
3.3 History of Warana 36
3.4 Beginnings 37
3.5 The parade 42
3.6 Becoming increasingly corporate 43
3.7 Identity crisis 44
3.8 Enter QPAC 50
3.9 The role of other festivals and key events 53
3.10 The Brisbane Festival 57
3.11 The current situation 62
3.12 The role of the audience 63
3.13 Conclusion 66
Chapter 4 - The Stage X Festival 69
4.1 Introduction 69
4.2 Stage X 72
4.3 The OUT OF THE BOX Festival of Early Childhood 74
4.4 Fieldwork 75
4.5 Strategy One: Research into current trends within youth culture and expert
knowledge of issues pertaining to youth arts theory 76
4.5a Stage X 1999: Current trends 78
4.5b Stage X 2001: Current trends 81
4.6 Strategy Two: The consultation process 86
4.6a Stage X 1999 and 2001: The consultation process 89
4.7 Strategy Three: Marriage of these elements into programming 92
4.7a Stage X 1999: Programming 93
4.7b Stage X 2001: Programming 94
4.8 Strategy Four: The management model: i) the key team, ii) a democratic
management process 96
4.8a Stage X 1999: Management model 100
4.8b Stage X 2001: Management model 105
4.9 Strategy Five: Positioning of the audience as author 106
4.9a Freakshow, 1999: Audience as author 107
ii 4.9b Shopping Mall 2001: Audience as author 113
4.10 Strategy Six: Evaluation of the festival 120
4.10a Stage X 1999: Evaluation 122
4.10b Stage X 2001: Evaluation 125
4.10c Reception Studies 127
4.11 Future directions for the festivals 127
4.12 Conclusion 127
Chapter Five - Towards a Model: The Boutique Festival 127
5.1 Introduction 127
5.2 The Boutique 127
5.3 Key elements of the boutique 127
5.4 The Boutique Festival 127
5.5 Audience relationships and identity 127
5.6 Key issues 127
5.7 Limitations of the Boutique Festival 127
5.8 Conclusion 127
Chapter Six - Playing with the Model: The Adelaide Festival 2002 127
6.1 Introduction 127
6.2 History of the Adelaide Festival 127
6.3 “The Great Dictator” or the Couturier 127
6.4 Enter Peter Sellars 127
6.5 The Adelaide Festival 2002 127
6.6 Implementing Sellars’ festival 127
6.7 The Board 127
6.8 Administrative structure 127
6.9 Insider views 127
6.10 Programming 127
6.11 Key connections between the Sellars’ model and the Boutique Festival 127
6.12 Evaluation of Sellars’ model 127
6.13 Conclusion 127
Chapter Seven – The Role of Festivals in Creative City Culture 127
7.1 Introduction 127
7.2 Weaving the threads 127
iii 7.3 Key tropes for current festival practice 127
7.3a Community 127
7.3b Space 127
7.3c Authenticity 127
7.3d The carnivalesque 127
7.4 The Creative City 127
7.5 Brisbane as a creative city? 127
7.6 The Creative Festival 127
7.7 Conclusions 127
7.8 To the future 127
Appendix A – Historical Overview of the Festival 127
A.1 Introduction 127
A.2 Definition of terms 127
A.3 Classical Greece 127
A.4 Rome 127
A.5 The Middle Ages 127
A.6 The Feast of Fools 127
A.7 Festival as revolution? 127
A.8 Carnival in the West Indies 127
A.9 Dual entity of the festival 127
A.10 Festival as propaganda 127
A.11 Intermezzi 127
A.12 The Masque 127
A.13 Ballet de cour 127
A.14 Royal entries 127
A.15 The demise of the glittering spectacle 127
A.16 The emergence of the arts festival 127
A.17 Bayreuth 127
A.18 Edinburgh 127
A.19 Avignon 127
A.20 The American festival 127
A.21 The Australian festival 127
A.22 Contemporary connections with festival traditions 127
iv A.23 Conclusion 127
Appendix B - Stage X 1999: Programming 127
Appendix C - Stage X 2001: Programming 127
Appendix D – Audience Reception Studies, Five to Midnight
Stage X, 1999 127
Appendix E – Audience Reception Studies, Five to Midnight
Stage X, 2001 127
Appendix F – Publications (that have come out of this PhD) 127
Bibliography 127
FIGURES
Figure 1: Stage X logo 81
Figure 2: The Adelaide 2002 Festival management strategy 127
v CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION
1.1 Introduction
Festivals operate in a variety of manifestations, from internationally renowned events such as the Edinburgh Festival, to seasonal celebrations in many cultures. The role of the arts festival as it functions in contemporary society is the overarching theme of this research.
In contemporary terms, the festival has been embraced by governments, both as a prestigious tool, via the arts festival format of major cities, and on a
“grass-roots” level, via the community arts festival. Yet it is a construct often treated with bemusement: arts companies feel that their public funding or box office returns are reduced or replaced by arts festivals in particular 1, especially in order to promote the short, sharp shock that is the arts festival model, more sexy than the long haul and often incremental work required by local companies to build cultural infrastructure.
The festival has endured from the earliest recorded periods of cultural expression, and continues to thrive in contemporary life, across an array of cultures, and via a diversity of forms and approaches. Its endurance is in part due to its ability to engage with dichotomous impulses in culture, embracing the new or the traditional, the common ground or the unique. It is a form that evokes tradition, or disrupts it. The festival is at times the vision of one individual, provided for many, or it functions as a celebratory or even revolutionary communal voice.
1 Arts journalist Deborah Jones suggests that money is being syphoned away from the major companies to fund festivals (in “Festival Fatigue”, Reporter Stephen Feneley, The Arts Show ABC Television, 13 September 1999). The Perth Festival in 1999 which was lauded for its fabulous program, lost in the realm of $1.5 million. That loss is a large amount of income for a small dance company.
1
The early democracy of classical Greece, or the essentially grim medieval world, in which carnival provided a much needed respite from a laborious existence, are but two potent examples of the festival’s function historically.
For the contemporary world, the excesses of the Renaissance pageant, the humouring and even blatant flattery of kings and queens seem naïve and somewhat ridiculous to our apparently more sophisticated models of culture.
Yet the potency of these earlier renderings still provides undertones for current readings of the festival, which may be more closely connected to traditional practice than is generally thought: the community arts festival has strong ties to ancient festival traditions, in which people celebrated their specific communities, via stories, songs and rituals unique to them, encouraging them to harness a strong sense of identity, often within a cultural context in which they were, and still can be, marginalised and silenced.
And the lofty cultural extravagances employed by kings, emperors and dictators have some semblance to today’s high art festivals, which work to provide prestige and cultural validity to a city. Western culture is bejewelled with such dazzling events, in which the emphasis is on excess and excellence.
As highly regarded Australian arts figure Anthony Steel suggests, “…there is no doubt that for our political masters, of whatever colour, such celebrations serve to give broad evidence of the host city’s cultural gravitas – a large multi- arts festival adds cachet to a city’s rounded ‘civilisedness’ ” (Steel, 2004).
Amidst these extremes, however, the boutique festival event emerges as a potent new form, one which employs a process of consultation by which programming is substantially shaped. The final result is perceived by the producers as engaging in a cultural dialogue with audiences, employing the very form of festival itself for them to inquire of audiences, “Have we hit the mark?
2 Is this what your experience suggests? Does this allow you to see your cultural
environment in a different way?” The boutique festival nestles somewhere
between the extremes of the high arts festival and the community model, as it
draws on current cultural readings of the contemporary urban world, most
clearly in Creative Industries discourse, and the Postmodernist predilection for
irreverence, pastiche, clustering and consumption. The boutique festival, the
central concern of this thesis, is a model that draws on certain elements of
traditional models, but which also carves out a new festival space that opens up
insights into the role of the festival in the contemporary world, both as a
cultural and aesthetic tool, and as a means of social and cultural exploration.
Whilst this research aims in part to explore a particular kind of festival in a
particular institution, in so doing, it provides space for the discussion of the
genre as a whole, its role in cultural life, its many manifestations, and its ability
to cement, conjoin, question or subvert.
1.2 Background to the research project
This PhD thesis grew out of a collaborative research project, which began in
1997 between the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the
Queensland Performing Arts Centre (to be referred to throughout this research as QPAC). This specific research was formalised through a 1999
Australian Research Council Strategic Partnerships with Industry – Research and Training (SPIRT) grant, via an Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) –
APAI.
In the early stages of this study, which commenced in 1999, the aim was to analyse the development of cultural product, particularly festival product, the
QPAC management structures that underpin this activity, and audience reception of QPAC’s festival offerings. This was to be undertaken by
3 addressing all festival production of QPAC over a three year time frame, with the aim of providing a model of entrepreneurial cultural development via
Festivals, focussing on artistic vision development, planning grids, implementation logistics and audience reception.
It soon became obvious that the scope of this undertaking would be too large, and as the fieldwork commenced in what was then referred to as the
Programming Unit of QPAC, the focus tightened to concentrate on the Stage X
Festivals produced during the 1999 – 2001 period, with some reference to the
Stage X 2003 festival, and a limited reference to OUT OF THE BOX in 2002.
Further research led to the consolidation of the term “boutique festival” as an effective descriptor for these festival models, and the chief aim of the fieldwork research became to analyse the boutique festival work undertaken by the Programming Unit of QPAC, via a quasi-ethnographic study of the way in which this unit produces its rendering of the boutique festival. This was to be contextualised within an historical analysis of the festival, so as to find points of connection and departure between current festival practice (in particular the boutique form) and its many previous renderings.
The third layer of research positions the boutique festival and other contemporary renderings within current issues regarding the Creative
Industries debate, which impacts significantly on cultural commodities such as this kind of festival event. Briefly, Creative Industries is a relatively recent term applied to those fields in which goods and services are provided whose chief economic value derives from their cultural value. This area will be addressed in detail in 1.5.
In the earlier stages of development of this third layer, the key Creative
Industries issue to be focused on was Fleming’s “model for adaptation” (in
4 Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p. 195), and the intention was to outline a “festival model for adaptation” as the ultimate outcome of the study. The reasons for this were that the flexible manner in which the Programming Unit worked, whereby the Unit continually renegotiated its structures, positions and working relationships, seemed to connect well with the fluidity that Fleming posited as being key to effective models of management. Elements of this fluidity were local embededness, strategic delivery points, corporate identity, clustering, learning to let go, social cohesion, and anticipating the future (Fleming, in
Hartley and Haseman, 2000, pp.196-98). Fleming explored the managerial fluidity that the embracing of these areas demanded, which allows for the unexpected, and the stretching and challenging of staff and ideas. This notion was certainly evident in the fieldwork that focused on the Programming Unit in festival production mode.
However, whilst these issues continued to be important, and are addressed within the body of the fieldwork, by the latter stages of the research,
Fleming’s ideas had been overtaken by newer thinking within Creative
Industries discourse, so that his model was now seen to be no longer the most immediate and useful tool by which to contextualise contemporary festival practice.
The ways in which contemporary festivals have developed during the period of research have led to a more pluralistic reading, as Chapter 7 will attest, so that the notion of a singular festival model, even for adaptation, has become redundant. It is the diversity of processes, programming, curation, and positioning of communities that is of most significance.
Furthermore, as has already been articulated, festivals have maintained a significant presence in global cultural expression, which has intensified over the last two decades in particular, especially as governments and councils
5 realise the power of the festival as an effective tool of cultural tourism, and as a means of adding prestige to a city or region’s profile. Yet while there has been much media and governmental interest in this international arts phenomenon, there is a paucity of academic research addressing the contemporary festival, and specifically its cultural significance in Australia.
This study aimed, at least in part, to redress that imbalance, by focusing current versions of the festival through a wider historical lens, and by concentrating on a major state institution (QPAC) which at the commencement of the research was a key national festival producer, and to position this method of cultural expression within both an historical context, and within contemporary cultural debates, most significantly those highlighted via
Creative Industries discourse.
The construct of the boutique festival will be contextualised not only within its fashion heritage, where the term has been most clearly employed, but also within current cultural and social trends, as outlined most significantly in
Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class, and additionally through the ideas of Charles Leadbeater and Pat Kane, framed within the discourse of the
Creative City. Central to the analysis of the boutique festival is the positioning of the audience, as that audience, via the festival’s production, is actively engaged in the formation and playing out of the festival, and of fluid relationships between consumer and producer.
Furthermore, this process of the festival, across the permutations of constructs, and on an historical, contemporary, local and global level, and the manner in which it engages in dialogue with audiences, is the thread running throughout the thesis. The key thrust of the research responds particularly to representations of community and identity, in a manner unique to the festival form, because its currency is community. This focus is central to the study, and attention to the variety of permutations in which this connection to
6 audiences is made manifest, and ultimately to the construction of the notion of
“community”, will be continuous throughout the research.
1.3 Scope of the study
The thesis will present three key research areas:
• an historical framework;
• an ethnographic study of the 1999 and 2001 Stage X “boutique”
festivals at QPAC;
• a contextualisation of contemporary festival practice within current
creative industries discourse.
To extrapolate upon the three points, the thesis reveals the major motifs that emerge from this exploration, and explores how the metamorphosis of the early functions of the festival, essentially as either propagandist or a celebration of the unique nature of a particular community, has evolved into current forms at the polar end of the festival scale: the high arts model and the community arts model2.
The thesis then contextualises the development of the city of Brisbane’s key
festival, Warana. The development will highlight how the event shifted from a
localised perspective, as a parochial and community-based event, into the high
arts model it has now become. The development of the festival will be seen to
function as a metaphor for the maturation of the city of Brisbane itself.
From this perspective on Brisbane and its key patterns of festival history, the
fieldwork portion of this study focuses on the boutique festivals of QPAC’s
2 Note: the historical analysis provides the background to this research, rather than forming the key argument, and as such is situated as Appendix A.
7 Programming Unit, the Stage X festivals of 1999 and 2001, with a minor focus on OUT OF THE BOX Festival in 2000, in order to illustrate management programming practices, and most significantly the philosophical underpinnings that drive the curation of these festival events. The term “boutique” has become a key word for this study. It was applied by John Kotzas, then
Producer of the Programming Unit3 to refer to festivals that cater for specific groups not readily considered by or targeted by most mainstream arts organisations or forms.
The study provides a detailed analysis of the term “boutique”, which in simplest terms, allows for the differentiation of this kind of festival experience from a high arts “department store” model, in which catholic programming aims to cast as wide an audience net as possible. The boutique festival aims to employ the festival as a means of dialogue with particular audiences, and which programs out of a process of detailed consultation. The programming, however, always places a high value on quality, and on its ability to engage with contemporary cultural issues.
This boutique model will then be examined against another application of relevant recent festival construction, which is shown to have become seminal for the further development of the festival in Australia. Peter Sellars’
Adelaide Festival of 2002 aimed also to engage audiences directly, fused elements of the community arts model within a high arts framework, but to different effect from that of the boutique festival. Sellars largely rejected the familiar pattern of the department store model, awash with glittering international productions. The Sellars’ thrust can be viewed as part of an emerging pattern of festival management that calls into question the previous distinctions between arts festival and community arts festival manifestation.
3 John Kotzas is now the Artistic Director of QPAC.
8 It is the contention of this analysis that Sellars’ model has had profound
ramifications for the further development of the festival in a contemporary
localised urban context.
The final chapter, drawing on the kinds of philosophical and cultural issues
raised by both the boutique and Sellars festivals, will present a study of
festival practices in Brisbane, contextualising these models within Creative City
discourse that can be seen to engage with significant issues impacting on
contemporary life. The thesis proposes that the boutique festival event is
indicative of a range of contemporary festival forms and that it has much to
offer the current cultural and social climate, not as a replacement for the
other models, but as an alternative to them.
1.4 Literature review
Following on from the outline of the research trajectory as presented in 1.3, the literature review focuses on three distinct areas, which form the line of argument developed in the thesis: the socio-cultural role of the festival, the construct of the boutique, and youth arts theory. Creative Industries discourse will be addressed in the Conceptual Framework (1.5). The range of reading, the location of points of connection and alignment, has brought to the fore key themes that have shaped the line of argument embodied in this thesis.
Those key aspects of focus are: the festival functioning as either a tool of the
‘state’, or a popularist celebration; the defining of the term ‘boutique festival’; and the impact of youth theory via areas of space, diversity, technology and consumption. This section (1.4a – 1.4c) provides a brief overview of the key texts that have most illuminated each portion of the study. These texts are referred to in more detail in the latter parts of the thesis.
9 1.4a Historical overview of the role of the festival
It is important to understand the historical functions of the festival, which can be viewed in many ways as the birthplace of artistic expression in our Western canon. The festival embodies the potential of the arts as commodity, and yet it can also be viewed as a cultural phenomenon that can be employed to subvert or celebrate, or at times, to present subversion as celebration. Oscar Brockett’s chronological analysis in the History of the Theatre (fourth edition, 1982), presents a reading of the festival operating in a variety of roles, which at certain points highlight the manipulative manner in which a parade of political regimes have employed the festival as a means of reinforcing their perceived centrality, contrasted against the potency of the form as a means of popularist assertion.
Within this range of roles it is clear that the festival is always, either overtly or covertly, a cultural tool, and this positioning is central to the study.
Alessandro Falassi’s Time out of Time (1987) provides a focus on the role of the festival as a cultural tool, and how it can be seen to function. Falassi defines a festival as:
…[a] periodically recurrent, social occasion in which, through a
multiplicity of forms and a series of coordinated events [and through
either direct or indirect participation,] all members of a whole
community [are] united by ethnic, linguistic, religious, historical bonds,
and share a world view (Falassi, 1987, p.2).
The references to ethnicity, religion, histories and world-views emphasize that the currency in which festivals trade is the deep-seated elements of culture.
10 A subset of this concept of the festival as a cultural tool is the subversive
potential of the festival as captured in notions of carnival and the
carnivalesque, in which notions of order and power relationships are subverted.
Bristol’s Carnival and Theatre: Plebian Culture and the Structure of Authority
in Renaissance England (1985) analyses the carnivalesque less directly, as the focus of his text specifically concentrates on a temporal and cultural context.
Peter Burke in Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1994) suggests that
“Carnival may be seen as a huge play in which the main streets and squares
become stages, the city becomes a theatre without walls, and the inhabitants,
the actors and spectators, observing the scene from their balconies” (1994,
p.182).
This sense of community, and the manner in which festivals play with the
construct, is a key issue addressed in this thesis, both historically and within
the framework of those festivals explored in the fieldwork. Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World (1984) considers the subversive capacity of the festival specifically via the carnival as it operated in the medieval world:
…Carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and
from the established order; [it] marked the suspension of all
hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions (1984, p.10).
This definition clearly positions the festival, specifically in the guise of the carnival, as a key instrument by which the oppressed could assert their cultural and popularist identity. This “privileging of the other” via the carnivalesque has become a seminal text for Cultural Studies discourse, in its aim “to celebrate the creative, the various, the domestic, the resistant” (Inglis, 1993, p.15). The trope of the carnivalesque has since been employed by many cultural studies theorists, as a metaphor by which to explore positionings of contemporary popular forms of culture. John Docker’s Postmodernism and Popular Culture
11 (1994) connects Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque with forms of popular culture. Through the lens of the carnivalesque, contemporary popularist forms such as soap opera, vaudeville, television, and the detective novel, amongst others, are explored. The carnivalesque, therefore, has been powerfully reinscribed in popular culture to work as a tool of resistance against high art forms, in ways parallel to the medieval carnival of Bakhtin’s analysis:
Carnivalesque […] offers an ongoing challenge to the narrowly conceived
forms of reason of the ‘public sphere’, as well as to modernism desiring
to legislate, in an equally imperial way, single standards for all culture:
what’s good for the modernist avant-garde is good for the world. In
relation to both, carnivalesque remains an always dangerous supplement,
challenging, destabilising, relativising, pluralising single notions of true
culture, true reason, true broadcasting, true art (1994, p.284).
The carnival within a colonial context highlights the manner in which the form was redeployed by ex-slaves as a means of re-exerting their own cultural forms, or indeed, how new cultural forms were created out of their own tribal cultural practices and the cultures of the colonised. What is profound is the manner in which the carnival was reinvigorated as a tool of subversion, at times teetering on revolutionary. Cowley’s reading of the potency of the Carnival in the West Indies in Carnival, Canboulay and Calypso: Traditions in the Making
(1996) can be linked to Docker’s reading of the carnival as a form of social control, when Docker states of the upper classes of early modern Europe:
[They] were aware that the society that privileged them, with all its
inequalities of wealth, status, and power, could not survive without a
periodic means for subordinates to purge their resentments and to
compensate for their frustrations (1994, p.197).
12 By the nineteenth century, however, the potency of the festival and in
particular the carnival, as a dominant cultural form had long diminished. In The
Politics and Poetics of Transgression (1986) Stallybrass and White suggest that from approximately the 17th century onwards, the function of the carnival has fractured, to the extent that its oppositional potential has been diminished by contemporary psychology. In their analysis of the carnivalesque, Stallybrass and White turn to Freud’s construction of the potential subversion of the carnivalesque as a mere phobia of the bourgeois hysteric sensibility, in which the anarchic and liberating power of the carnival (and of the “other”) becomes atrophied into a kind of cathartic comedy. Alternatively they articulate that the power of the carnival was transposed into what the authors view as an empty spectacle, witnessed from a distanced gaze, with the crucial element of public involvement made null and void. Yet modern deployments of the idea of the carnivalesque, as Chapter Seven articulates, provide a counter-argument that attests to the still present potency of this ancient element of the festival, as the reference to Docker’s ideas, and Twitchell’s Carnival Culture, attest.
In contrast to the subversive function of the festival expressed through its carnivalesque elements, there is a counterbalancing impetus towards maintenance of the status quo. Roy Strong’s Splendour at Court: Renaissance
Spectacle and Illusion (1973) balances the idea of the subversive power of the
festival via the carnival, by addressing the blatantly propagandist deployment
of the form by the ruling classes. His elegant analysis of European renderings
of festival as a tool of extravagant propaganda in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries highlights the manner in which monarchs aimed to impose
a sense of Royal divinity and immortality on their subjects. Strong’s social
critique of this deployment of the festival is captured when he suggests:
13 By means of myth and allegory, festival found a means to exalt the glory
of the wearer of the Crown […] We can see them in retrospect for what
they were: extravagant assertions of a mirage of power (Strong, 1973,
p.21).
This propagandist role of the festival was embraced throughout history, most chillingly in the 20th century through Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies. Less sinister examples can be found in major exhibitions of national pride, such as the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games, in which the focus is primarily still to celebrate the achievements of the host country, and as such to profile its prestige.
An alternative approach to socio-historical readings of the festival can be revealed through an anthropological perspective, which provides the potential for an exploration of the festival as “magical” and transformative. From Ritual to Theatre: the Human Seriousness of Play (Turner, 1982) constructs the festival as transformative, in its relationship to tribal practice, and suggests that transformation occurs within the duration and space of the ritual. That ritual, he suggests, of which transformation via liminality is a vital element, serves to reinforce social balance. In a further key text, The Anthropology of
Performance (1988), Turner enhances this idea by suggesting:
Liminality is a temporal interface whose properties partially invert those
of the already consolidated order which constitutes any specific cultural
‘cosmos’ (1988, p.41).
Whilst Turner argues that ritual ultimately consolidates the status quo, it can be seen that the traditions of festival via the carnival, have the potential to subvert the social fabric, and in a sense to therefore go beyond ritual. The notion of festival as transformative is an important aspect of this thesis,
14 however, and is addressed in this research from several perspectives, both historically and contemporarily.
The historical analysis demonstrates that the festival is a potent cultural tool, possessive of the ability to act as propaganda and to reinforce the value systems that the wielders wish to enforce. Dichotomously, it possesses the ability to undermine those systems, lampoon them, and satirise them. Festival can function, as the carnival has demonstrated, as a means of liberation, or of control. In the 1800s the festival becomes a means of arts exaltation, its subversive potential largely lost to popular theatre forms. The community- oriented elements re-locate into fairs and feast-day celebrations.
The second half of the 20th century provides a number of new models, the fringe again reigniting the subversive nature of festival. Contemporary arts festivals ostensibly function as did those of ancient Greece: they are a means of civic pride and prestige. Yet they are also largely democratic, created in an environment of a market-based economy, attracting essentially middle class audiences. Rarely is programming interfered with by governments or obvious political agendas, even though programming is of course a reflection of socio- cultural impulses of the times in which it is developed. Arguably, though, such festivals work in a manner not dissimilar to the glittering models of the
Renaissance: they are presided over by a power structure of governments and social elites, and even subliminally, privilege the agendas of these groups.
The contemporary festival can be viewed as a form that functions essentially in one of two guises: to encompass the best of what has been said and done, or to validate a sense of community, or a combination of both, an issue explored in detail in Chapter 6. It can be argued that in the post-war period, the arts festival cements a city’s sense of cultural status, usually employing “high arts”
15 to do so. The world, and clearly Australia, is awash with examples of such events.
The popular model has become the community arts model, created out of the development of Community Arts ideology in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which focuses on a specific community, often a group disenfranchised by mainstream festival culture. The festival in this context aims to celebrate that community’s uniqueness, its local history, its survival. The emphasis here is not on excellence as it is with the arts festival, but on the community’s direct involvement, and often functions as a means for that community to articulate its plight in a public manner. Thus, the community festival can operate as a highly politicised form.
It will be seen that the issues of community, identity and utilisation of public space that have always been fundamental to the festival, are still of key significance, and yet the manner in which contemporary culture engages with these terms has shifted dramatically, as Chapter 7 reveals.
The carnivalesque has also been positioned from a variety of modern constructs, as Docker suggests:
…we can clearly see a diminution of carnival as a public festive event –
though carnival continues strongly in South America and more recently
has surfaced in Australia, in Sydney’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi
Gras. But I would argue that carnivalesque as a cultural mode still
strongly influences twentieth-century mass culture, in Hollywood film,
popular literary genres, television, music: a culture that in its
exuberance, range, excess, internationalism, and irrepressible vigour and
inventiveness perhaps represents another summit in the history of
16 popular culture, comparable to that of early modern Europe (1994,
p.185).
The redeployment of the carnivalesque in contemporary festival practice is addressed in the concluding chapter.
The contemporary festival operates within a different socio-political climate to that of its descendents, with governments (at either a local, state or government level), employing the form as a means of tourist attraction and civic confidence building, as the proceedings of the Future of Festivals Formulae conference (2002), edited by van Geijn and van Veen, attest. The contemporary arts festival is often positioned as “a window on the world”
(2002, p.7):
The intellectual, artistic or emotional satisfaction that theatre can
offer is no longer adequate for most people, they want more. People
want to meet, communicate and experience something special together.
So a festival these days should ideally not only be an artistic event, but
also a social experience (2002, p.11).
As we move into a new century, many of these roles and functions of the festival as it has operated historically have blurred, their impact becoming
more nebulous. In addition, where once attendance and participation were mandated either by personal, religious or other affiliations or by decree of some authority, festival attendance is very much a contested issue and a matter of theoretical speculation.
Festivals are now conceptualised and marketed as an “experience”: McDonnell,
Allen and O’Toole’s Festival and Event Management (1999) provides an analysis
17 of two local American festivals which revealed the five key reasons for festival attendance:
Socialisation: being with friends, people who are enjoying themselves
and people who enjoy the same things;
Family togetherness: seeking the opportunity so the family can do
something together and to bring the family together;
Excitement/thrills: doing something because it is stimulating and
exciting;
Escape: getting away from the usual demands of life and having a change
from daily routine; and
Event novelty: experiencing new and different things and/or attending a
festival that is unique (1999, p.114).
Interestingly, this information can be seen to parallel (though in a more pedestrian manner) key theorist Richard Florida’s analysis of cultural involvement by those whom he describes as the Creative Class. An exploration of this concept follows later in this chapter.
1.4b Fashion
An understanding of the cultural meaning of the boutique is illuminating for this research, and unearths the manner in which retail as a cultural process was revolutionised via the boutique, as Marnie Fogg explores in detail in Boutique: A
‘60s cultural phenomenon (2003). The key shifts in processes of clothes consumption for young people in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, and the key issue that has impacted on the research for the boutique festival is the repositioning of audience member as both consumer and producer:
18 The new modes of self-presentation were a reflection of the upheavals
taking place in society, and resulted in many innovations including that of
the fashion boutique. The entrepreneurial ethos of the 60s that
resulted in teenagers “doing their own thing” meant that young
consumers could now become the new producers (2003, p.13).
The most definitive of boutiques, Biba in London, created an environment that was at the forefront of articulating the shifting patterns of cultural consumption for young people, explored in detail in The Biba Experience
(Turner, 2004). This single boutique embodied all that was crucial about the retail form as a cultural phenomenon: the “democratic” relationship between customer and retailer, the accessibility of high fashion at an affordable price, the highly interactive environment within the boutique itself, and the privileging of young people’s patterns of consumption. This privileging warrants a deeper exploration into the practices and philosophies of youth culture:
1.4c Youth arts theory
An exploration of the key theorists of youth arts theory has identified that underlying issues of social justice via areas of access, inclusivity, consultation and the positioning of young people, both children and adolescents as culturally aware and culture makers already, heavily inform the framework for the QPAC boutique festival models. These ideas can all be connected to the key philosophy of QPAC’s Artistic Director, John Kotzas, which underpin these festivals for young audiences: to “create room in the mainstream” (27April
1999).
At the risk of overgeneralising, it is possible to identify some significant trends in the cultural lives of young people, and to articulate elements that shape young people’s experiences. As the carnivalesque can be seen as a
19 subversion of high culture, and a celebration of those who were rarely afforded a voice, the parallels with youth culture become obvious. Forms employed by young people often subvert or redeploy mainstream traditions, and in so doing, create a new form of cultural expression. Youth culture also provides a cultural space by which young people operate on their own terms.
The key spheres of influence here are the processes of cultural consumption, the relationship with key cultural forms and critiques of them, the redeployment of public space, the privileging of diversity (sexual, political, cultural, aesthetic) and the impact of technology.
Theorists highlight that young audiences are highly sophisticated and literate in terms of their ability to read and critique media and marketing. Having been raised in a cultural experience in which brand names and the wearing or avoidance of them play a key role in the shaping of one’s identity, young people’s consumer antennae are highly adept at tracking when they are being patronised, exploited or pandered to. They are also, perhaps partially as a reaction to stereotyped media representations, marked as either “threats or victims” (Richer, 1999, p.2) fluid in their construction of and playing with identity. They are difficult to construct in the mapping of definitive cultural trends; rather, they dip into the array of “what is ‘hip’ or ‘alternative’ from youth cultures” (Lopiano-Misdom and DeLuca, 1997, p.6), so that elements from a coterie of cultural movements are adapted for personal needs or amusement.
This is further explored regarding the relationship between young people and patterns of consumption, and highlights key trends in the late 1990s such as new surrealism and extremism, which connected keenly with cultural threads of the 1999 Stage X festival, and which have continued to impact on young people.
The issue of young people’s patterns of consumption and their marketing savvy particularly regarding an Australian perspective is powerfully documented in
Diana Bagnall’s article, “The Y Factor”, (The Bulletin, March 16, 1999). The
20 article highlights how young people are extremely market literate, highly aware
of when they are being targeted by marketing campaigns, and will retreat as
soon as they are being targeted.
Youth culture therefore embodies a world where a blancmange of cultural
movements and references are morphed, pastiched and mobilised through a
relentless array of images via television screens, gameboys and DVDs. The
ability to “play” with the projected images and the concepts behind them has
become a key factor in what it means to be young. Much cultural studies
research regarding youth culture focuses on youth icons, such as the MTV
(Music Television) phenomenon, and more recent excursions into reality
television, web culture, most recently through blogging and zine publications4.
Cultural expression for young people seamlessly employs cultural pastiche and
irreverence into new forms.
Youth cultural practice and its relation to dominant cultural forms is
illustrative of the manner in which it can intersect, appropriate and overturn
mainstream cultural practice, and key theorists explore this from a variety of
perspectives. Angela McRobbie’s focus is on young women and the ways in
which they subvert dominant readings and representations of femininity, and
how they recontextualise mainstream cultural practice for their own pleasure.
McRobbie’s In the Culture Society: Art, fashion and popular music (1999) and
4 Blogging, a relatively new form of “democratic journalism”, focuses on the blog, a website in which items are posted and displayed regularly in reverse chronological order and which usually employ an informal style of documentation. The subject-matter of a blog can range from a personal diary, to being topical, political and even business-oriented. Blogs are becoming increasingly mainstream, as politicians and other public figures have come to value the widespread potential of the form.
Zines are essentially magazines with a very small circulation, often generated by niche interest groups. Zines can take the form of a more conventional magazine, although issues are often photocopied, but they can also be computer-generated, or even handwritten. The form is also becoming increasingly recognised in the mainstream, as many zines are now distributed more widely through bookstores.
21 Feminism and Youth Culture (1991) in particular privilege forms of value to young women, such as fashion and fashion magazines, cultural forms largely trivialised or dismissed by academic discourse until recent times. McRobbie asserts the cultural validity and potency of these forms, and in so doing, provides a legitimacy for young people’s cultural expression.
The impulses impacting on young people at the turn of the 20th Century, and in particular issues such as corporatisation, technology and consumerism, are highlighted from an Australian perspective in Noel Turnbull’s The Millennium
Edge: Prospering with Generation MM (1996). An understanding of young people’s patterns of consumption, of products, image and lifestyle, is crucial to this study, and is addressed in detail in Chapter Four, which analyses QPAC’s
Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX festivals.
Other key theorists who explore these issues as they impact on young people are Douglas Rushkoff, whose text Media Virus: Hidden agendas in Popular
Culture (Random House, 1994) explores the fraught and complex relationships that young people inhabit with technology. His Playing the Future: How Kids’
Culture Can Teach Us to Thrive in an Age of Chaos, (1996) as the title suggests, positions young people as powerful cultural contributors, which is a key philosophical underpinning to both the Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX festivals, rather than seeing them as future or potential audiences.
Some of the most important theorising regarding young people’s cultural practice involves the provision of opportunities for them to curate their own experiences, an issue explored in detail in Epstein’s text Youth Culture:
Identity in a Postmodern World (Blackwell, 1998). One of the most profound articles within Epstein’s text is Henri Giroux’s “Teenage Sexuality”, in which he presents one of the key issues that has informed QPAC’s Programming Unit’s curation of festivals for young audiences: “…young people need to be given the
22 opportunity to narrate themselves” (Giroux in Epstein, 1998, p.48). This issue
of re-appropriation is key in youth theory, not only in terms of cultural space
for the ideas of young people to be profiled, but also in terms of the physical
redeployment of space, the ramifications of which are further explored in
Andy Bennett’s Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place
(2000), as Chapter Four examines.
Other key sources of information regarding young people have been via magazines, several of which are no longer in circulation such as Cream, an
Australian magazine, and The Face, a British publication. The fact that these publications no longer exist is indicative of the rapidity of cultural movements within youth culture. Indeed, many of the focuses of these texts, especially the nomenclature, “Gen X”, “Gen Y” for example, further highlight just how quickly youth cultural impulses shift, and it will be shown that the boutique festival form is extremely adept at engaging and profiling this brevity.
Furthermore, the degree of diversity within youth culture is fundamental. It is impossible to consider young people as a homogenised group: indeed, youth
culture applauds multiplicity, so much so that as Johanna Wyn and Rob White
articulate in Rethinking Youth (1997): “the concept of youth is itself problematic when it is used to categorise people by age alone” (1997, p.147).
It can also be seen that many of the deeper issues addressed in these texts are ongoing (such as the manner in which young people are positioned, and their constant marginalisation) and are not confined to a specific point in time.
1.5 Conceptual framework
The literature review has provided a significant insight into the range of areas that this research encapsulates. The issue is now to provide an analysis of the many aspects of the operation of festivals in the contemporary world.
23 Currently there is a body of emerging research that is significantly impacting on contemporary festival practice.
The development of Creative Industries thinking, particularly since the commencement of this research project, has impacted on the manner in which concepts of “culture” and “creativity” are positioned. These terms have shifted from being widely understood as “soft” notions of aesthetics, pertaining only to the arts, into being incorporated into the mainstream of economic activity and now being regularly used in the business and corporate sectors. The notion of creativity in particular is now employed as a key signifier of many domains of policy “success”.
What the literature search (1.4) has highlighted is that there is a significant gap in the research regarding the role of festivals within this paradigm shift, regarding cultural consumption and production. Festivals, as this research evinces, are a key cultural form that exemplify key Creative Industries ideas, in terms of models of management and philosophical engagement, and most particularly in terms of consumption, globalisation, and community.
Because the thinking surrounding creative industries has itself developed significantly since the commencement of this research, it is useful to articulate the trajectory from the earlier key thrusts that have impacted on the research, to the most recent issues.
The term “creative industries” can be defined as “those activities that deal primarily in symbolic goods – goods whose primary economic value is derived from their cultural value” (O’Connor in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.21).
Strong links with cultural studies are evident, especially via Fiske’s suggestion that:
24 …new technologies do not in themselves produce social change, however,
they can and do facilitate it. These new technologies met the marketing
strategies of late capitalist industries, which can be summarized briefly
as ones of market segmentation rather than mass marketing (in Denzin
and Lincoln, 1994, p.189).
The discourse has consolidated an exploration of the palpable shift in the relationship between culture and economy that has emerged since the Second
World War. Culture increasingly functions as a commodity, and cultural value plays an increasingly central role within economic production (as outlined by
Justin O’Connor in The Definition of ‘Cultural Industries’, in Hartley and
Haseman, 2000). Bourdieu and Castells further explore this notion. There are
three specific areas within this earlier creative industries discourse that have
informed this study:
• the aestheticisation of everyday life:
• the changing patterns of consumption;
• new modes of production: the network information society,
the world of flexible, responsible, interdisciplinary teams.
There is then a fourth more recent area that has come to have significant impact not only on this thesis, but on creative industries discourse in general: d) the Creative Class.
These issues impact significantly on the festival, both as a major cultural tool into which millions of government dollars are channelled, and as a boutique rendering, which highlights shifts in audience patterns of consumption, and shifts in the festival production model towards a flat management style, as distinct from the essentially hierarchical styles of the major arts festivals.
25 1.5a The aestheticisation of everyday life
Featherstone’s articulation of the idea of the “aestheticisation of everyday life” suggests that the structures which have separated art from everyday life have increasingly crumbled, as have the distinctions between high and popular artistic expression, impacted upon most obviously through Postmodernism. He perceives that the resonances of these blurrings can be located in movements as far back as Dadaism in the late 1910s and early 1920s, and in the lifestyle of bohemians such as Oscar Wilde and the Bloomsbury group, to cite the most obvious examples. Featherstone crystallises the idea of the aestheticisation of everyday life when he suggests:
…the dual focus on a life of aesthetic consumption and the need to form
life into an aesthetically pleasing whole on the part of artistic and
intellectual countercultures should be related to the development of
mass consumption in general and the pursuit of new tastes and
sensations and the construction of distinctive lifestyles which have
become central to consumer culture (in Hartley and Haseman, 2000,
p.95).
Baudrillard argues that the hyper-reality created via the superfluity of media images and patterns, confuses the real and the projected, to the extent that all things have become aestheticised. Those traditional sites of high culture are thus metamorphosed into sites “where one has an experience, rather than where knowledge of the canon and established symbolic hierarchies are inculcated” (Roberts quoted by Featherstone in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.98). The trope of the carnivalesque comes into play in this argument, when
Featherstone further articulates, “it may be possible therefore to trace back to carnival of the Middle Ages many of the figural aspects, the disconnected succession of fleeting images, sensations, de-control of the emotions and de-
26 differentiation which have become associated with postmodernism and the aestheticisation of everyday life” (in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.28-29).
This sense of the ‘fleeting’ is strongly reinvoked in Richard Florida’s assertions regarding the Creative Class and the analysis of community, to be addressed in
Chapter 7. It is also key to the construct of the festival as a whole, which on one level can be viewed as the literal aestheticisation of everyday life in its ability to transform public spaces into performative sites.
Featherstone goes on to state:
The elements of the carnivalesque which became displaced into art, and
retained in consumer cultural sites and spectacles, and in the media of
film and television, now have larger middle-class audiences […] In effect
fractions of the new middle-class have become more educated into a
controlled de-control of the emotions and the sensibilities and tastes
that support a greater appreciation of the aestheticization of everyday
life (in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.109).
Conversely, festivals can be seen as reclaiming this displacement into a heightened sense of reality, or even a transformation of it.
O’Connor suggests that the traditional or classic arts such as theatre, music, dance and the fine arts have a key function in this new environment: “The ways in which the arts feed into the wider cultural infrastructure […] its cultural circuits can be extremely catalytic for local creativity and innovation in both cultural production and consumption” (in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.28-29).
The festival, and in particular the boutique festival, as explored in this thesis, has a significant role to play in marrying the notion of production and consumption, with the audience placed in a key role.
27
1.5b Patterns of consumption
Justin O’Connor explores the shift from mass consumption practices of the
1950s and 1960s, to a niche consumption model during the 1970s and 1980s, whereby the desire for an experience that could be deemed as special, unique or authentic has become a key focus for consumption. This is a further feature of Florida’s analysis of the Creative Class whom he argues “equate authentic with being ‘real’, as in a place that has real buildings, real people, real history” (Florida, 2003, p.228). O’Connor further advocates, “large areas of consumption were becoming increasingly cultural and positional. There has been a transformation of traditional taste cultures” (in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.23), to the point that the consumption of material goods can be viewed as a cultural undertaking. This positions the festival powerfully, especially regarding the boutique model, which specifically works to create a unique experience focusing on a particular blend of audience tastes and positionings.
Festival producers such as John Kotzas and Susan Richer, the Artistic Director of both Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX, can be considered, to employ
Bourdieu’s term, as:
…cultural intermediaries […] those [who are] concerned to open up local
space to new practices, to transform local cultures, to act as agents of
cultural changes…cultural catalysts who actively transform the local
cultural landscape of the city (O’Connor in Hartley and Haseman, 2000,
p.24).
What is most significant about these processes of transformation is that the producers aim to create the transformation in consultation and dialogue with the target audiences. Thus, while O’Connor suggests that such agents have a key role to play in connecting global movements within the local specificity:
28 “these new cultural entrepreneurs operate as loose, fluid, highly creative
clusters operating outside or on the edge of the public funding structures” (in
Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.25), it is critical to note that these agents (the
Programming Unit) feel the efficacy of their ability to “transform” must be
measured by their ability to engage in a “cultural conversation”, to employ
Richer’s term, with audiences. O’Connor’s concept further places the
Programming Unit in an interesting position, in that it is part of a heavily
funded government organisation. The interest lies in the Unit’s ability to
connect other cultural non-mainstream ‘clusters’ with a mainstream
organisation, along with atypical audiences. In this way, the team may be seen,
to use its own terminology, to be “creating room in the mainstream”. The role of
the audience as consumer and producer is explored in detail in Chapter 5 and is
of chief concern to writers such as Florida, Leadbeater and Kane. The issue of
the experience being as important as the product has become fundamental to
contemporary models of cultural consumption and the festival is a seminal
conduit by which to harness this process.
1.5c The network society
The network society, a term featured in the work of Manuel Castells, is an attempt to deconstruct the impact of technology on contemporary life, and specifically the manner in which information has become the key currency rather than goods, by which to trade. Kevin Kelly suggests:
The new rules governing this global restructuring revolve around several
axes. First, wealth in this new regime flows directly from innovation,
not optimisation; that is, wealth is not gained by perfecting the known,
but by imperfectly seizing the unknown. Second, the ideal environment
for cultivating the unknown is to nurture the supreme agility and
nimbleness of networks. Third, the domestication of the unknown
29 inevitably means abandoning the highly successful known – undoing the
perfected. And last, in the thickening web of the Network Economy,
the cycle of “find, nurture and destroy” happens faster than ever
before (Robins and Webster, in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.27).
Castells suggests that this new economy is globalised and networked, as major companies decentralise, outsource, form alliances for a particular project, then disband these when the work is complete, form new alliances for the next project, and so on. He discusses the effect this has on the “cultural realm”
(Castells in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.5), in that “cultural expressions of all kinds are increasingly enclosed in or shaped by [these new technologies, especially the internet]” (Castells in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, pp.5-6).
Historian Mark Foster considers that “…the information explosion […] is the ground of postmodernism, and the resultant interactive complexity, shifting- centred, and multi-sited constructedness of our selves and our worlds” (in
Lather, 1991, p.21).
Justin Fleming’s thinking has also been seminal to an articulation of the network society, especially as he suggests that the paradox of locating the local within an increasingly globalised world can be reconciled by understanding that “[l]ocal cultural networks have a relationality, a reliance on what ‘happens elsewhere’”
(in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.195). He goes on to argue, “By sharing models of best practice between localities, uncertainties and insecurities can be alleviated, displaced by the reassurance that similar policies are operating in other localities with some success” (Fleming in Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.195).
The festival has a crucial function to play in this relationship between the local and the global, and different festival models intersect with this relationship in different ways, specifically related to their informing constructs of community.
30 The community arts festival unapologetically focuses on a specific and often
geographical sense of community, whilst the arts festival, (the department
store model), brings the world to local audiences via the inclusion of
international productions, but also positions its audience as part of an
international festival audience, as those international works are repeated to
audiences around the world, and have been created specifically for that
context. The boutique festival aims to profile local works that respond to
global cultural trends from a decidedly local perspective.
1.5d The creative class
The most recent theories to impact significantly on Creative Industries thinking are Richard Florida’s assumptions about the Creative Classes, Charles
Leadbeater’s ideas about new optimism, and Pat Kane’s play ethic. Each of these theorists presents key ideas that intersect with the potential of the festival to engage with contemporary life, via the exploration of issues such as the reaction against technology, embodied in movements such as new ageism and “seachanging” 5, highlighting a concerted distrust and unpalatability for an informationally-driven world. A desire to re-connect with something perceived as real or authentic has become a driving cultural force, and is central to the festival’s longevity, as Chapter Seven will attest.
5 New Ageism refers to a movement which gathered momentum in the late 1980s, which is an “alternative spiritual subculture interested in … meditation, channelling, reincarnation, crystals” (www.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Age) and generally in holistic medicines. It can be seen as an attempt to embrace an alternative world-view amidst the onslaught of globalisation and rampant consumerism.
Seachanging is primarily an Australian term reflecting a growing trend among stressed city dwellers, especially babyboomers, to re-locate to regional coastal areas. It is a trend that is part of the downshifting trend, and is seen by some theorists as being “about a reinvention of yourself, letting go of the past” (Bernard Salt, quoted in “Preparing for the seachange” www.abc.net.au/goldcoast/stories/s1336068.htm).
31 This issue of re-connection, even a sense of longing for aspects of a perceived past world order, is bound up with the problematisation of community, a term which is becoming increasingly difficult to define because of the rapidity of shifting social and cultural forces. In light of this, the festival’s ability to engage with audiences, especially in a contemporary context, is crucial to the form’s potency. Featherstone’s point that “the spectator is not invisible” (in
Hartley and Haseman, 2000, p.103), can be read as valid for all festival production, because the spectator has become the consumer and the producer.
The study highlights the shifting role of the spectator in festival history, and the particular potency of the positioning of audiences in contemporary festival practice.
1.5e Key Questions
In light of these theoretical concerns, which contextualised this research, the key question to be addressed in this thesis can be consolidated as: why has the festival become such a dominant cultural force in contemporary cultural practice?
This consideration is addressed by exploring:
• What are the links between the festival historically and contemporary
practice?
• What is the nature of the localised festival practice in Brisbane?
• What are the managerial, aesthetic and philosophical underpinnings of
QPAC’s Programming Unit in festival production mode?
• What is unique about a boutique festival?
• How does it connect within contemporary cultural frameworks?
• What is the role of the audience?
• What is the future of the festival?
32
1.6 Conclusion
The introduction has presented the key conceptual impulses that will add resonance to the exploration of this vast cultural terrain. The positioning of the festival as a cultural, social and political form, from both the long trajectory of historical renderings, to the most immediate interpretations, as the subsequent chapters will elucidate, will map out this terrain. The thesis will explore the ways in which the festival, in all its guises, has aimed to add resonance to the culture that has created it, so as to avoid Michael Billington’s assumption that many festivals commence as a celebration and continue as an institution (2001, p.20). Their success in this aspiration is ultimately what steers a festival’s continuance, or disbandment.
Chapter Two articulates the methodological framework via which the research has been undertaken.
33 CHAPTER TWO - METHODOLOGY
2.1 Introduction
This chapter will outline the methodology employed to analyse the nature of the festival, with particular emphasis on the boutique event. The research aimed to contextualise the festival in key theoretical debates, and in so doing, to then explore the ramifications of the notion of the “boutique” festival for a contemporary cultural landscape. A number of methodological tools have been required to complete such an analysis, as the study approaches readings of the festival from several methodological positions, primarily historical and ethnographic, but also drawing methods and techniques from the frameworks of Cultural Studies, and Reception Studies.
2.2 Methodology
Thus, hierarchically, this research applies essentially two methodologies: an historiographical and an ethnographic analysis. It will be shown that other areas inflect these two key arenas, but can be viewed essentially as subsets of them.
Historiographical analysis was applied in the first stages of research (the findings of which are located in Appendix A), via an exploration of key impulses within festival activity since classical Greece, the accepted birthplace of western cultural expression. A Cultural Studies approach is involved to generate a reading of the festival historically as either a propagandist tool of the state, or a populist celebration of the people, and occasionally as an intersection of both. To contextualise this within the social and geographical climate that has produced the two key boutique festivals that formed the key case studies within the research project, Stage X in 1999 and 2001, the local
34 background to festival culture within the city of Brisbane is also explored.
This has been achieved via undertaking an historical analysis of the Warana festival, the development of which mirrors the cultural maturation of the city itself.
The thesis then recontextualises this analysis ethnographically, by regarding the function and role of the festival through the means of the two key case studies, Stage X 1999 and 2001, with minor reference to OUT OF THE BOX
2000. This is further explored via an analysis of cognate elements of the 2002
Adelaide Festival of the Arts. Finally, the boutique arts festival is theorised as an effective model for arts development within the Creative Industries framework. As articulated in Chapter One, Creative Industries discourse provides a lens through which to position the festival, and in particular the boutique festival, as a potent means of cultural production and consumption, and also affords the theoretical space by which to contextualise the festival within key contemporary urban issues, such as representations of community, space and audience relationships to cultural product. These considerations, whilst woven through the research as a whole, are specifically addressed in
Chapter Seven.
The aim of the research is to provide a rich and triangulated reading of this particular kind of boutique festival model, involving both the “making phase”
(QPAC’s Programming Unit) and the “consuming phase” (audiences). However, because of the multiple layers in the model, no singular methodology could be applied. A variety of data collections and approaches to analysis have been required to conduct this research, and satisfy research aims. Thus, a mixed methodology has been developed, which draws on a diversity of conceptual positions. To summarise, this methodology draws on the fields of
Historiography (inflected by Cultural Studies perspectives), and Ethnography
(with recourse to the field of Reception Studies to analyse the “consuming”
35 phase of the model); and in order to build theory, the art/commerce debate within Creative Industries is deployed. In essence, therefore, this project can be viewed as a sociological study of the festival, shifting to a narrow focus on the deployment of a particular kind of festival model, located within a particular organisation, and concluding with a speculation about the place of this festival model in a contemporary urban environment.
In broad methodological terms the research is located within the qualitative research tradition, although quantitative tools have been employed to serve the reception studies dimension of the work. Each methodological element will now be articulated in order to crystallise the research aim.
2.3 Components of the research
As already articulated, the research employs a number of different frameworks, appropriate for the nature of the research element being explored. These components are:
An historical analysis of the role of the festival, as a cultural phenomenon.
Berg suggests “historical research attempts to systematically recapture the complex nuances, the people, meanings, events, and even ideas of the past that have influenced and shaped the present” (Berg, 1998, p.198-99). This process is also referred to as historiography, and that term is applied in this analysis.
Furthermore, it can be seen that this kind of research implies “the study of the relationship among issues that have influenced the past, continue to influence the present, and will certainly influence the future” (Glass in Berg,
1998, p.199). Thus, a reading of the festival as it functioned in preceding eras will be shown to have strong ramifications for contemporary positionings, particularly with regard to the boutique model.
36 A key factor emerging from the historical research is that the concept of
“place” is crucial in the development of the festival – for many early festivals, the location itself was the raison d’etre for the celebration. This has indeed
come to have significant implications for contemporary festivals, an ostensible
function of which is to profile the city in which they are held for the purposes
of prestige and tourism, as well as to reinforce for the local population a
stronger sense of the city’s defining characteristics in geography, climate and
lifestyle. Because this sense of place is so significant as regards the festival,
it is necessary to explore celebration of place as it emerges in the two
festivals focussed on in this study, Stage X in 1999 and 2001. The city of
Brisbane is the location for both festival events.
Therefore, in order to gain an understanding of festival culture as it has grown
within the city of Brisbane, an historical analysis of the major festival in the
city, Warana, an outdoors Spring festival which commenced in 1961, has been undertaken, as has its metamorphosis into the largely indoors arts-oriented
Brisbane Festival in 1996. As there is almost no published critical analysis of this event, this research is based on newspaper and magazine articles and on an unpublished essay about the history of the event until 1982, as well as an earlier research project undertaken by Judy Pippen in 1997.
The core of the research has been a primary examination of the Stage X
Festivals of 1999 and 2001, and a minor reference to the OUT OF THE BOX
Festival in 2000. This is an ethnographic case-study over the years 1999 through to 2001, focusing on the producer of these festivals, the Programming
Unit of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), and on audience responses to the event. In terms of “testing” the efficacy of the work of the
Unit, two audience reception studies were undertaken, one in 1999 the other in
2001 for a component of the Stage X festival for young people, Five to
Midnight. This is a five hour event comprising a number of bands, featuring one
37 headlining band, supported by local groups, and profiling a significant arts component featuring the work of local emerging artists, their work linked via a loose and parodic theme. The purpose of this aspect of the research was to discover how audiences responded to the themes and programming of the festivals, and to explore how the philosophical aims and underpinnings of the event (as articulated by the Programming Unit) were processed by audiences.
It could appear therefore that the reception study research regarding Stage
X, is attempting to measure the efficacy of the festival. Indeed, ticket sales, audience reception studies and reviews of the events provide a certain kind of evidence regarding the success of these festivals. However, the issue of efficacy is far more complex and wide reaching than such measuring elements suggests; this notion of efficacy will be problematised in detail in Chapter 4.
To contextualise the workings of the Programming Unit in terms of festival production, a comparative analysis of the 2002 Adelaide Festival of the Arts directed by Peter Sellars was undertaken, because Sellars was attempting to deploy the festival as a vehicle for dialogue with audiences in a manner parallel to the philosophy of QPAC’s Programming Unit. Sellars was employing what could be regarded on several levels as a boutique model for a major arts festival. Since this dichotomy was fundamental to the theory building function, highlighting the various festivals models and recent convergence of them, the exploration of Sellars’ transplanting of form and function provided a crucial analysis to this study of contemporary models of festival production, and the ways in which audiences are positioned as consumers, producers, or both.
The intention of this research is to provide a detailed speculation on the role of the boutique festival within an urban context. This includes a problematisation of that very notion of community embedded in the construct of ‘festival’, as well as issues regarding space and the dual positioning of
38 audiences as consumer and producer. Creative Industries and creative city discourse shape this speculation with a particular inflection; furthermore, youth arts theory, as a subset of Cultural Studies, is an informing conceptual framework as has been articulated in the introduction, which is paramount to this exploration of festivals for young people.
2.4 Position of the researcher
One significant issue which came into play as a result of the ethnographic approach is that at certain times throughout the study I, the researcher, worked as an employed member of the Programming Unit in a variety of roles, including producer, writer, and workshop facilitator. Whilst this allowed me to function in a highly privileged position, coupled with the generosity afforded me by staff members in terms of access to materials and ideas when I was working in researcher mode, it ultimately placed me in a position of being both researcher and researched simultaneously, a position that has significant ramifications for the research. This issue is discussed in detail in 2.6
Ethnography.
2.5 Qualitative research
This research process commenced without a clear issue to explore, except for the assumption that festivals are of fundamental importance to western cultural expression. And yet it was known that both historiographical and
ethnographic methodologies would be employed, especially as case studies of
QPAC festivals were always at the forefront of the project design. The project thus falls under the expansive umbrella of the qualitative research tradition: “Qualitative research, as a set of interpretive activities, privileges no single methodological practice over another” (Introduction, Denzin and
Lincoln, 2000, p.6). In simple terms, “Qualitative research thus refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and
39 descriptions of things” (Berg, 1998, p.3). Key theorists Denzin and Lincoln outline definitive moments in the qualitative research tradition and the consideration in particular of those here which impact on this research project, provides an effective overview of this kind of research endeavour and its justification and positioning, especially in light of the growing sense in post-war research that the search for a unified and singular outcome is untenable.
Instead, “we stand at the threshold of a history marked by multivocality, contested meanings, paradigmatic controversies, and new textual forms”
(Lincoln and Guba, in Richards, forthcoming, 1.3.1) This multi-dynamic approach proved particularly useful to this study and its application of Creative
Industries discourse, at the heart of which are plural, diverse and open ended means of producing and consuming creative product.
Denzin and Lincoln provide a detailed analysis of traditions in qualitative research traditions. A brief overview of the key impulses is provided here:
In the early Twentieth Century, the social sciences emerged as a separate entity from other scientific endeavours; sociological exploration based on methods of observation began in the early 1920s (Silverman, 1993, p.32), positioning the world through the lens of colonisation, with the “other” being objectified, represented as strange, the aberration of the central positioning of the coloniser.
This position shifted focus to slice-of-life ethnographies, aiming to apply
“rigorous qualitative studies of important social processes” (Denzin and Lincoln,
1994, p.8), so as to provide a space in which to examine the underbelly of society that considered the “other”. Those groups perceived as minorities gained a voice in research, albeit with the researcher speaking for them. The space created for the “other” is highly significant to this thesis: the creation of “room in the mainstream” (Kotzas, 27 April 1999) is a powerful function of
40 the festival, and is in particular, a key tool of the boutique festival, affording the space for those groups usually ignored by mainstream cultural practice, in this instance, young people.
By the 70s an explosion in methodologies, discourses and practices had occurred, and Clifford Geertz advocated that a “pluralistic, interpretive, open- ended perspective” (Denzin and Lincoln, 1994, p.9) was far more appropriate for exploration within the increasingly popular Postmodernist sensibility. By this point the researcher was no longer positioned as superior to the subject, and the focus began to shift away from universal “truths” to localised hypotheses.
A key issue became “how the researcher [could] speak with authority in an age when there [were] no longer any firm rules concerning the text” (Denzin and
Lincoln, 1994, p.9).
Subsequently, not only did qualitative research documentation become more reflexive, it began to inherently problematise issues of race, class and gender.
Interpretive modes became more privileged than grounded theories, and the writing of fieldwork notes and the final analysis blurred, as opposed to previously functioning as two separate stages of the research process. This was further fragmented by a crisis “of representation, legitimation and praxis
[which] confronts qualitative researchers in the human disciplines” (Denzin and
Lincoln, 2000, p.17). Within such a climate it is argued that the researcher can
“no longer directly capture lived experience” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p.17), and furthermore, problematises “the traditional criteria for evaluating and interpreting qualitative research [meaning those tools such as] validity, reliability and generalizability” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p.17).
However, what Denzin and Lincoln refer to as The Fifth Moment of
“postmodern experimental, ethnographic research” (2000, p.17), privileges the narrative as narrow and localised, addressing the problems specific to a
41 particular group in a particular locale. This is the essence of the ethnographic facet of this research project. The role of the researcher and the manner in which the subject is represented is continually problematised, as are the aims for results and outcomes, and the intended audience is re-evaluated. The question at the forefront of much contemporary qualitative research is who is the research for? For this particular project, a close connection has been obviously drawn between the researcher and QPAC, in particular the
Programming Unit, and the outcome of the research is twofold: to provide
QPAC with an analysis of its methods employed for festival production, and secondly, to offer those methods, their strengths and limitations, for the use of other cultural organisations, contextualised within a theoretical analysis of the boutique festival as a potent contemporary cultural tool.
Qualitative research had become “properly conceptualized as a civic, participatory, collaborative project. This joins the researcher and the researched in an ongoing moral dialogue” (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000, p.1049).
This phase is crucial to this research project. Given the highly privileged position afforded to the researcher via QPAC, the openness of staff discussion, interview and analysis, the process has become very much a dialogue between researcher and the researched, effectively paralleling the creative process of festival production, whereby festival is viewed by the key team as a dialogue between producer, artist and audience, and this thesis sits relatively comfortably within this Seventh Movement.
Contemporary qualitative research now embraces a variety of positions simultaneously. Rather than creating a sense of fracture and disjointedness, the value of this pluralistic, multi-dynamic approach suggests that research is richer and wider reaching because of such diversity of approach. This particular project is hopefully strongly indicative of this, drawing as it does
42 from a variety of research tools, located within the two key methodologies of historiographical analysis and ethnography.
Contemporary qualitative research subscribes to a blurring of genres, a redeployment of various research genres. Tulloch suggests that “local, contextualized and ‘situated knowledge’ […] is the current academic condition of our postmodern experience” (Tulloch, 2005, p.19). The “situated, constitutive self can no longer hide behind the imperialism of unifying conceptual schemes embodied in ‘master’ narratives; rather, each one of us has to engage with the fluid ambiguities and uncertainties of tentative, ‘local’ stories or accounts” (Adam and Allan in Tulloch, 2005, p.19). How, therefore, does the death of the master narrative position this investigation of the festival, one of the oldest theatrical narratives in existence? The answer must be in the tentativeness of theory building and the residual “speculation” of the construct in a contemporary urban context.
This research project drew on a range of genres to explore the festival from a number of angles. Such positioning can be seen as appropriate, given the postmodern condition within which we have been framing culture for some time.
As Tulloch suggests:
At the same time as the ‘grand narratives’ […] lose their legitimacy, so too
‘art’ loses its privileged status, and becomes indistinguishable from any
other cultural commodity in everyday life…the boundaries of high and
popular culture become permeable in the free-flowing world of
undifferentiated image, simulation and spectacle. Cultural products […]
become simply non-hierarchical commodities on offer (for ‘performance’
and ‘consumption’) as in a supermarket (2005, p.28).
43 Tulloch’s retail imagery is appropriate here regarding the analysis contained within this thesis of the department store festival model, and the boutique event. Can it be argued that the festival, especially the boutique model, is just, as Tulloch suggests, another “commodity on offer”, or can it be seen to have deeper ramifications?
When Singer claims that ‘a culture articulates its self-image through cultural
[…] performances and thereby represents and exhibits itself to its own members as well as to outsiders’ (in Carlson 1996: 16), he articulates a very necessary potential of the festival: it can function as a crucial act of self- definition (Martin, Seffrin, Wissler, 2004, p.109).
This crucial issue will be explored in detail in Chapter Seven.
2.6 Ethnography
Having explored the umbrella of qualitative research, it is at this point timely to address in particular the deployment of ethnography in this research process. Ethnography can be described as “a form of field research in which the researcher attempts to understand a culture by becoming part of it”
(Thwaites, Davis and Mules, 1994, p.205). At its most general, ethnography involves a process of describing a particular culture, through articulating what particular subjects do and what kind of people the subjects are. Ethnographic research can be viewed as a process of narrowing down:
…over time the research problem is developed or transformed, and
eventually its scope is clarified and delimited and its internal structure
explored. In this sense, it is frequently only over the course of the
research that one discovers what the research is really ‘about’, and it is
not uncommon for it to turn out to be about something quite remote
44 from the initially foreshadowed problems (Hammersley and Atkinson in
Silverman, 1993, p.46).
Ethnographic research aims to focus on a particular element of a group, not a holistic reading of its habits or behaviours. This study focuses on the
Programming Unit’s working environment during festival production mode. It may be said that this study employs “analytic ethnography”, an element of which “utilizes data based on deep familiarity with a social setting or situation that is gained by personal participation or an approximation of it” (Berg, 1998, p.120-21). This employment is especially valid for those periods during which the researcher was working for the Unit as part of the festival production team.
At its simplest, Ethnography can be seen as “the practice [that] places researchers in the midst of whatever it is they study” (Berg, 1998, p.121). The tools employed in qualitative research, especially interviewing and participant observation can easily create an environment whereby the researcher forms a close alliance with the researched subject, and this was significant for this research. At times, as researcher I found my role within this ethnographic aspect of the study to be problematic from the point of view of seeking to maintain neutrality, a term which itself is much problematised in contemporary research, and is explored shortly in this Chapter.
Indeed it is important to note that this kind of ethnographic research relies on the investment of the researcher’s subjectivity building on methodological trends, which for the past twenty years have increasingly emphasised a) the fluidity of the relationships and processes in a particular research site, and b) the multiplicity and diversity of voices within that research site. As has already been alluded to, this position is distinct from Nineteenth Century
Qualitative Research (and in particular Ethnography), which has been
45 increasingly dismissed as reductive and hegemonic. Denzin and Lincoln argue
“the search for grand narratives will be replaced by more local, small-scale theories fitted to specific problems and specific situations” (1994, p.11). A study of specificity provides significant insights that can be recognised by other similar agents of cultural production, however, and thus the application of the research findings may not be solely limited to the organisation being researched. This will be further explored in Chapter 7.
Recent shifts within ethnographic frameworks emphasising the positioning of the researcher’s voice include the work done by Patti Lather. Her determining of “New Ethnography” has resulted in “a redefining of ethnography as a set of highly formal techniques designed to extract cognitive data” (Ellen in Berg,
1998, p.122), and has been applied most rigorously in educative circumstances, and in the field of nursing. New Ethnography places a greater emphasis on the effect of the researcher’s “voice”, in which the impact of the “I” in the final research dissertation can be incorporated; further personal approaches, such as biography or a deep affiliation with the researched subject have also become acceptable in the researcher’s scope. The reasons for this are several, but are most succinctly described by Berg:
Maintaining the façade of neutrality prevents a researcher from ever
examining his or her own cultural assumptions (Rubin and Rubin, 1995) or
personal experiences. Subjective disclosures by researchers allow the
reader to better understand why a research area has been selected,
how it was studied, and by whom (1998, pp.127-28).
In the context of this research process, I was observing a group of festival makers in order to ascertain just how they produced a boutique festival. What steps did they take? What were their processes? What was the end result?
How might I determine the “success” of their work - in terms of programming,
46 ticket sales, reviews, audience numbers? Far from positioning myself as the expert, I felt very much to be in a position of a diminished status, and a dubious one: that of being the observer, “critiquing” the process of these experts, and then collapsing their detailed work into an academic critique. I felt a little as did Patti Lather in her research of women with AIDS: “The weight of the indignity of being studied, the violence of objectification required by the academic pursuit of the possession of another’s life which is turned into information for academic trade” (Lather and Smithies, 1997, p.154).
Granted, my study did not involve the observation of critically ill people, but at times the sense of inappropriateness and insignificance was certainly palpable for me, given that this team of festival producers is expert in the field, having developed sophisticated means of working together over a significant period of time. Yet “[m]uch of what we seek to find out in ethnography is knowledge that others already have. Our ability to learn ethnographically is an extension of what every human being must do, that is, learn the meanings, norms, patterns of a way of life” (Hymes in Glesne, 1999, p.45). Thus, the process became one in which I, the researcher, was learning from the researched, who were extremely open and generous ‘teachers’, but also I contributed to the process during those times when I was actively working in a variety of roles within the festival making processes.
Fortunately, therefore, the initial hurdle of gaining the trust of the group was overcome early on. The process seems to be a juggling act of, as Glesne suggests, “gaining and losing self” (1999, p.64). She believes:
The inescapable truth is that researchers are not merely present as
they would be in other ordinary circumstances of their lives. Given
purposes to pursue, they shape their behaviour to be efficacious in light
of these purposes, managing selves that are instrumental to gaining
47 access and maintaining access throughout the period of study in a way
that optimizes data collection (Glesne, 1999, p.64).
As Tedlock further articulates, “The oxymoron participant observation implies simultaneous emotional involvement and objective detachment” (in Denzin and
Lincoln, 2000, p.465).
Indeed, I found it difficult to maintain a sense of ‘objectivity’ about my subjects for two interconnected reasons: firstly, that I had great respect for the work they were doing, I felt it was empowering and enriching, creating a festival entity that connected in a meaningful way with its target audiences, and secondly, I found that I was becoming friends with several of the people whose work I was researching. I was constantly concerned that these factors were creating a bias in my research, that I was in danger of becoming an advocate of their practice, rather than an ‘objective’ researcher, and that I was romanticising their work. Simon During states that in this kind of
Ethnographic situation:
There is an irreducible rift between the position of being-a-researcher
and that of being-a-fan, though of course a single individual may be
both. There are two ways of dealing with this: one is to accept it and
the ambivalence or contradiction it generates as productive […] the
other is for the researcher simultaneously to ethnographize herself in
relation to her subjects and to allow her subjects as much exposure as
possible to her own, more academic discourses (During, 1999, p.19).
I have aimed to accept this ‘contradiction’ in the belief that it has afforded me a richer insight into the subject. As Glesne posits:
48 Qualitative researchers, recognizing that subjectivity is always part of
research from deciding on the research topic to selecting frames of
interpretation, began to claim the term. They discuss how subjectivity,
once recognized, can be monitored for more trustworthy research and
how subjectivity, in itself, can contribute to research (1999, p.105).
I have attempted to reconcile that my sense of ‘inclusion’ has indeed, provided a far greater insight into the processes of the group; had I remained as a somewhat distant researcher, I believe I would not have been privy to the detailed insights of the group’s workings. The emphasis is on the “frame of interpretation” – not so much about my evaluation of the efficacy of their workings, but more an insight into what is possible to create. As Glesne suggests, “You learn that your subjectivity is the basis for the story that you are able to tell” (1999, p.109).
Yet, this ‘insider’s’ position has of course, raised a further dilemma – how much is it ethical to reveal? There were some significant personal crises within the
Programming Unit that occurred during my period of observation, and they impacted substantially on the processes of the group and of festival production, but to include details of such crises risks public exposure of essentially private issues, even though the issues impacted substantially on the dynamics of the group. I have reconciled this troubled position by advocating that it is enough to mention that there were personal issues that affected the group, without regarding it as necessary to articulate what those issues were.
Thus, I have described the impact of the crises rather than the crises themselves. I do not feel that this omission has detracted from the analysis.
In keeping with the guidelines of ethical research, I have shared my observations and findings with those individuals targeted in the project1, and
1 Refer to Research Ethics Booklet Number 13: Personal Information, Produced by QUT University Human Research Ethics Committee, p.5 in particular.
49 have welcomed their feedback and comments. The aim has been to keep the research process as transparent as possible, so that those individuals being researched have always had immediate access to the work, in order to view the processes employed and the results.
It is also important to highlight that this analysis of the Programming Unit is only a portion of the scope of the research. It is triangulated with historical and critical research, which is designed to produce a balanced and multi-layered approach.
2.7 Qualitative tools
A key tool through which to explore the work of the Programming Unit has been the case study that provides “intensive and systematic investigations of many factors for a small number of individuals, a group, or a community”
(Fawcett and Downs, 1986, p.6). Dane describes this kind of study as an
“intensive study of a single participant over an extended period of time” (Dane,
1990, p.113). Yin highlights disciplines in which the case study is continually employed in particular work settings, such as in policy and public administration research, as well as organisational and management studies (Yin, 1989, p.13).
Thus, there already exists a tradition of employing ethnographically-based methods to explore the kinds of issues dealt with in this study. Most pertinently, Yin suggests that case studies are of significant use when questions exploring how or why are being considered. This kind of approach is referred to as an “explanatory” case study (Yin, 1989, p.13) which can be complemented by two other kinds: the “exploratory” and the “descriptive”. The case study as it functions in this research draws on all three definitions.
Yin notes that criticism levelled at the use of the case study is that it is difficult to generalise from one case to another. His suggestion is that the
50 researcher “should try to generalise findings to ‘theory’, analogous to the way a scientist generalises from experimental results to theory” (Yin, 1989, p.44).
This positioning is in contrast to Lather’s notion that it is not possible to build theory via this kind of case-study approach. The view of the researcher is that this study does aim to build theory within an Ethnographic study; whilst recognising that the specifics of that Ethnographic study are particular to the group of people being observed within a particular organisation, it can be argued that there are key elements within this specificity that could be deployed by other organisations. The six key strategies articulated in Chapter
Four reinforce this. This kind of “ethnographic account” (Berg, 1998, p.145) allows the researcher to gain a detailed insight into a particular group, in a way that other methods of research would not support. A variety of particular tools provided this insight, and the particular strategies employed in order to undertake the case study are discussed below.
Direct observation has formed an extensive portion of the case-study, with a detailed observation for dense periods over the years 1999 – 2001, of the
Programming Unit. The focus rested substantially on the planning for the festivals, and chiefly focused on key staff members, John Kotzas, Producer of the Programming Unit, Susan Richer, Creative Director of Stage X and OUT OF
THE BOX, Deborah Murphy, General Manager, Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX, and Rebecca Lamoin, Project Officer. I also kept a researcher’s journal of my time spent within the Merivale Street offices, which assisted in pinpointing key shifts and emergent themes in the work of the team.
Direct observation has also been employed to research the young artists working with the Unit for the festivals analysed, to track the manner in which the production team interacted with these artists. This process also included a number of meetings and discussions at which key issues were raised. From this observation, which also employed field notes to track the process, a
51 questionnaire for a sample of Freakshow 2 artists in 1999 was created in order to provide young artists with the opportunity to freely comment upon the processes employed by the Programming Unit.
Participant observation of many meetings with key staff was a key strategy, as meetings were a common occurrence, allowing the team to discuss and work through key ideas and general issues addressed in the office environment.
I also explored the Unit from the perspective of participant observer, as over the course of this research I have been actively employed by the Unit in a variety of roles within the festivals’ production. For a period of six weeks from
March 27 to May 19 2000 I was employed as a Project Officer for OUT OF
THE BOX 2000, which provided an ‘inside’ perspective to the logistics and politics of producing a festival. There were additional professional involvements, including writing the Programme Notes for Stage X in 2001, working as a workshop facilitator for Stage X, from 17 March to 11 April, 2003, and as a Research Assistant for OUT OF THE BOX from 27 August through to
28 November in 2003.
Field notes were kept during my time within the Programming Unit’s office environment, so that I could trace patterns and aberrations within the group’s practice.
Interviewing of key Unit staff has involved in depth interviewing of chief figures, most significantly Susan Richer and John Kotzas, both of an open- ended and focused nature. This has been a constant process, which gave them
2 Freakshow was part of Five to Midnight, the key-curated event for Stage X 1999 and 2001. Freakshow was a performance arena in which young local artists presented works that in some ironic and humorous way parodied the idea of a carnival or sideshow alley. It is explored in detail in Chapter Four.
52 the opportunity to wrestle with ideas and issues pertaining to specific festival concerns. To supplement these extensive interviews, I also engaged in more informal unstructured interviewing with a variety of staff members, but most consistently with Susan Richer, and for Stage X 2001, with Rebecca Lamoin.
Interviewing was also a key tool with which to gauge the perspective of artists working on festivals examined, employing techniques including in depth interviews and written interviews. This allowed an insight into what the artists perceived the Programming Unit was attempting, and their perceptions regarding the efficacy of this. The artists formed a key link in the research, as their views on the aims and practices of the Programming Unit added further detail regarding how the work is situated in the community, and if the aims and philosophies of the festivals connect effectively with young local artists.
The research also incorporated what Berg refers to as “unobtrusive measures”
(1998, p.178). When researching the organisation itself, an extensive number of documents and archival records from QPAC have been considered which covered a variety of areas including materials pertaining to specific festivals, and general operational papers. Administrative documents such as proposals, progress reports and annual reports have been analysed, as have agendas for meetings, minutes of meetings, and other written reports. Most significantly for this research, scoping and planning papers for each festival have been addressed in significant detail, and have provided great insight into the mapping out of each event. Additionally, press clippings and reviews have been drawn upon, to gain a “public” and critical perspective on the work. I was extremely fortunate in that privileged access to the material was granted, with permission from John Kotzas. Further privileged material from QPAC’s
Moncrieff Library was made available.
53 For Chapter Three, the history of Warana, a detailed archival analysis was undertaken, to locate primary material that highlighted the shifting nature of the festival over its 40-year history. The process reviewed reports and correspondence, as well as government documentation of this event, and again I explored the attitudes of the media over this period.
For Chapter 6, which focuses on the Adelaide Festival in 2002, an extensive analysis of the media coverage of the event was engaged in, which highlighted the extremely public nature of the debate regarding Peter Sellars’ reworking of this national iconic festival. This was supplemented with attendance at and my analysis of key events3, as well as interviews with stakeholders both within the Adelaide Festival administration and programming arenas, and within the
Adelaide arts community. These interviews assisted in providing balance to the reading of the event.
Two extensive Audience Reception studies were undertaken, which are elaborated on later in this chapter in 2.11.
2.8 Quantitative tools
The set of methods employed in Reception Studies (discussed in 2.11), involved quantitative tools of measuring, specifically regarding demographics, ages, domiciles, careers, and so on, and their attitudes towards the key curated event Five to Midnight, during 1999 and 2001. The results of this research have been simply tabled, so as to provide ‘evidence’ regarding the desired outcomes of the philosophical aims of the Programming Unit in its festival
3 The key pieces explored were Shishka-car, a large community piece staged at a raceway, and The Longest Night, a community-arts piece performed by professional actors, performed at a marginalised community. These are explored in detail in Chapter Six.
54 production. Further quantitative ‘evidence’ such as ticket sales, and revenue for the festivals analysed here is employed for similar purposes.
2.9 Triangulation
As in most forms of qualitative research, the Ethnographic portion of the study has drawn on the chief research tools for the genre: participant observation, interviewing, and document collection (Glesne, 1999, p.31). The study employs triangulation, which is “a means of refining, broadening, and strengthening conceptual linkages” (Berg, 1998, p.6), and it employs “different methods of data collection ([such as] surveys, interviews, discussions) [which] are used in order to confirm results” (Thwaites, Davis and Mules, 1994, p.207).
Furthermore, triangulation “allows researchers to offer perspectives other than their own” (Berg, 1998, p.6).
This is not to suggest that triangulation is without issue. As Schroeder suggests, “the fundamental problem with triangulation is that we lack a theoretical framework for specifying the precise manner in which the different methods actually observe, or ‘measure’, the ‘same object” (1999, p.50). Suffice to say, it is merely one aspect of the methodological approach applied within this study. The historiographical and theory building elements of the research, which draw on Creative Industries and Cultural Studies discourse, assist in widening and contextualising the Ethnographic dimensions of the study.
2.10 Cultural studies
Cultural Studies has provided a key perspective for this study, and it is useful to contextualise the field here. Fred Inglis suggests that Cultural Studies is
“the study of human values, their changefulness and their recognizable communality. Such a study is always historical even when it is contemporary”
55 (Inglis, 1993, p.28). This notion has particular potency for this study, as it makes connections between historiography and the study of contemporary practice.
John Fiske advocates that “…cultural studies does not recognise the audience passified and massified, one whose identities and differences have been homogenised through either commodification or ideology: Audiencing is a variety of practices, an activity, not a social category or a site or a victory”
(Fiske in Denzin and Lincoln, 1994, p.198). This notion of audiencing has explicit ramifications for this study, in which the definition of the boutique festival places significant emphasis on the festival’s attempt at dialogue with its target audience, on the audience’s terms and according to its values, in all its diversity.
Fiske’s employment of the term ‘audiencing’ refers generally to the variety of ways in which people partake in and consume cultural product, rather than specifically denoting theatre or film spectators. But this act of audiencing, in both Fiske’s wider sense, and in the particular position of being an audience member at the festivals discussed here, is crucial to this study, as the boutique festival functions simultaneously as a vessel and conduit for contemporary cultural practice, and as a means for specific audiences to be involved in a dialogue with particular festival product.
Simon During maintains that at its simplest, Cultural Studies is the study of contemporary culture, and it may be analysed in a number of ways, sociologically or economically, for example; it can be studied ‘critically’ by celebrating large forms, such as television, film, popular fiction, and so on, and as is also undertaken in part in this study, addressing the role of the festival as a significant cultural tool.
Since the 1970s cultural studies has taken on the mantle of critiquing the hegemonic operation of culture, and did so in a variety of ways, employing most
56 notably semiotic analysis, structuralism and psychoanalysis, to explore how individuals were caught up in a system in which they were willing captives to a dominant ideology, constructed through an image of life in which the individual is represented as natural and free.
The focus then shifted to more complex understandings of culture’s operation.
As concepts such as hybridisation, re-production and re-negotiation were brought to bear, it was better understood how individuals and individual communities can actively create new meanings from culturally imported products. The powerful role of the audience as consumer in shaping cultural flows is the key point here, and this is the key to this study. Furthermore, it can be seen how the creative industries discourse has strong resonance here, as is explored in Chapter Seven.
From this researcher’s perspective, cultural studies proffers the adoption of a critical reading of the festival with an emphasis on the tension between popular and propagandist cultural aspirations, and the addressing of creative industries discourse. It can be seen that creative industries discourse has been born out of issues and positions raised within cultural studies which are especially pertinent in this study, such as the polarisation of high culture versus popular culture, and the emphasis on marginalised groups, which for this study is young people.
2.11 Reception studies
In order to analyse the efficacy of the ideas and assumptions embedded in the festival production processes of the Programming Unit, a monitoring of the specific views of festival audiences has been necessary. Two major evaluations were carried out for the Stage X festivals of 1999 and 2001, in the form of
Reception Studies; Rothenburg illuminates this as follows:
57
Along with the artist, the audience enters the performance arena as
participant – or, ideally, the audience disappears as the distinction
between doer and viewer […] begins to blur. For this the tribal/oral is a
particularly clear model, often referred to by the creators of 1960’s
[sic] happenings and the theatrical pieces that invited, even coerced,
audience participation toward an ultimate democratizing of the arts (in
Bennett, 1997(a), p.9).
The concept of audience as participant is hardly a new notion in the performing arts; Susan Bennett argues that it was a key feature of Classical Greek theatre
(1997, p.3), and the varieties of forms of audience engagement with live events and of the forms of complicity between the performers and audiences are well chronicled in theatre history. Bennett also highlights the notion of “reception as a politically implicated act. Indeed, the relationship between production and reception, positioned within and against cultural values, remains largely uninvestigated” (Bennett, 1997, p.86). However, it can be seen that since
Bennett’s comments, much research has been undertaken to further an academic understanding of receptions by audiences, from a diversity of perspectives4.
Reception studies aim to “investigate the ways in which spectators experience performances. This task will only be achieved when the researcher has a definite picture of the spectator’s object, i.e. the theatrical performance itself” (Martin and Sauter, 1995, p.27). Martin and Sauter clarify the difference between this kind of analysis and audience research, which focuses on attendance and statistics, demographics and consumption patterns, and is
4 Refer to the work of Sauter and Martin, Van Maanen, Eversmann, Schoenmakers, and most recently, regarding local audiences, Scollen.
58 largely employed by agencies that fund theatre, to create new policy, or to justify or rework funding structures. Reception Studies alternatively focus on how audiences perceive what they experience. Martin and Sauter divide the focus into two areas: the macro-aspects, which deal with the sociological aspects of what is experienced, and the micro-aspects, which focus on the psychological aspects (Martin and Sauter, 1995, p.29).
Furthermore, they highlight at least four different kinds of experiences by audiences:
…what in a performance is considered as being important, i.e. what
theatrical elements such as acting, set, plot conflicts etc., does the
spectator describe and concentrate upon; in which ways are these
elements, as well as the whole of the performance, interpreted by
different groups of spectators; what kind of emotional responses does a
performance evoke with the spectators; and last but not least how do
the spectators estimate what they see? (Martin and Sauter, 1995,
p.30).
Thus, the focus is multi-layered, and aims to provide detailed and qualitative
analysis.
Thwaites, Davis and Mules stress that ethnography, especially in terms of
researching how people respond to particular kinds of experiences, such as the
watching of television, can be highly problematic, raising questions such as who
speaks for whom? They offer the tool of ethnomethodology, in which “the
focus is on explanations constructed by the participants themselves”
(Thwaites, Davis and Mules, 1994, p.206). This will be addressed in more detail as part of the audience reception studies aspect of methodology.
59 Bennett maintains, “it is the reciprocal nature of production and reception which characterizes the formation and reformation of cultural markers for theatre” (Bennett in Tulloch, 2005, p.6). It is this sense of reciprocation that is of key interest in the research’s deployment of reception studies in the study of festivals particularly in this project. Reception studies were undertaken during the Five to Midnight event of both the 1999 and 2001 Stage
X festivals; how connected did audiences feel to what they experienced? Could they engage physically, emotionally and aesthetically?
Reception studies, as a process of investigating “the ways in which spectators experience performances” (Martin and Sauter, 1995, p.27), often apply a conventional questionnaire tool to carry out such a study. However, the specific nature of Five to Midnight posed considerable problems regarding the employment of this tool: the event occurs over a seven hour period, and audiences wander around a sizeable open air area, which is worthy of description here, as it was such a ‘feature’` of the Five to Midnight event: the area is a large, essentially open space, between the QPAC building itself, a huge concrete and glass performing arts centre (such as are now common in major cities globally) and the Brisbane River. The long ‘boulevard’ area, with foliage and a blend of grass and paving, becomes quite magical at night, as, across the river, the lights of the city heart create a visual spectacle. The area is also a thoroughfare, providing access from the Queensland Museum and Queensland
Art Gallery, to the South Bank Parklands, so there are always a number of people ‘promenading’ through the space. Thus, the logistics of handing out and receiving completed surveys was impossible to service. Furthermore, as the main body of the audience was to be young people, between the ages of 13 and
25 years, a more flexible and age-appropriate process was required. Video interviewing was used, as it is portable, mobile, and allows people to have short interviews, encouraging them to think while they are in the midst of the event.
The way in which this was implemented was that second and third year theatre
60 studies students from the Queensland University of Technology worked in pairs; one filming, one interviewing, to record the impressions of a cross- section of audience members. A semi-structured interview approach was employed as is common in much ethnographic data collection. 394 audience
members were interviewed over the two events, and provided a “vox pops”
reading of the event, which was highly appropriate for that event. Analysis of
this data is presented in Chapter 4 (see 4.10c).
Thus, the usual method of Reception Studies was adapted in a particular
direction. I wanted to establish the age of audience members – just how wide a
net did such an event cast in terms of appealing to the tastes of a variety of
age groups? Where did they come from? Even though the event is inherently
an urban, Brisbane city-centred event, how wide was the audience geographical
net? How did people find out about the event? What did they think of the
price of tickets? And, most importantly, how did they respond to what they
experienced, particularly regarding Freakshow in 1999, and Shopping Mall in
2001? The responses and demographics of those interviewed were a rich source of information for this research.
2.12 “Theatre talks”
To explore the method of Audience Reception in even greater detail, Sauter’s concept of “Theatre Talks” was applied, whereby a “group of about seven participants, who knew each other previously, gather immediately after a performance and talk freely about what they have seen and experienced, thus describing, interpreting and evaluating the performance, unhampered by direct or indirect questions” (Sauter, 1988, p.20). Adapting this method, I assembled the group of students who had undertaken the interviewing at Five to Midnight in 1999, and invited them to freely discuss the event. I recorded their views on video, but because of the late finishing time of the event, midnight, the
61 group met on the Monday after the event, and then again the following Monday, when the process was repeated.
There was no intervention in the interviewing on my behalf, and I felt that by employing Theatre Studies students, with some degree of expertise in performance analysis, the interview data would ultimately result in a wide range of audience perceptions, from the general audiences of the “vox pops” to the more detailed analyses of the “theatre talks” participants. The result of this process was the gaining of a detailed and sophisticated insight into the events, both experientially and theoretically, as the Theatre Studies students discussed how they personally engaged with the event, and then applied a theoretical reading of them. The results of this research have assisted in shaping subsequent festival events. Bennett employs the concept of the
“emancipation of the spectator” (1997a, p.213), which provides an interesting slant on the practice of Reception Studies, especially as it pertains to this study where the audience was invited to “talk back” at the event itself. The opportunity afforded to audience members to articulate their views, furthers the sense of dialogue between production team and audiences, a key goal of festival production for the Programming Unit.
2.13 The theatrical event
The relatively new research methods emerging in studies of the Theatrical
Event have also assisted in the methodological framing of the study. The emphasis here is on observing “the nature of communication, what is going on between stage and auditorium, and the circumstances in which this communication is taking place” (Sauter, 2000, p.2). Furthermore, as Tulloch advocates, “the concepts of ‘liveness’ in a ‘mediatized’ society (Auslander 2000) and of audiences themselves performing, as an aspect of the ‘theatricalization of everyday life’ (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998), are current and ongoing
62 themes in both theatre and cultural studies” (2005, p.7). This theatricalization, along with Featherstone’s “aestheticization of everyday life”, discussed in Chapter 1, has potent ramifications for the boutique festival and its relation to contemporary urban life, as Chapter 5 attests.
Another theoretical facet of the theatrical event that influenced the analytical framework of the study is highlighted by Peter Eversmann who in
The Theatrical Event outlines a number of points of audience interaction with
the particulars of performance, one of which is paramount to this study.
Eversmann discusses “the collectivity of production and reception: where
communication between audience members, and between audiences and artists
is especially important” (in Tulloch, 2005, p.9). The processes employed by the
Programming Unit aim specifically to further communication between these
stakeholders, so that the festivals themselves are a melange of dialogue,
production and consumption. This issue is also explored in detail in Chapter
Five (see 5.5).
Furthermore, it can be seen that this kind of dialogue creates a different kind
of audience experience which “rejects the traditional sender/message/receiver
model as well, arguing for a mutual, ostended relationship of play between actor
and spectator” (Sauter in Tulloch, 2005, p.7), a key notion explored in Richard
Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class (2003), ideas of which are explored in detail in Chapter Seven.
Sauter focuses substantially on the notion of play in the performative context, and argues that the “intersection between the performer’s actions and the spectator’s reactions – which I see as the core of theatricality – is characterized by three interactive levels, called the sensory, artistic and symbolic levels of theatrical communication” (in Tulloch, 2005, p.13). Sauter’s
63 notion of play is particularly useful for this study in the analysis of Freakshow and Shopping Mall, as analysed in Chapter Four (see 4.9a and 4.9b).
Tulloch concludes by suggesting that “liveness in theatrical events is one place and occasion where people still find active pleasure and performativity in direct spheres of intimate contact. Others may find this in sport, or festivals, carnivals or in a variety of other ‘liveness’ events and inflections…” (2005, p.313). This notion of being amidst the activity is a key aspect of Creative
Industries discourse, and is a particular feature of Florida’s work. Chapter 7 connects this sense of immersion to issues of community, space and identity.
2.14 Conclusion
This research process focuses on gaining an insight into the festival as an historical and contemporary cultural commodity and process, and to explore a particular kind of festival, the boutique model, via the production of boutique festivals by a professional team within a mainstream arts organisation. The use of qualitative techniques to gain such insight has allowed me to examine, just as qualitative research does in essence itself, “how people learn about and make sense of themselves and others.” (Berg, 1998, p.7)
The broad range of tools employed in this study has afforded a panopticon of views regarding the festival, as it functions historically and contemporarily, practically and theoretically. The range of tools supports the three broad levels of the research, which consist of:
1. An exploration of current readings of the festival and how this can
be contextualised within its historical function;
64 2. An Ethnographic study of the manner in which festivals are produced
by QPAC’s Programming Unit;
3. A rationale of the boutique festival as an effective contemporary
cultural tool that can be significantly located within Creative
Industries discourse, and a speculation regarding the role of this
kind of festival in contemporary urban life.
As indicated above, the scope of this research regarding contemporary festival practice at QPAC and the defining of the boutique model necessitates a detailed cultural background of the city that has produced these festivals.
Chapter Three will analyse the development of the Warana Festival, developing from a family-oriented, essentially ‘amateur’ event in the early 60s, to its current rendering as the Brisbane Festival, a sophisticated arts event.
65 CHAPTER THREE - HISTORY OF THE FESTIVAL IN BRISBANE
3.1 Introduction
An overview of the maturation and corporatisation of mainstream arts practice, and alternatively the development of a thriving non-mainstream arts culture within Brisbane, reveals that the festival has played a key role in this topography. This history serves to illustrate the manner in which the arts are employed as effective tools in assisting in and repositioning a city’s cultural identity, in the case of Brisbane, from a parochial, small-scale environment in the 50s and 60s, to a confident city of national significance at the time of writing.
The exploration of Warana1, the city’s most significant festival, and its metamorphosis into the Brisbane Festival are crucial to this development. The chief point of consideration is the shift from community-based format to arts festival, similar to the model that had become dominant in other Australian capital cities, most notably Adelaide (explored in Chapter 6), and key reference will be made regarding the role of the audience.
It will also be shown (in Chapter Four) that via the festivals OUT OF THE BOX and Stage X, the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) 2 has assisted in
1 This chapter builds on a detailed study undertaken by researcher Judy Pippen in 1997. I am indebted to Judy for her work, and much of the information in this chapter is drawn from her research.
2 Originally this organisation was known as “QPAT”, the Queensland Performing Arts Trust, and QPAC referred only to the specific group of buildings that constituted the organisation. However, in more recent times, most significantly when the organisation was restructured and CEO Craig McGovern was appointed in 2002, the nomenclature “QPAC” has been employed to refer to the organisation as a whole. This has essentially worked as a “trading name”, to create a more welcoming identity for the organisation. For consistency when referring to the organisation in this thesis, “QPAC” will be employed.
66 the development of the city’s identity in terms of non-mainstream arts practice as well. QPAC has played a dominant role in the recent development of the arts in Brisbane, and arguably most significantly via the festival: the exploration of the festival over a period of time crystallises the growth in Brisbane’s acknowledgment, celebration and exploration of its identity. This connection between festival and city is a deeply embedded one, as is explored in detail in
Chapter Seven.
Furthermore, an analysis of the festivals provides a context for the environment in which Stage X in 1999 and 2001, the key case-studies of this research were created, along with an analysis of the manner in which QPAC impacted on festival-making in the city of Brisbane.
3.2 The festival and the community
In his discussion of early carnivals Peter Burke raises a key issue that impacts upon modern community festival celebrations in that they “may be seen as a huge play in which the main streets and squares become stages, the city becomes a theatre without walls and the inhabitants, the actors and spectators, observing the scene from their balconies” (Burke, 1994, p.82).
Indeed, a sense of communal celebration has been one of the fundamental attributes of a festival throughout history, as Appendix A elucidates.
Such community celebration can be seen to have framed Warana’s inception and application both as a key form of entertainment, and articulation of a civic identity for the people of Brisbane. The festival’s shift into the Brisbane
Festival in the 1995-96 period consolidated a significant cultural repositioning
in the manner in which Brisbane viewed itself, which had been gathering
momentum since the World Expo in 1988, (to be discussed in 3.9) as the
emphasis shifted to the provision of a high arts cultural event in which that
67 immediate sense of community is less obvious, but no less significant. The reincarnation brought the festival under the auspices of QPAC, with the local programming content produced by the Programming Unit headed by John
Kotzas, and a study of this area foregrounds the tension inherent in attempting to maintain strong connections to the community.
As the analysis of the 2002 Adelaide Festival attests in Chapter 6, this balance is a key ingredient in determining the success or failure of a festival’s reception. It would seem that in all major arts festivals, the local arts community must on some level feel a sense of attachment to, if not ownership of the event, lest the festival runs the risk of functioning as merely a dazzling piece of programming, rather than a festival. This is equally true for audiences. This sense of both the artistic and general community’s connection to a festival is crucial to a festival’s inception and longevity, as John Kotzas has suggested:
When artists don’t have that dialogue [with audiences], that’s when
festivals fail […] the essence of any festival is the dialogue between
artists and audiences, and that’s really what it’s about (John Kotzas,
Brisbane Festival and QTIA Debrief, 7 October, 1996).
It is a contestation of this thesis that a further fundamental issue is that both artists and most significantly, audiences, require some sense of dialogue with festival producers, in order that they are positioned at some significant level as stakeholders in the event. The most successful festivals can be seen to achieve this triangulated dialogue, and this thesis explores a variety of models in which such interaction may be achieved.
For a community-driven festival, the sense of ‘dialogue’ is perhaps far more immediate, in the notion of providing family-oriented, ‘hands-on’ events, aimed
68 at creating enjoyment and a sense of goodwill amongst participants.
Undoubtedly when Warana was first created, there was a paucity of such
events in Brisbane, so that the festival’s success was virtually guaranteed, as it
provided a kind of community involvement on a scale uncommon at the time. But
the sense that by the late 80s Warana had seemingly lost its raison d’etre is a
significant indication that the conversation with the people of Brisbane had
faltered.
The arts festival rendering, however, is more complicated in terms of identity,
as its very nature is not to provide community-oriented events, but more to
instil a sense of exaltation to a city. Perhaps dialogue in this model occurs by
“broadening a city’s perception of itself by advancing both arts and audience”
(The Age, 5 November 1996, p.14). The manner in which this broadening occurs, or indeed if it does occur, will be explored via Warana, initially in its guise as a community-based festival, and then as an arts festival. It will be considered how a major arts festival such as the Brisbane Festival can retain a sense of community. This issue of a festival’s relationship with its host city is further consolidated in Chapter Seven.
3.3 History of Warana 3
An analysis of the development of Warana, initially a ten-day event held in
Brisbane annually in Spring, is crucial in discussing the cultural shifts in the city itself. Brisbane in the late 50s was essentially a comfortable and secure city, with a small but active arts population that had few outlets, physically or culturally, for their work. Australia (and Brisbane particularly) was largely
3 This historical rendering is heavily informed by a paper written by Judy Pippen, and a partial chapter by Professor Rod Wissler, “The Festival is a Theatrical Event”, in “Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames” (2004, details listed in the bibliography). A document written by M. Boyen in 1982 entitled “Warana Festival, the first twenty-one years” (never published), provided further material.
69 conservative, colonial and loyal to the tastes and traditions of British culture, despite a significant post-war migration from Europe, which was slowly impacting on the Anglo-centric agendas of the time. Throughout the 60s in
Queensland, a State Symphony Orchestra, a State Art Gallery and a State
Theatre Company were created, which were working to contribute to the cultural life of the city, but based very much on British notions of cultivated society. It was common practice for local artists to feel that real recognition needed to be derived from Sydney or Melbourne, (and beyond there, London) which were seen as more progressive and cosmopolitan, with greater outlets and opportunities for support.
The early manifestations of Warana reflected a localised environment, as there was little emphasis placed on developing a culturally dynamic event, the focus instead residing within family entertainment of a largely parochial flavour.
However, over time, the direction of the festival shifted, and Warana and the subsequent Brisbane Festival came to function as significant cultural tools, which assisted in eroding that sense of inferiority, and artists came to be supported in the provision of an outlet for their work, often via the festival.
Furthermore, the festival assisted in developing an audience base for local artists and companies, by featuring them in festival programming and thus exposing them to new audiences. The degree of support offered, however, remains a contentious issue.
3.4 Beginnings
The concept for the local Warana Festival first emanated from the Centenary
Celebrations of Brisbane in 1959. The inclusion of a street parade, an event that was to become a tradition and hallmark of Warana, strongly situated the celebrations within traditional festival practices of civic celebration and
70 consolidation of identity, and this celebratory convention was to remain a dominant feature of the festival for many years.
The realisation of the initial festival consolidated a political desire to promote
Brisbane as the capital city of Queensland, the “Sunshine State”, initially to itself, and subsequently to other states. Warana, Brisbane’s first large-scale festival, was advocated in 1961, and was to be modelled on Melbourne’s Moomba event, a large-scale community-based festival4. The idea for a festival in
Brisbane was announced by the Tourist Bureau secretary Frank Ball and
Minister for Labour Industry and Tourism, Ken Morris, at a public meeting consisting of the city’s prominent business members. The then Lord Mayor,
Clem Jones, moved a motion to “initiate a festival in the city of Brisbane”
(Boyan, 1982, p.7), which was to occur in September 1962. Thus, it was an event essentially created out of a political agenda, rather than having been organically born within the community. Undoubtedly, however, a great proportion of Brisbane residents were supportive of the idea, evident in the number of entries for the competition regarding the naming of the festival.
And by allowing the people of Brisbane to name the festival, it could be suggested that the festival administrators strongly desired the timbre of the festival be focussed specifically on the citizens. 15,000 entries were received, and the name “Warana”, thought to be an Indigenous term for blue skies, was agreed upon.
The brief for the festival was to blend cultural and sporting interests, so as to provide opportunities for people living in Brisbane to come together, as well as
4 Moomba has a similar early history to Warana. It began in 1955, influenced by a Royal Visit the previous year, and its name is also derived from Aboriginal culture. One of its most endearing features was the crowning of a Moomba King, which contextualises it in historical renderings of carnival practice. It likewise came to shift in tone, with a Fringe Festival established in 1982. In 1986, the first Melbourne International Arts Festival was held, called “Spoleto”. In 2003, Moomba was renamed Moomba Waterfest, and is now held annually in March, which a strong emphasis on sport and family involvement.
71 attracting tourists to the state. Yet the early programming seems almost wholly focused on celebrating Brisbane’s identity (as will be demonstrated shortly), rather than providing events that would be likely to attract tourists.
The emphasis was on family entertainment and the city’s local identity, rather than a privileging of arts practice. The initial theme was entertainment for the people by the people, and therefore from the festival’s outset the tone was substantially different from the “excellence” driven agenda of arts festivals already in operation in Perth, which began in 1953, and had been directly informed by the Edinburgh model, and Adelaide, which had commenced in 1960.
Whilst the Queensland State Government provided a small amount of seed funding of 1000 pounds, the initial committee led by Chair, Alan Campbell, was totally voluntary. This model later expanded to include a paid secretary, and a board supported by eighteen committees that was responsible for raising its own funds. Thus, at this point this was a non-profit, community-driven event, with little corporate profile or function.
The range of activities offered as part of Warana provides a significant insight into the philosophy of the festival at this time. As the focus was on the celebration of the community of Brisbane, the manner of consolidating this sense of community was to draw on events that were not dissimilar to those of an English county fair: predominantly locally-provided entertainment, competitions and sporting events. Whilst it could be argued that the following list of events indicated a sense of the uniqueness of the community celebrating itself, there was no sense of an exploration of that uniqueness. Events over the years included: fishing competitions (1962), a hat parade (1962), demonstrations by taipan expert Ram Chandra (1963), a car navigation run
(1963), the Miss Warana Quest (commenced 1964), the Warana drama festival
(1964), a children’s art exhibition (1964), lunch hour gymnastics (1965),
Nationalisation ceremony (1966), Warana Brookfield Rodeo (1966), fence
72 painting competition (1967), Snoopy’s Dance, a musical production for young people (1967), a competition for best florally treated areas of business and hotel premises and shop windows (1967), the inaugural Warana Air Race (1967), an obedience demonstration, German Shepherd Dog Club (1968), short story competition (1968), an All Nations pageant (1969), a Grand Organ concert
(1969), a Lovely Legs Competition (1969), a Wine Waiters Race (1969), a Miss
Mini contest (1970), and a Beer festival (1970). Thus the program alludes to the privileging of local colour and enjoyment, invoking on one level the small regional festivals in European countries such as Italy, which “punctuate the civic calendar in ways that are relevant to each place” (Landry and Bianchini,
1995, p.40). It is interesting that there was such emphasis placed on local colour, and in this sense further developed a tradition established by the
Queensland Exhibition (or the ‘Ekka’ as it is popularly referred to), which commenced in 1876 with the original charter stating:
…intended to promote not just local industries, but to showcase the
agricultural, pastoral and industrial resources of the whole of
Queensland. Just as important are the social aspects of the Show
where the city and country come together”
(www.epa.qld.gov.au/cultural_heritage/places_and_meanings/ekka/history).
Yet, within this environment, the seed for more arts-oriented content was also being fertilised in Warana, as demonstrated through events such as the Drama
Festival and the Grand Organ concert referred to above. From Warana’s earliest renderings there were often some examples of arts events, usually high-ended, such as symphony concerts, retrospectives at the Queensland Art
Gallery, and a writers’ convention. It was perhaps this small portion of programming that attracted a tourist audience. It was also this essence that was later to substantially drive the festival’s programming agenda when the aim
73 became to draw in audiences from areas other than Brisbane, and thereby to position the city as culturally rich.
The administration of early festival models comprised committees that ran various sectors of the event, by submitting a proposed operations chart to the
Minister of Tourism. This was a model that operated throughout a succession of three Chairmen: ‘Big Bill’ Edwards, 1961-62, Alan Campbell, from 1963-79, and Lester Padman (from 1979), and:
…all agree that the system of committee management has been a great
success. It has brought together many of the top businessmen and
administrators in the community and they have pooled their time, effort
and ideas in a realistic spirit of co-operation (Boyan, 1982, p.8).
Thus, the management structure of the event, even at such an early point, relied heavily on the assistance of the corporate sector, and this was to further consolidate, amidst the increasing corporatisation of arts funding, and increasingly aggressive competition for the arts dollar over the subsequent two decades.
Also, within Warana’s earliest incarnations, there was increasing interest in making the event larger in scale and impact: in 1966 Chairman Alan Campbell appealed for an increase in funds so as to shift Warana into a major South
Pacific festival; “Most of the things we have got have been given free, and we are thankful; but the Adelaide Festival of Arts is allotted $300,000 and
Queensland is lucky to get $30,000” (in Boyan, 1982, p.18). This aspiration to create the expectation that Warana and the Adelaide Festival were attempting the same kind of model was disproportionate, however. The southern festival had been positioned as a national arts-driven event from early on, especially under the artistic direction of Anthony Steel (see Chapter 6 for a detailed
74 history of the Adelaide Festival); this was not Warana’s brief at this point in its history. The Adelaide Festival targeted national audiences, whereas
Warana aimed at the local community, and it would hardly seem reasonable that a comparable amount of funding be appropriate, especially when the 1967
Warana festival positioned itself as the “fun in the sun” festival (Courier Mail,
30 September, 1967, p.1), hardly the catch-cry of a sophisticated arts event,
but rather as a family oriented festival. This disparity between Campbell’s aims
for the festival and its actual realisation signals a sense of confusion over the
festival’s identity that was to have a long trajectory, as will be revealed in this
chapter.
3.5 The parade
The signature event for Warana was the Pageants Parade, drawing directly on practices employed in the medieval rendering of the festival. This aspect of the festivities was greatly loved and participated in by a wide cross-section of the community. It is worth noting that John Kotzas aimed to resurrect the parade for the inaugural Brisbane Festival in 1996, perhaps because it connected so strongly to Warana’s history and to the people of Brisbane.
For the initial parade, fourteen sub-committees were established to facilitate the parade event, covering the areas of: tourism, primary industry, commerce, secondary industry, heavy industry, bands, marching, entertainment, carnival, television and radio, horses, cars, design and fabrication, and organisation.
Floats designed and operated by local identities were paraded through the city’s main streets, attracting large crowds. In 1968 for example the event was
“watched by 100,000” (“Away to a gay Warana start”, Courier Mail, 30
September, 1968, p.3). Such an event draws on the festival’s early Christian renderings, (as is examined in Appendix A) in which local communities, largely via guilds, built stages and wagons within the village or town centre to both
75 celebrate and consolidate a sense of identity. This is an issue that is analysed from a contemporary perspective in detail in Chapter Seven.
3.6 Becoming increasingly corporate
By the mid-70s Warana had become Australia’s largest outdoor festival, attracting audiences of around 800,000. Thus, the event had become highly significant in the cultural life of Brisbane. The increase in scale required a greater corporate structure, as the operational budget anticipated to produce the festival continued to expand. Norman Llewellyn was employed in 1975 to navigate a sharply orchestrated business strategy for Warana, as relations with local and State Government became more formalised, and lobbying for corporate sponsorship began in earnest. From this point, a Managing Director worked with each board (still unpaid but with government approval) and the original committee structure: each committee now had an amount of seed funding along with an accountant, solicitor, manager and paid staff. (Pippen, interview with Norm Llewellyn, 17 August 1997). Thus, “as the Warana infrastructure grew there emerged a new participant in the field of cultural development in Queensland which would provide added impetus in the development of festival culture in the state” (Pippen, 1997, p.1).
Over the course of the next 15 years, the corporate dollar became a necessary part of funding the festival, and with this change a shift in the culture of the event was inevitable. Brisbane as a city was developing, becoming more cosmopolitan and diverse in its tastes and arts practices. By the early 80s,
Warana came to be funded from a number of sectors, most notably the State
Government, the Brisbane City Council, local and national corporations and the
Australia Council.
76 Furthermore, culturally by this time the event was aiming to reflect the city’s diversification and maturation, with greater emphasis being placed on artistic content, and an internationalisation of tone, focussing increasingly on neighbouring Asia-Pacific cultures. Warana came to function as a combination of the arts festival models exemplified in Adelaide and Perth, and the Moomba
Mardi Gras. Warana’s theme as being “entertainment for the people by the people” (Boyan, 1982, p.9), was being re-negotiated but in so doing, the identity of the event was becoming increasingly blurred.
3.7 Identity crisis
If Warana was shaping into a major source of cultural development for the city of Brisbane, it was also becoming a highly problematic entity, in terms of its identity and function. As Charles Landry and Franco Bianchini suggest in their discussion of the notion of a creative city, currently in urban environments “the diminishing sense of locality, of shared place and identity […] has made cities less clearly defined as places. Communities are now increasingly defined on the basis of common interests rather than in geographical terms” (1995, p. 15).
Indeed, it is appropriate that as the city of Brisbane has matured into an increasingly cosmopolitan and openly multi-faceted environment, the family/community-oriented nature of Warana could no longer sustain the multiplicity of factors required for a major city festival, nor was the original framework of essentially volunteer-driven administration appropriate. The localised content was being redistributed by smaller festival events, as
Brisbane communities linked via ethnicity, interest or specific geographical location, had essentially taken on the mantle of the community festival model in
Brisbane.
77 Thus, Warana had shifted from its early function as essentially a celebration of the local, but was still a far cry from the by now sophisticated cutting-edge model embodied by Adelaide.
These were issues that the festival itself had begun to examine: minutes of a meeting held in June 1994 of the Performing Arts Advisory Panel to the
Warana Festival, raised key questions regarding Warana’s role in terms of the other festivals in the city, and in terms of artistic and community contexts.
The key aim was an attempt to find an identity for the festival, and to consolidate a raison d’etre for its continuance. Questions were raised about the very nature of the event, whether it should simply be a “license to rage” as the minutes record, (meaning to have fun, not anger!) or whether it was possible to be a cutting-edge model, yet still attract sponsors. The influence of the Adelaide Festival is evident here, as by this point, the southern festival consolidated its identity via cutting-edge programming.
It was suggested that Warana’s main positioning was now reliant on providing audiences a first-hand experience of the diversity of cultural components of countries, as well as a range of different styles and art forms which were significantly ‘Australian’. Any other by-products that developed as a result of this – tourism, trade, manufacturing – were to be viewed as complementary, and not the raison d’etre for the festival.
Perhaps the most fundamental question posed was whether Warana could function as both a community and an arts festival. To shift the tone of the event substantially risked losing its large audiences (and sponsorships). A possible model was proffered in which there could be two or three non- mainstream events at each festival, which involved the arts and community groups from inception, and which would help revive the trust, participation, ownership and celebratory feeling which seems to have been missing. However,
78 whilst fundamental questions pertaining to the direction of Warana were being voiced, they were not easily resolved, and this state of confusion was to continue, and ultimately to bring about Warana’s demise.
In July of the same year, minutes of a further meeting of the Performing Arts
Advisory Panel for the Warana Festival highlighted further salient issues, such as “…the Queensland Arts Industry needs and wants to be integrated into the fabric of the festival – not to throw everything out and start again” (p.4).
General agreement from the panel members partially resolved this issue by agreeing that “the majority of events should remain free, especially for children” (p.5); “Warana needs to educate sponsors to support more innovative and ‘cutting edge’ events” (p.5), and the Warana Festival “[n]eed[s] to rebuild the community’s sense of ‘ownership’ of the festival” (p.6). It was further recommended “ethnic communities need more appreciation and involvement.”
(p.6). However, for the festival to aim to address such a diversity of issues would only further confuse the event’s tenuous sense of identity.
Out of this discussion, a paper entitled Warana Festival – Performing Arts
Advisory Panel Recommendations (1994), refocussed some of the issues
mentioned above, and a number of significant recommendations emerged, such as the suggestion that: “The Festival needs an artistic vision based on an informed and relevant philosophy, in touch with current and future issues and trends” (p.1). It is interesting to note that this issue becomes a cornerstone of the later OUT OF THE BOX and Stage X Festivals. Thus, emerging for the first time is a sense of Warana contextualising itself within a philosophical framework, rather than from the by now tired ‘entertainment for the people by the people’ ethos.
A further concern crystallised “the Festival infrastructure and sponsorship should be responsive to, and not a determinate of, the artistic program” (p.1).
79 This comment exhibits a commitment to programming, and artistic programming in particular, and grew out of a concern that the “Festival is perceived to be driven with sponsorship and infrastructure issues as the priority. The program appears secondary to this” (p.1).
The idea that “The Festival should be part of the landscape, not imposed on it”
(p.1), can be seen as responding to a criticism that the festival was “Unable to work effectively with local performing arts industry” (p.1). This underlines the sentiment that the festival needed to grow organically from within the community, and in particular the arts community, as is evident in the concern that “There is little sense of community ownership in the festival” (p.1). This was further consolidated by the comment that “the Festival has a lot of work to close the credibility gap [with the arts industry]” (p.1), and also that “there is insufficient ongoing community consultation and participation in festival planning, running and evaluation” (p.1). Thus, the notion of the festival operating as a dialogue with the community was felt to be of crucial importance to the future of Warana. Further areas of concern raised were that Warana:
• Does not adequately cater to young people [age groups 18-25];
• There are no known mechanisms to become involved in Festival (for
example, membership of Warana, or a Friends of Festival program);
• There are problems with how the festival is publicly presented (1994,
pp.1-2).
The Panel made a number of key recommendations, the most significant to this discussion being:
• The Festival Board should reflect the broader community to a greater
extent;
80 • The Festival Board and Artform Panels should reflect the cultural
diversity of the community;
• A clear artistic policy and agenda needs to be implemented (1994, p.2).
It is in these recommendations that the sense of Brisbane’s growing cosmopolitanism can be evinced. What was required now was a structure that would support these recommendations:
• We strongly advocate appointment of an Artistic Director, who would
also act as Chief Executive Officer for the festival:
- [Be] Responsible for developing and implementing festival
program;
• This position should be nationally advertised;
• This person should be given three years to turn the festival around, a
three year contract should be offered;
• Accountability and reporting relationships need to be clearly defined
(1994, p.2).
This proposal of an arts festival model may be seen as operating at odds with the emphasis on community, as outlined in the above recommendations. The national advertising for the position of Artistic Director suggests that the aims for Warana were increasingly to position it as a player on the national festival context, which in some sense can be seen as being in contravention with the emphasis on the diverse local communities of Brisbane. Such a tension paradoxically foreshadows in reverse the plight of Peter Sellars’ Adelaide
Festival, discussed in Chapter 6, and highlights the necessity of a festival direction to be clear.
Jane Atkins had been appointed Producer to Warana in 1983; perhaps the title
Artistic Director was in effect too lofty, too soon. However, the creation of
81 this appointment can be seen to signal the shifting of this festival from a community-based event into the realm of an arts festival, the emphasis ultimately centring on excellence and prestige. Similarly, the production values attached to Warana became far more professional. Along with the appointment of a Technical Director, many events moved indoors, and therefore box office now became an important part of the festival’s revenue. The shift was palpable, from mostly free outdoors events to hard top ticketed events (Pippen,
1997, p.2). Whilst there was criticism regarding this metamorphosis of
Warana, such shifts were undoubtedly inevitable, given the presentation in
Brisbane of events such as the Commonwealth Games and Expo ’88 (explored in
3.9), which had exposed local audiences to an impressive range of nationally and internationally significant arts products, including the prestigious Comedie
Française. For Brisbane residents, the expectation in terms of scale and possibility had been inevitably lifted. Warana in a sense had no choice but to also ‘lift the bar’. Brisbane had proven to itself that it could provide and support large-scale dynamic and sophisticated cultural events.
Such changes clearly had ongoing repercussions for Warana, each year requiring greater budgetary expenditure and professional contexts within which to operate. At the core though, the identity of this local festival was still unresolved, in the sense that certain sectors of the community continued to position Warana as it had originally functioned: a community, family-oriented event. The new structure was at odds with the festival’s original positioning, and the use of the name ‘Warana’ for what was developing into a completely different festival model, was becoming increasingly problematic.
Furthermore, there were managerial issues impacting on the future of the festival. Norman Llewellyn expressed concern that there were a number of positions within the organisation that were not peopled effectively, and that with shifts in government policy and the ever-decreasing availability of
82 corporate funds for sponsorship, Warana needed to implement fundamental changes to its own corporate and administrative culture.
The needs of Brisbane as a city were also being reviewed; by this time ethnic and community groups had become well enough established to instigate their own various festivals, and Warana’s role in highlighting the cultural diversity of the city was becoming somewhat obsolete. A symbolic death knell for the festival as it had existed was a fire in a storeroom, which severely depleted
resources for the key street parade. (Pippen, 1997, p.4) This severe blow
forced Warana to completely re-evaluate its role. But even with an injection of
new personalities and administrative practices, Brisbane had outgrown the
culture of Warana as it had originally been conceived; yet the current
infrastructure seemed unable to instigate an effective framework:
This sense of the energy winding down in the organisational machine was
coupled with the changing composition of the Brisbane population
reflected in a loss of public interest in the traditional festival activities
offered by Warana (Pippen, 1997, p.4).
This was perhaps to be expected. Clearly, the city had changed in cultural
expectations since 1962. It was highly appropriate that the nature of the
festival should also shift.
3.8 Enter QPAC
By the late 70s the Queensland State Government had embarked on the development of a major cultural centre in Brisbane, which would supply the city with a series of venues and collections of international standard, based on similar institutions operating in major European and American cities. A key part of this development was the Queensland Performing Arts Centre, a multi-
83 faceted performing arts venue, to be built on the South Bank across the river from the city’s heart. This was an area that had played an interesting role in the city’s cultural life, in that it had been the site for several live performance venues: in the Twenties the Trocadero Dansant and the Newton Dance Palais were favourite haunts of the city’s glitterati, and perhaps the most significant performance space, the Cremorne Theatre. During the Second World War,
Brisbane became the strategic headquarters for US General MacArthur’s defence of the Pacific, and by US decree, African-American troops were prohibited from crossing the river into Brisbane’s commercial centre. Thus, the soldiers infiltrated the entertainment venues of the South Brisbane (now called South Bank) area, and it became a heart of jazz and dance, welcomed by many young Brisbane people. However, gradually the area slipped into disrepute, symbolised by the Cremorne being destroyed by fire in 1954. By the
70s South Brisbane had become a less than salubrious area.
That environment was completely transformed with the development of the
Cultural Centre, as the collective Queensland Art Gallery, State Library,
Queensland Museum, and Queensland Performing Arts Centre were known5.
And in a rare symbol of respect for the area’s past history, the name
‘Cremorne’ was redeployed for an intimate performance space that was included in the QPAC complex. Especially in terms of QPAC, the venue signalled that
Brisbane could now be a player on the national and international touring circuit, offering local audiences a program of popular and cutting-edge entertainment.
Tony Gould was appointed Director of the organisation in 1979, and his impact on the cultural life of the city in this role has been profound. Gould’s background as an administrator of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust (the
5 The complex continues to expand with the opening of the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art, a new building adjacent to the current gallery, in late 2006, along with a major extension to the existing State Library building.
84 forerunner of the national arts funding body, the Australia Council) for 11 years, and as the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s Federal Concert
Manager, as well as being a board member for a host of arts organizations, meant that he brought a balance of administrative and operational knowledge to the organisation, as well as a shrewd eye for successful product: QPAC’s first professional production, The Pirates of Penzance, recorded $2.3 million at the
box office (Aldred, 2000b, p. 17). This success raised the bar (or perhaps
harnessed the city’s growing cultural appetite) for the arts in Brisbane.
Even prior to the success of events staged within the Centre, however,
celebrations alone marking its opening in 1985 could be seen as constituting a
festival, and ironically reinvoked the early days of Warana, featuring elements
such as a street parade. However, this rendering was a professional and
curated process, on many levels a world away from the Warana parade that
comprised floats sponsored by local industry, however well constructed and
clever many of these proved to be. The QPAC parade was underpinned with a
sense of ‘excellence’, a quality that Gould was to strive for in all aspects of
QPAC’s operations. An event such as this official opening can be seen to
cement:
QPA[C]’s entrepreneurial flair and capacity to meet its statutory
obligation to educate in performing arts and promote the performing
arts to future audiences, through the staging of high impact multi-arts
festival offerings with broad community outreach imperatives (Martin,
Seffrin and Wissler, 2004, p.92).
Whilst there has always been a major emphasis for QPAC on staging large
blockbuster events of national and international standard, evident in
productions such as 42nd Street, Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, as well as a plethora of international performers, the creation of and support for
85 local content has always been present from the organisation’s inception. This has been most evident in the guise of Festival programming, and became most evident during John Kotzas’s time as Producer of the Programming Unit within
QPAC.
Thus, QPAC was on several levels an obvious institution to reinvent the festival.
In 1995, John Kotzas, along with a dynamic creative team, had proven his sense of creative vision with a range of innovative arts enterprises under the banner of the Fiftieth VE Day celebration in commemoration of the Allied victory in
World War Two, titled Australia Remembers, 1945-1995, including Athol Young and designer Bill Haycock. This critically and publicly successful event exemplified the team of personalities as innovative, creative and able to connect with the city’s inhabitants in a meaningful manner, via a large-scale spectacle. This creative energy, along with the stable financial basis that a large and effectively run organisation such as QPAC could provide, was attractive to the city’s largest cultural inheritance, and, in consequence Warana metamorphosed into The Brisbane Festival.
3.9 The role of other festivals and key events
Prior to discussing the new festival event, it is important to consider that outside of Warana, Brisbane’s cultural life, with particular emphasis on festival culture, had shifted, due to the impact of several other key festival-type events. In 1982 Brisbane hosted the prestigious Commonwealth Games, an undertaking that significantly increased the city’s cultural confidence. The scale of this event and its success in infrastructure, event management and tourism, was such that Brisbane virtually came of age as a culturally capacious city. This was supported by an additional festival, ‘Festival ‘82’, which was created to celebrate the “rich and diverse cultures of the Commonwealth”
(Festival ’82, Warana and Commonwealth Festival Newsletter, 1982). The aim
86 was for each country in the Commonwealth to contribute in some way, and was staged when Warana celebrated its 21st birthday, bringing a sense of symmetry
to the city’s cultural coming of age.
The history of the festival within Brisbane was thus fundamentally
transformed with the presentation of these massively staged events, and even
more decisively with the International Exposition in 1988, also the year of
Australia’s Bicentennial. ‘Expo ‘88’ in particular can be attributed with
significantly altering Brisbane’s cultural complexion nationally, but more
importantly, from its own perspective. Brisbane no longer saw itself as a poor
‘big country town’ cousin to Sydney and Melbourne. It had proved itself
capable of providing sophisticated, large-scale cultural experiences. This was
consolidated by the Queensland Art Gallery’s Asia-Pacific Triennial of
Contemporary Art, initiated in 1993, which further assisted in profiling the
city not only as an effective events progenitor, but also an individual cultural
site, with unique programs to present on the national cultural calendar. These
“carnivals of high culture” (Martin, Seffrin and Wissler, 2004, p.92) worked to
mature the rendering of the festival within the city, highlighting what was
positive about Brisbane: its weather, its congeniality, its safety, and most
significantly, its potential.
Alongside the Commonwealth Games was the burgeoning Brisbane Biennial
International Music Festival first sponsored by the State Government in 1991,
directed by Anthony Steel, former Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival,
who subsequently presided over the second event in 1993. For this second
festival, the administrative structures were changed so that a CEO was now
responsible to the Warana Board, with the Artistic Director to devise the
program in collaboration with an advisory panel. Steel felt that this was a
mistake; perhaps working in a collaborative model was not a modus operandi that Steel found effective: “As we all know, an artistic adviser with a panel is
87 not the way to do it” (quoted by Pippen, 1997, p.2). It is interesting to note that similar kinds of administrative issues would come to plague Steel’s former artistic domain, the Adelaide Festival, in 2002, addressed in detail in Chapter
Six.
The Brisbane Biennial has had a chequered history. In 1996 Joan Sheldon, then
Minister for the Arts, and also State Treasurer, announced that the Biennial
Festival of Music, as it was named at this point, would merge with the Brisbane
Festival, to take place in September 1998. The 1997 Biennial would still occur, but after that, the event would supposedly merge (Sheldon, 1 December 1996).
This amalgamation never occurred; perhaps the Government realised that the two events had different purposes and could be seen as serving different audiences, although there are undoubtedly crossovers. In 1999, the event was touted as the inaugural Queensland Biennial Festival of Music, and in the subsequent year, in execution, the event consolidated itself as focussing on both metropolitan and regional audiences as well as music communities. From this period until the time of this research, this focus, under the Artistic
Directorship of Lyndon Terracini has been extremely successful in format and programming (Chapter Seven explores recent renderings of this festival in greater detail). This emphasis to play to the regions has proved highly strategic for the event. Queensland is a large geographical state with the majority of citizens situated in medium-sized cities situated along the coast.
There are significant communities inland, and Terracini’s desire to include these towns has been enormously successful, creating an effective balance between metropolitan and regional programming. The event has become the largest music festival in Australia, and geographically, the largest in the world.
For the 2003 festival, 138 events were presented in an area spanning 4500 kilometres (www.queenslandmusicfestival.com.au). The festival was re-named the Queensland Music Festival. The 2005 Music Festival was Terracini’s last, as he moved to a new position of Artistic Director of the Brisbane Festival for
88 2006, and Paul Grabowsky, a renowned jazz musician and composer, has been appointed as Artistic Director of the Queensland Music Festival. The future direction of both these events will undoubtedly prove fascinating.
The Riverfestival, which commenced in 1988 and is substantially produced by
the Brisbane City Council, has on several levels replaced the community-driven
role of the old Warana. Perhaps the city has come to the point where it feels
confident enough to celebrate its identity in such a seemingly traditional, even
‘old fashioned’ manner. However, the current rendering by former Sydney Gay
and Lesbian Mardi Gras Director Jonathan Parsons, has taken the idea of
‘community’ in a highly creative and innovative direction, as is evaluated in
Chapter Seven.
Thus, by the 90s, the festival environment was diversifying and expanding for
the city of Brisbane, and the climate was ripe for the generation of the two
festivals to be focussed on in Chapter Four: Stage X in 1999 and 2001, with reference to the OUT OF THE BOX Festival. Since its inception in 1992, The
OUT OF THE BOX Festival of Early Childhood has been regarded as a milestone, artistically, aesthetically and educationally, and in its unique positioning as a children’s festival offered by a key arts organisation. The idea
was originally John Kotzas’s, who at the time was QPAC’s Education Program
Manager. Kotzas subsequently became the Artistic Director for the festival
and his vision was to celebrate the creative lives of Brisbane children, and for
the period of the festival, to privilege and showcase their ideas and work in an
extremely high-profile manner. The decision for a major arts venue to host
and produce such a festival was a decisive move for the organisation: rather
than operating merely as a venue for hire for mainstream blockbusters and symphony concerts, the development of a particular kind of cultural program that OUT OF THE BOX proffered was a significant cultural shift for QPAC.
Furthermore, John Kotzas’s original festival in 1992 was firmly focused on the
89 philosophy of children taking over the Performing Arts Centre for the duration of the festival, not contained within a small section of the centre. Cate
Fowler’s artistic direction of the children’s festival in 1996 and 1998 was somewhat different in emphasis and tone, with each of her festivals being obviously themed, in 1996, the theme was ‘Myths, Legends and Dreaming’, and programming was organised to support this. For the 1998 Festival, the theme was ‘Stars’. As will be explored in Chapter Four, under the auspices of Susan
Richer, the children’s festival has become a powerful contemporary festival model, and provides further evidence of the shift in Brisbane’s cultural life, increasingly incorporating contemporary cultural impulses into the festival’s philosophy and programming.
Richer’s philosophy was also a lynchpin of the Stage X Festival which began in
1997, and caters for audiences between the ages of 13-25, as is also discussed in detail in Chapter 4. Thus, by the 90s, QPAC had become the city’s main festival producer, as by 1995 it was also producing what was at this time the city’s flagship festival, the Brisbane Festival.
3.10 The Brisbane Festival
With Warana in crisis by the mid-90s, its public image waning, and the state government cutting funding (Courier Mail, 17 November 1995, p.43), a public announcement was made that Warana was officially over (Koch, Courier Mail,
18 November 1995, p.1), but in the same breath it was announced that it was to be replaced by the Brisbane Festival, under the auspices of QPAC, with
Director Tony Gould as the Director of the event and John Kotzas as Managing
Artistic Director. Whilst this re-formatting was undoubtedly inevitable, the way in which this shift occurred could be regarded as somewhat orchestrated, with little community consultation. Certain members within the local community were highly dubious about the marriage of state festival and QPAC, fearing it
90 was imposed by government with little consultation for those who had been key players in the recent history of Warana, and that it would become an arm of the government and therefore of the cultural elite.
Nonetheless, the inaugural Brisbane Festival in 1996 was viewed largely as an
aesthetic and financial success, certainly in comparison to recent Warana
renderings, for it now had far greater funding and the support of being curated within a major arts organisation.
The programming of the Brisbane Festival was publicly announced at a special function held on 5 December 1995, aiming to draw on the past flavour of
Warana whilst injecting a more sophisticated arts profile. Programming
included acclaimed American performers the Parsons Dance Company and the
Tokyo String Quartet, as well as prestigious local events such as a production
of Over the Top with Jim. This production was based on an extremely popular
memoir by local author Hugh Lunn, and was a quintessential Brisbane story
focussing on growing up in the city in the 1950s. It recreated an atmosphere
almost completely lost for contemporary inhabitants. This work was
complemented by a production of indigenous Australian playwright Jack Davis’s
canonical The Dreamers. However, Gould and Kotzas were eager to maintain
some reference to the personality of the traditional Warana event. The 1996
program included a parade and street party, a feature that had been absent
from recent Warana festivals. This functioned as “a significant symbol of
Warana’s growth beyond the City Botanic Gardens, into the street of Brisbane”
(Warana – The Brisbane Festival 1995 Program). The atmosphere for this
event was inspired by a Brazilian carnivale, and featured 3000 performers as a
result of an artist-in-residency program in schools. Thus the tone was
different from what it was in the past, which followed along the lines of a civic
parade, with upstanding members of the business community providing lavish
floats. Here was a means of transforming a traditional event in a way that was
91 more contemporary and arts driven. However, the tradition of the parade was to have a short history as part of the Brisbane Festival, and was not continued in subsequent festivals. Perhaps this is an indication that the balance of tradition and innovation was not yet working. It is interesting to note, as is observed in Chapter Six, that the Riverfestival, with its signature Riverfire event, has found an effective way to re-connect with an urban community on a large scale6.
For the Brisbane Festival, a new board was created, for which the outgoing chair of the Brisbane Festival, Trevor Reddacliff, and chair of the Biennial,
David Graham, were to act as advisers, during the transition period. The new board was to have as its chair lawyer Ross Clarke, and the board members were: Barbara Absolon (Chief Executive Officer, Queensland Events
Corporation, a quasi-government organisation), Philip Bacon (Philip Bacon
Galleries, the most prestigious private gallery in Queensland), Graham Hart (a former Bank of Queensland CEO), Rosalie Martin (a senior financial advisor),
Kathleen Newcombe (the Managing Director of Queensland’s Martin College),
Cathy Sinclair (management consultant), and Brian White (son of Ray White, a leading local real estate agent). Thus, the complexion of the Board was significantly coloured with high-profile members of Queensland’s business sector. The amalgamated festival’s Artistic Director was to be Tony Gould.
The second Brisbane Festival, held from 28 August – 20 September 1998 introduced two major sponsors, Energex and Optus. The electricity company offered a $300,000 funding arrangement for the event, with Optus providing
$2 million over a five-year period. Since the event’s metamorphosis into the
6 Riverfire is a “spectacularly choreographed fireworks display synchronised to a soundtrack by [local radio station] Triple M.”(www.riverfestival.com.au). It is the opening work in the Brisbane Riverfestival, and the event occurs around the Brisbane River. The event is sponsored by the Brisbane City Council, the State Government and local television station Channel 9.
92 Brisbane Festival, the event has been branded the Energex Brisbane Festival.
Such obvious branding of the event could suggest a further ‘elitisation’ or politicisation of the festival, moving it further away from the community, in terms of input and direct participation.
The programming at this point was a fairly conventional blend of the classical art forms employing respected overseas performers such as a production of
Anna Karenina by the British Shared Experience Theatre and concerts by the
Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, as well as celebrated local events such as the extremely successful Marriage of Figaro directed by Neil Armfield, for
the Queensland State Theatre Company, in association with the Festival, and
featured Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush, who had cut his theatrical teeth
in Brisbane. The festival also featured a production by Kooemba Jdarra
Indigenous Performing Arts production of Black Shorts. Tony Gould, Artistic
Director of QPAC described the event as “as good as it gets” (Courier Mail,
22 August 1998, Weekend, p.1). The Festival was certainly expanding in scale,
utilising 122 venues, to deliver 743 performances, 134 of which were free. It
was estimated that the festival “generated an extra $14.85 million of economic
activity in south-east Queensland” (Gould, Courier Mail, 27 September, 2000,
p.17).
There were problems however, most notably with the scheduling of the OUT
OF THE BOX festival at the same time as the Brisbane Festival in 1998. This
proved to be a mistake, as it detracted from the children’s festival maintaining
its own sense of identity and momentum. This double-bill programming has not
occurred since: in 2000 the children’s festival was programmed in October, but
since the 2002 event OUT OF THE BOX has been locked into a June timeslot.
Furthermore, Gould remained Artistic Director until his last festival in 2004,
even though his doing so had created a degree of criticism in the recent past:
93 “key recommendations of the 1999 Smerdon report into QPAC operations, notably that Gould should abandon his position as artistic director of the
Brisbane Festival” (Lim, 2000, p.15).7
Under Gould’s directorship, the programming was maintained as a blend of several successful international events, national events usually featuring well- known performers, and a local program blending popular works with a few non- mainstream pieces by local companies, yet arguably without much curation, in terms of a philosophical shaping of that programming. Whilst it could be argued therefore, that the Brisbane Festival has always focussed on variety and quality, there has been criticism that the festival has been without vision or truly attempted to push the boundaries of aesthetic understanding or taste in the manner in which Adelaide has, for example. Yet the emphasis for the
Brisbane Festival on excellence (as it has been for most arts festivals of this ilk) was Gould’s key motivator.
Furthermore, the festival came to function as a source of civic profiling:
…having an international event such as the Brisbane Festival has brought the city into step with Australia’s other capital cities. Sydney, Melbourne and
Adelaide all have arts festivals that not only have boosted the arts but also served them well in terms of cultural tourism (McLean, 22 August 1998, p.1).
Yet John Kotzas was eager to ensure that this festival was not a poor imitation of the southern events: “The fabulous thing about Brisbane is the lifestyle.
It’s an outdoor place and the festival needs to take advantage of those things that [make] Brisbane unique” (in Debritz, 1995, p.23).
7 The Smerdon report by Henry Smerdon, who at the time of writing was on the QPAC Board of Directors, evaluated QPAC’s operational structures, and advised of ways in which he felt the organisation needed to restructure.
94
3.11 The current situation
It could be argued that current invocations of a Brisbane festival have little in common with their predecessor of Warana over 40 years ago, and that this is highly appropriate, given the manner in which the city has changed. However, as Rod Wissler suggests, “the patterns of community, media and government involvement, the naming of the event, the concern for weather conditions are all as relevant” (Martin, Seffrin and Wissler, 2004, p.93) now as they were for the event’s inauguration. It is the sense of community connection to the event that is especially significant. Undoubtedly the contemporary Brisbane Festival poses a very different dynamic than Warana, especially in its early renderings.
The sense is certainly no longer entertainment for the people by the people – the tone is far more one of professional performers, and drawing on the post- war model of the arts festival, in which an Artistic Director programs a variety of high quality events of renown, from which audiences choose a range of products. This kind of festival can be referred to as the ‘department store’ model, and is addressed in both Chapters 5 and 6.
It is worth considering that there was an earlier rendering of a more highbrow festival approach in Brisbane: in 1975, the Queensland Festival of the Arts was created, seemingly to tap into the more lofty enterprises associated with
Adelaide and Perth. However, “subsequent attempts of two community-based boards of management to work together towards an integration of Warana and the Arts Festival foundered on the differing ideologies of celebration and the arts” (Martin, Seffrin and Wissler 2004, p.94). It is paradoxical therefore,
that an almost mirror situation of this exists at the time of writing, with the
amalgamation of the Riverfestival Board and the Brisbane Festival, with the
Riverfestival taking over more obviously the function of Warana, and the
95 Brisbane Festival seeing itself as the highbrow event. Hopefully, the situation will not bring about the same fate as in the mid-70s.
Lyndon Terracini as newly appointed Artistic Director of the Brisbane Festival for 2006 will undoubtedly aim to channel the arts festival in a new direction, perhaps drawing on the extraordinary geographical success of his Queensland
Music Festival, which presented events in the extremities of the state (as is discussed in detail in Chapter Seven). The challenge for Terracini will be the setting of the balance between dazzling programming and local connection.
3.12 The role of the audience
In 1997, Executive Director of Warana, Norm Llewellyn, suggested that the success of festival organisation depended on finding:
1. A salesman who can get the money.
2. Someone who can manage the money.
3. Someone who can manage the artists (Pippen interview, 17 August
1997).
Whilst these issues are undoubtedly seminal, drawn from Llewellyn’s years of festival management experience, there are two key areas that are not addressed in this formula: the artistic program and the audience. Whilst
Llewellyn’s comments are crucial to the successful administration and operation of a festival, this study questions whether it is the relationship that the audience has with the festival entity, which occurs essentially via programming, that determines the event’s true efficacy. As has been articulated through the history of the Warana festival in Brisbane, the positioning of the audience and its relationship to the festival has shifted as the nature of the festival has shifted, in keeping with cultural and societal developments.
96
Warana’s connection to audiences in the 60s and 70s was an obvious attempt at family focussed entertainment, and events that fostered a sense of an almost bucolic, safe, and relaxed environment, highly appropriate for the city at that time. As the city matured, loftier aspirations became apparent, so that by the time of the Brisbane Festival, audiences were positioned more as sophisticated cultural consumers who could choose from a “smorgasbord” (to use Adelaide
Festival 2004 director Stephen Page’s term) of programming options. Not that local content was dismissed: QPAC’s Programming Unit was responsible for producing a dynamic portion of the Brisbane Festival’s program, which profiled the city’s leading artists and companies.
As has been highlighted, this balance between local and national/international programming had always been a feature of QPAC itself, under the leadership of
Tony Gould. He proved to be somewhat masterful at creating excellent relationships with key national producers such as John Frost and Andrew
McKinnon, relationships that have been maintained even at the time of writing.
But Gould also aimed to engage the community through the presenting of a range of public arts programmes, as well as being a key advocate for the OUT
OF THE BOX Festival, which John Kotzas had inaugurated.
What is of key interest regarding the Programming Unit is that Kotzas, as
Producer of this unit, consolidated the philosophy that came to signify his future work, particularly regarding young audiences, not only with the Unit in non-festival mode, but also regarding programming as a whole when he became
QPAC’s Artistic Director in 2003: “It’s about opening our cultural institutions and giving them to young people as audiences and performers. That’s the only way these institutions will become accessible” (McLean, 22 August 1998, p.1).
Evidence of such programming accessibility was exemplified in productions such as Bim…BamBoo!! a theatre piece presented in the city’s Botanic Gardens, and
97 the Fortitude Valley Street Party, which included roving performers and drag shows, “basically a heightened version of what you might find in the mall on a
Saturday morning” (McLean, 22 August 1998).
However, the review of the initial Brisbane Festival highlighted how complex the function of an arts festival is, in terms of brokering relationships with local communities, both of artists and audiences, so that they feel engaged and nurtured. Freelance Arts Administrator Glenda Johnson suggested at a meeting held after the inaugural Brisbane Festival:
I think when planning for a festival you need to be aware that when you’re
developing new products, and particularly with artists who haven’t had a
lot of experience then they need a lot more time nurturing and resources.
And in fact if they are to compete with international and national product,
who have had somewhere in the past, time and money and nurturing spent
on them, then I guess that’s the best way you can contribute to local
artists and ensure that they have a platform in which they can compete
equally with artists from interstate or from overseas. And I think that’s
a necessary part of your budget if you’re to be truly supportive of your
local artists (Brisbane Festival and QTIA Debrief, 7 October 1996).
Ironically, these sentiments can be seen to connect to Norm Llewellyn’s more corporate approach, but he also recognised that “a successful structure is not a rigid structure, but a network of people who can work together” (in Pippen,
1997 p.7).
The situation at the time of writing regarding the major festivals in Brisbane is that the Brisbane Festival and the Riverfestival come under the auspices of one Board, the Major Brisbane Festivals Board, the Chair of which is Judith
McLean, a leading arts educator. Only the manifestation of several festivals
98 under this arrangement will gauge the efficacy of this arrangement. It will also be interesting to evaluate how the Brisbane Festival under Terracini’s leadership will be made manifest, and whether the event will retain its now highbrow frame, or if it will aim to connect with “community” in a more obvious manner, as has been evinced in the number of community-oriented works programmed in Terracini’s Music festivals.
Furthermore, the interface between the Brisbane Festival and the
Riverfestival will afford analysis in the future, given the different roles they play in constructing an identity for Brisbane. Chapter 7 further explores this issue.
The biggest challenge facing current producers of the Brisbane Festival is to balance the sense of the local and the global. The ability to ensure that an arts festival, featuring the best of local, national and international performative experiences, and yet which manages to allow a city to understand something about itself, is surely difficult to achieve, but is crucial for the efficacy of the event, especially for audiences.
3.13 Conclusion
This chapter has traced the dramatic shift of the Warana Festival from its nascence as a locally-driven event, with the emphasis strongly on the celebration of the local, to an attempt at a rendering of a major national arts festival, bringing dazzling works in to the city, and complementing these with the best of Brisbane arts practice, eventuating in the split into the Brisbane
Festival and the Riverfestival. In this rendering, the function of the festival as a matter of civic prestige and pride becomes highly significant. It is understandable why this model has become so globally important, in light of
Landry and Bianchini’s advocacy that:
99
…our deepest feelings about the city are at the moment expressed only
on special occasions, such as carnivals and festivals, which are clearly
separated from ‘normal’ activities. The creative energies which are
generated on some of these occasions are rarely carried over into the
mainstream of city life (1995, p.23).
Given the plethora of festival activities now on offer (as highlighted in Chapter
Seven) however, it may seem that festivals are merely one entertainment out of many. But if Landry and Bianchini’s ideas hold weight, then the worth of the festival is indeed significant, as it continues to be to the life of the city of
Brisbane.
The festival of Warana has obviously shifted in concept, structure and programming since its inception in 1962, just as the city of Brisbane has altered radically in that time. The festival can no longer hold the position of civic event to celebrate a localised flavour, as the city has diversified to a profound degree and the flavour is too diverse to capture in a single festival.
However, the Warana festival has been a crucial cultural tool by which the city of Brisbane has celebrated its uniqueness and maturation, and has encouraged an embracing of the qualities that are specific to Brisbane, which insist that the local should always maintain a significant role in the cultural representations of the city. Perhaps the merging of the Brisbane Festival with the Riverfestival will work to effectively balance the sense of cosmopolitanism and locality. As Landry and Bianchini suggest, “if local identity is eroded too much, a city may lose confidence and sense of direction. International initiatives should co-exist with festivals and other celebrations and rituals designed to strengthen local identity” (1995, p.29).
100 Participation may be a key factor in keeping the festival process ‘honest’, assisting in the communities of Brisbane either remaining or becoming key stakeholders in these events. This concept has always been a key consideration of Kotzas’s work, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that it will be privileged by Terracini, given the key emphasis he has placed on community involvement during his Artistic Directorship of the Queensland Music Festival.
As has been evinced, the traditional post-war arts festival model, on which the
Brisbane Festival is based, has been highly successful internationally, providing an array of works not often experienced by local audiences, and there is a strong argument for Terracini to maintain this kind of model, as practised by his predecessor, Tony Gould.
However, it is the smaller festivals also produced by QPAC, that are of greatest significance to this research, due to the particular ways in which they are produced and programmed, and in particular regarding the ways in which they position their audiences. John Kotzas’ philosophy encapsulated in his aim for the 1998 Brisbane Festival to “animate, educate and energise” (McLean,
22 August 1998, p.1), were also to become fundamental hallmarks of these smaller festivals. Chapter Four provides a detailed analysis of these boutique festivals, and the manner in which the audience engages with the event.
This was something that John Kotzas in particular had highlighted as early as
1995 when he was director of Warana: “The most important thing is to have a dialogue with our audience” (in Debritz, 1995, p.22).
Chapter Four explores the detailed strategies employed by Kotzas and his team, in order to engage in that dialogue, via the construct of the smaller festival experience.
101 CHAPTER 4 - THE STAGE X FESTIVAL
Youth as a complex, shifting, and contradictory category is rarely
narrated in the dominant public sphere through the diverse voices of
the young […youth] are simply restricted from speaking in those spheres
where public conversation shapes social policy and refused the power to
make knowledge consequential with respect to their own individual and
collective needs (Giroux in Epstein, p.24).
4.1 Introduction
“Our job as curators and producers is to create the aesthetic framework within which the artists and participants create the work” (John Kotzas, interview, 27 April 1999). At the time of writing, in alternate years, the
Programming Unit of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre produced two festivals for the young people of Brisbane: the OUT OF THE BOX Festival for children between 3-8 years, and the Stage X festival for 12-26 year olds.
These events functioned to create a major public space in which the creativity and cultural lives of young people in Brisbane and its surrounds can be articulated and profiled.
While both festival models are significant, this thesis focuses on the Stage X events, which demonstrate most clearly connections with the areas of the carnivalesque, fashion and youth arts theory, along with Creative Industries discourse centring on the aestheticisation of everyday life, patterns of consumption and new modes of production, as articulated in Chapter One.
Via a set of key strategies as identified by the researcher, the Unit created these smaller, non-mainstream festivals, Stage X in 1999 and 2001, that aimed to connect with their target audiences of young people, in a manner
102 significantly different to the conventional arts festival (on occasion referred to as the department store model), which caters for a wide audience base.
These key strategies empower audiences in that the processes of festival production and programming (in which target audiences are heavily involved) positions the festival as a dialogue between producers and audiences, rather than audiences being positioned essentially as consumers, as occurs in the more traditional arts festival rendering.
Thus, this engagement positions young people in the dominant public sphere – the space which, as Giroux suggests above, they are rarely given over, as their work and specific cultural interests are profiled via the state’s major performing arts venue, so that the festival in this construct is, as John Kotzas advocates, a way of “creating room in the mainstream” (in Richer, 1999, p.2).
This positioning has specific connections to the traditional manner in which populist festival models connected with their ‘target audiences’, the importance of which is outlined in Appendix A: via the assertion and celebration of their uniqueness as a community, the status quo was often inverted for a particular point in time, so that those elements of society not usually privileged via major cultural celebrations, came to the centre. This chapter analyses the strategies employed to create these festivals, resulting in cultural experiences that connect strongly with target audiences of young people.
The aim of this ethnographic research has not been to position the researcher as “expert”, but rather to define the key strategies as identified by the researcher, that have been employed by the Programming Unit in the production of what has come to be articulated by the researcher, as a particular kind of festival model. This model engages with contemporary cultural impulses, and highlights important questions about the role of the arts festival contemporarily.
103 As a means of assisting in the evaluation of the strategies, two Audience
Reception studies assisted in understanding the manner in which these festivals are received. The curatorial processes of the Unit are also contextualised within the management structures employed, as well as being contextualised within current youth arts theory.
From the detailed fieldwork undertaken and analysis of the festivals, six key strategies have been identified by the researcher, which are seen to embody the core of the Programming Unit’s festival production process.
These key strategies can be summarised as follows:
1. Research into current trends within youth culture, and expert
knowledge of issues pertaining to youth arts theory;
2. Consultation with focus groups, young artists, key stakeholders, and
target audience members from a diversity of hegemonies;
3. The marriage of these elements into programming for each festival;
4. The management model of i) a key team who have produced several
boutique festivals, coupled with expert staff brought in for each
festival; and ii) a democratic management process which functions
essentially as a “flat” model rather than a hierarchical one, although
there are hierarchical structures in place;
5. The positioning of audience as author;
6. The evaluation process after each festival event.
104 These strategies are explored in this chapter via an analysis of the mounting of
Stage X 1999 and 2001, with some reference to the 2003 festival, and a minor reference to the 2000 and 2002 OUT OF THE BOX festivals. The children’s festival will be employed as an extension rather than a specific case-study against which to compare Stage X; thus, it is employed as a complementary study. The efficacy of these strategies will be analysed, taking into consideration the costs that such strategies demand of the Programming Unit and within QPAC as an organisation. A detailed analysis of Freakshow (1999) and Shopping Mall (2001), two versions of the key-created piece for Stage X’s
Five to Midnight will be employed as a particular example by which to
demonstrate the efficacy of this means of programming, in connecting both
with contemporary issues and also with traditions of the festival, with
particular acknowledgement of the carnivalesque.
Firstly, an outline of Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX is warranted:
4.2 Stage X
As has already been articulated in Chapter Three, by the mid-90s, QPAC had established itself as a key producer of quality cultural performing arts product for the city of Brisbane, and increasingly as a producer of festival product. It had staged the successful OUT OF THE BOX festivals in 1992 and 1994, and subsequently oversaw management of the Warana Festival in 1995 and transformed it into the inaugural Brisbane Festival of 1996. In 1997, a festival for young people between the ages of 13 and 26 years (the official age perimeters of “youth” as deemed by government) was created, inaugurated
specifically from a recommendation in the Queensland Government’s youth
policy, Your Culture, Your Move, which advocated the necessity for a festival
for young audiences. QPAC was a good option for producing this event, given
its success at having recently produced both the Brisbane Festival and having
105 produced OUT OF THE BOX since 1992. Thus, with a proven track record in festival production, QPAC also came to produce Stage X, as the event came to be titled, the state supported festival for young people. This festival was launched to address the fact that at that time, young people accounted for approximately 24.6% (that is, virtually a quarter) of Queensland’s population:
Both local and state government made a three-year financial commitment
to Stage X. Tony Gould [then director of QPAC] came up with the idea of
a ‘Young People’s Festival’ and then gave the initiative to the Programming
Unit to develop and conceptualise […] Programming then gave the
developed idea back to Tony for approval (Susan Richer, email, 15 March
1999).
The resultant Stage X Festival was to be “a high profile, arts driven celebratory event that recognised the arts and cultural lives of young people”
(Richer, 1997, p.13). However, whilst QPAC had the credentials to produce the event, in terms of resources and reputation, the arrangement was also problematic. As Stage X was established by and through the hierarchical and arguably conservative, elitist channels of government via a statutory body, a fundamental critique was obvious. A highly conservative organization such as
QPAC, which in essence caters for mainstream, essentially middle-aged, middle class audiences, could have been considered an inappropriate choice to produce an event created out of government policy that would connect with young people aged 13-26 years.
The solution lay in the particular facet of the organisation that came to produce the festival: the Programming Unit, essentially comprising John Kotzas,
Producer, Susan Richer, Creative Director and Deborah Murphy, Program
Manager (and later General Manager for OUT OF THE BOX 2000 and 2002), as well as other significant staff. Richer in particular influenced the shape of all
106 the festivals examined in this chapter. She was appointed Creative Director of
Stage X, and subsequently of OUT OF THE BOX for the 2000 festival, and has been a driving and seminal force in the shaping of both festivals.1
There have been several other key staff over the four year period being
addressed, in particular Project Officer Rebecca Lamoin (who became the
Associate Producer for Stage X 2003), but the constant has been the
triumvirate of Kotzas, Richer and Murphy, which, as will be addressed later in
this chapter, has developed a potent working relationship over a number of
years and which the research evinces to have proved a key ingredient in the
festivals’ success. Production strategies, the ensconced, conventional models
of festival making, in terms of an Artistic Director who dictates programming,
were deemed inappropriate by the Unit to facilitate an event for young people:
the appointment of a high-profile Artistic Director whose vision drove the
programming, and whose profile assisted in drawing the sizeable amounts of
funding required to program dazzling international performances would be
unworkable for a young people’s festival. Thus a far more collaborative
approach was employed, which is further addressed in an analysis of Strategy
Four (4.8).
4.3 The OUT OF THE BOX Festival of Early Childhood
OUT OF THE BOX, as it is popularly known, was first initiated by QPAC in
1992. It is an event that “seeks to enrich the cultural lives of children, their communities and the city of Brisbane” (OUT OF THE BOX Festival Program,
1 Richer’s career path highlights her involvement and commitment to young people’s cultural life. She has worked as a project officer and leader for a variety of youth arts projects, and was the Associate Director of Brisbane’s Contact Youth Arts Company, the Artistic Director of alternative Brisbane theatre company La Bôite’s Youth Arts program, as well as being a committee member of Festivals Australia for the past four years. In addition, she has published widely in the area of youth arts processes.
107 2002). The festival was the creation of then Education Officer, John Kotzas, who commenced with QPAC in 1989, and since its inception, the emphasis has firmly resided in viewing children as arts makers in their own right, and not as potential audiences of the future. The festival has consolidated an excellent reputation for itself both nationally and internationally, and was for some time the only event of its kind in the world. It has always featured a blend of commissioned works, in-schools projects, workshops, and the programming of quality works by professional youth arts companies:
The festival provides a diversity of sophisticated and innovative arts and
cultures for this age group, above and beyond the sanitised kitsch that I
believe they are often dished up through popular culture (Richer, 2002,
p.74).
4.4 Fieldwork
The fieldwork occurred in stages over the period February 1999 through to
December 2001, and was structured as a process of participation research, situated in the then Merivale Street offices of QPAC, a separate building to the “mother ship” of QPAC at South Bank. This physical separation afforded the Unit a strong sense of identity and independence. The fieldwork focussed on observing and occasionally participating in the lead-up processes to producing the festivals, attending staff meetings, production meetings, meetings with artists, and regular interviews with key staff. This process was coupled with an analysis of key documents, memos, research material, position papers, and scoping papers.
This research was complemented by the researcher being employed in a variety of roles over the course of the research period: as a project officer, workshop
108 facilitator, workshop leader, writer, and research assistant. This positioning provided detailed insight into the way in which festivals were produced.
As already articulated, the analysis of these case studies has resulted in identifying six key strategies that provide a topography of the manner in which the boutique festivals are produced. An examination of each strategy and its application to specific festival processes provides an understanding of the efficacy of the strategies for boutique festival production at QPAC.
4.5 Strategy One: Research into current trends within youth culture and expert knowledge of issues pertaining to youth arts theory
The Programming Unit engaged in detailed research regarding trends that were emerging in youth culture at the time of each festival. These issues were gleaned from a variety of sources, including internet sites, from magazines and
youth publications, and from the work of and discussions with young people,
themselves, especially artists. Through this process, the Unit was able to
connect meaningfully with young people, through knowledge of what trends and
issues they were addressing or dismissing.
Susan Richer is not only highly versed in key theorists and theories addressing
young people, she also actively contributes to the debate.2 Richer’s work is driven by a commitment to recognise and profile young people as artists in their own right, and to provide opportunities for their work to be profiled, and for young audiences to connect with this work.
2 Some of Richer’s publications include “Self Narration and Navigation” – Keynote presentation, QADIE (Queensland Association of Drama in Education) Conference, subsequently published in the QADIE Journal, 2000; “Young People’s Theatre”, co-authored with Judith McLean, an essay commissioned by the Australia Council, 2001, and “Young People’s Festivals” in the Youth Arts Queensland Journal, 2002.
109
Richer has developed a number of practices to ensure that young people are effectively engaged in dialogue (Richer, 2000b, pp.7-8). These strategies can be briefly described as follows: engagement in two-way communication, by talking to young people rather than at them, and disseminating information via channels that they trust. The prizing of eccentricity and diversity is a further practice, realised by exploring less obvious creative solutions, and listening to those who have been largely denied a voice or presence in mainstream cultural practice. The development of a learning culture by taking an active interest in youth culture and theory when working with young people is crucial, as is connecting with lifestyles, by “allowing young people to self narrate within safe and appropriate contexts provides more information about their interests, values and tastes than any amount of market research” (Richer, 2000b, p.8).
The team engaging with young people must be flexible enough to allow frameworks that are transparent and that can accommodate change, and being ethical, by ensuring that promises can be delivered. Young people can read insincerity very easily and it has “brought many a corporation that relied on the youth dollar to its knees” (Richer, 2000b, p.8). This philosophy also draws from
Richer’s own knowledge of and practice in contemporary cultural issues, and the belief that young people engage deeply with such issues.
Wider resonances can also be drawn in terms of key theories pertaining to young people, specifically with reference to the redeployment of public space for young people to access. The Production Unit employed the belief that
“young people must be given space/forums to speak about issues that concern them” (McLean and Richer, 2000, p.70), as its underlining programming philosophy. This implies that any work created with and/or for young people needed to have been carried out within a consultative environment. As Giroux suggests:
110 …pedagogically and politically, young people need to be given the
opportunity to narrate themselves, to speak from the actual places where
their experiences are shaped and mediated. This suggests more than
letting kids have the opportunity to voice their concerns, it means
providing the conditions – institutional, economic, spiritual, and cultural –
that allow them to reconceptualize themselves as citizens and develop a
sense of what it means to fight for important social and political issues
that affect [sic] their lives, bodies, and society (in Epstein, 1998, p.48).
4.5a Stage X 1999: Current trends
As the second incarnation of this festival model, Stage X 1999 drew on the strengths of the 1997 model, such as the profiling of young artists, but shifted other aspects that were seen to be able to be improved upon, such as the
festival’s timeslot and length.3 Curatorially, the aim was to provide “spaces and contexts for the celebration of the arts created within and in relation to young people’s cultures” (Richer, 1999, p.2).
At this point in time, that is the late 1990s, key trends that emerged via the research process for Stage X 1999 included a reinvocation of punk, a wariness of obvious designer labels, and an appreciation of “dagginess”, meaning, ironically, “clothing or behaviour that is considered unfashionable, especially by young people” (Encarta Dictionary, 2001, p.361). This can be linked to the nostalgia revival, albeit from a tongue-in-cheek perspective. This impulse was evident in areas of key interest to young people generally, such as fashion, music and television culture. It was felt by the Unit that these issues strongly
3 As is evinced in Strategy Four, this ability to play with the model is one of the key advantages in having a core of senior festival staff that have worked together over a period of time.
111 resonated with young Brisbane audiences at the time, and were able to be explored via the construct of the Stage X festival.
Specifically, the philosophical underpinning for the 1999 festival drew on the trends of New Surrealism which resulted out of research into key trends in youth culture, primarily connecting with key theorists Angela McRobbie and
Douglas Rushkoff, and out of consultations with young people. New Surrealism refers to a reawakening of Surrealism, a movement which:
…aimed to liberate the powers of the unconscious […] surrealism’s
emphasis was on creating positive vehicles of expression against what its
proponents saw as the destruction of culture brought on by the so-called
rational thinkers of the time […] the surrealist movement of the 1920s
parallels what is surfacing on the streets today, as the new surrealists,
the artificial playsurists, challenge the norm. They are creating radical –
and often fantastic – new means of self-expression (Lopiano-Misdom and
De Luca, 1997, pp.53-54).
These writers discuss the manner in which then current practices within youth culture (including androgyny and the club culture in which young people live out fantasies, often dressing up like cartoon characters, experimentation with synthetics of all kinds, body piercing and tattooing, the dominance of computer games and role-playing) connected significantly with New Surrealism (Discussed in a meeting on 15 March 1999). This movement became a key influence for
Stage X 1999, especially in the framing of Five to Midnight, which is discussed in detail later in this chapter.
Another emergent theme that was especially important in discussions with young people was the sense of moving on to another point in life. This became strongly resonant in the commissioned piece Blurred, a collaboration between
112 QPAC and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which explored the period of ‘Schoolies’, the point at which Year 12 Queenslander school students finish their secondary schooling, and travel to the Gold Coast en masse to celebrate.
In 1999, the festival was programmed to coincide with the Queensland Biennial
Festival of Fine Music, and several works were programmed across both festivals, most notably the opera Agrippina, Handel’s opera that was re-framed as a soap opera, aiming to provide a context that was familiar to young audiences. Thus the underlying themes of Stage X 1999 connected strongly with the “Biennial’s themes of transitions – departures journeys, destinations, change” (Richer, 1999, p.1.).
It was at this point that Stage X was contextualised as a ‘boutique festival’ for the first time: “In planning a ‘boutique’ style festival, Stage X will focus directly on its target audience with its marketing and programming strategies converging to provide a strong market approach” (Richer, 1999, p.1). This market approach aimed to connect with a clear set of goals, articulated by the
Programming Unit:
…to assist in the development of a broader context that empowers young
people’s cultural interest; to utilise art-making that accommodates
flexible definitions and boundaries; and to stimulate a culture of learning
with and surrounding the event (Richer, 1999, p.6).
Given that the festival was produced within a largely conservative and mainstream arts organisation, it was vital that the festival had a degree of
‘street credibility’, and was badged effectively, so that target audiences wouldn’t feel that they were being either aggressively targeted, or patronised.
For the 1997 event, the term ‘festival’ was openly employed to describe the
113 event. However, by 1999 “Stage X ceased using the term ‘festival’ as an identifier and adopted the Swiss army knife logo to signify the variety of ways in which its processes and programs could be accessed” (Richer, in Lamoin,
2003, p.5). This badging device was the image of a Swiss army knife, with
‘Stage X’ inscribed on the front:
Figure 1: Stage X logo
(Source: QPAC marketing department)
Instead of tools, however, attached to the body of the knife is a pair of pliers, an old-fashioned film camera, an arm clutching a tambourine, and a wand, amongst other items. This range of items highlights the sense of pastiche and irony associated with the festival’s aesthetic, and also indicates the range of creative endeavours explored by young people, most obviously referring to filmmaking and music.
4.5b Stage X 2001: Current trends
Even though produced only two years later, the focus for the festival had shifted significantly so that the dominant theme was a preoccupation with consumerism, founded on the impact of academics such as Leadbeater in the
114 exploration of contemporary lifestyles, along with Florida’s emphasis on creativity, and both writers’ interest in patterns of consumption, discussed further in this chapter.
Young people are perceived as rapidly consuming trends and just as rapidly discarding them, and this focus on consumption was also contextualised philosophically for Stage X 2001, through the perceived decline of postmodernism. This trend had become evident amongst a number of academics, Charles Altieri, Susan Friedman and Kathryne Lindberg of the New
Modernisms Conference (Penn State University, October, 2000). They articulated that postmodernism was waning; yet no clear new direction was in evidence. A proliferation of terms such as ‘Postpostmodernism’, ‘Revelationism’,
‘Hypermodernism’ and ‘Neo modernism’ were thrown up as a means of replacement (Richer in Lamoin with Seffrin, 2003, p.13). Yet the meaning of these terms was opaque, and perhaps the most clearly articulated ‘new wave’ was that of ‘Post-postmodernism”.
This is a term that foregrounds evidence of a cultural desire to shift away
from the arbitrary nature of postmodernism, evident in an increasing tendency
to seek out and define the Modernist ideal of truth. Yet this cultural
environment, having been fundamentally shifted by Postmodernism, could never
reclaim a Modernist sensibility in the manner in which it had existed in the pre-
Postmodernist world. It was more a sense of re-evaluating Modernist
impulses, such as a desire to escape from being bound by previous historical
styles, via an emphasis on originality, a predilection for formalism, and a desire
for authenticity.
This postmodernist fatigue was also evident in other areas of cultural
expression at this time: in specific connection to youth culture, theorists such
as Angela McRobbie articulated the manner in which young people are well
115 entrenched within a postmodernist sensibility, where pastiche, eclecticism, irony and parody predominate, and as a reaction against this climate, there is a
‘longing’ to reconnect with Modernist concepts of authenticity, and sincerity.
Additional trends include the idea of the Post-Ironic condition, Revelationism
(which criticises Western society’s Millennial preoccupation with public prophesies, exposes and confessionals)
(www.templarlodge.com/revelationism.html), Paul Vallely’s discussion of “the human impulse to impose order on chaos, to make shapes out of the events of mere existence” (The Independent, 3 July 1999) and Jedediah Purdy’s call for young people to end chronic self- absorption and the love affair with irony in
For Common Things: Irony, Trust, and Commitment in America Today (1999,
Knopf, no place of publication cited).
In the realm of the performing arts, the In-Yer-Face theatre movement evident in the United Kingdom in the late 90s palpably embraced post- postmodernism, especially in its preoccupation with a profound scepticism about consumer culture, which, ironically, it may be argued, is the essence of postmodernism. This is evident in plays such as Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and
Fucking and David Grieg’s The Architect (http://www.inyerface- theatre.com/az.html p.2).
Thus, there was a strong cultural impulse to re-connect with a nostalgic sensibility, although the sense of irony and parody was still dominant. And whilst the subsequent consultation sessions with young people (as highlighted in
Strategy 2) were not necessarily framed within these particular terms, the essence of their comments corresponded closely with the academic concepts.
This trend of ‘Post-postmodernism’ was seen by the Programming Unit to be coupled with ‘New Consumerism’, which positioned ‘new consumers’ as being more informed, more involved and media savvy than ever before. Consumption
116 was viewed as increasingly grounded in self-image, control and political power.
There was a growing inclination towards a rejection of big, in favour of smaller, more authentic companies and products (Stage X 2001 Consultation Paper, p.8).
This is an issue strongly consolidated in the writings of Richard Florida, which
are addressed in detail in Chapter 7. ‘New Consumerism’ can be viewed in light
of young people’s rejection of being aggressively targeted by the marketing of
mainstream brand name companies, to the point that trends such as
customisation and the vogue for vintage as something unique, original and
authentic has become part of the mainstream. Vintage is a trend that has
permeated upwards; once the domain of poor but stylish students, it has
become valued by fashionistas, and has become in many instances prohibitively
expensive. It is the emphasis on the sense of having something that is unique,
nostalgic and ‘valuable’ in terms of its craftsmanship, as opposed to the
recognisably mass products available globally. This can be linked to the very
notion of boutique itself, as outlined in Chapter 5, and also to those elements
valued in the boutique festivals described here: quality and unique products
that draw cleverly on motifs from past eras, but contextualised within
contemporary thinking: “These two themes, the associated trends, theories and
attitudes which came out of the research, were also reflected in young people’s
comments and feedback during the consultation process” (Lamoin and Richer,
2001, p.8).
From the consultation process, three key issues were profiled, as priorities for
the young audiences within Stage X 2001: to connect, to create, and to curate.
The goal ‘to Connect’ aimed to connect with the creative lives of young people
by consulting with them regarding their arts, cultural interests and needs; for
the festival to keep abreast of current trends and issues within the cultural
lives of young people; and to include young people in the planning,
implementation and evaluation of Stage X.
117 The goal ‘to Create’ focussed on supporting young people to narrate their own cultural experiences, and the festival would do so by providing strategic opportunities for young people to publicly voice their ideas, knowledge and opinions; and to promote young people as sophisticated cultural contributors and aesthetes.
The third aim, ‘to Curate’, aimed to present a range of aesthetically grounded art works, and would do so by investing in a diverse range of partnerships and projects that support young artists; engage young artists to make new works for Stage X; and to present new multiform works and events that draw upon young people’s lifestyles, popular cultural and postmodern traditions (Stage X
Vision Statement, 2001).
These three priorities can be further contextualised within a wider set of philosophical principles that articulates the manner in which Stage X as a cultural entity positions young people. The philosophy which has underpinned all festivals produced by the Programming Unit hinges upon four key principles, of navigation, by which young people are positioned as skilled navigators of contemporary society; self-narration, by which young people narrate their own cultural experiences; diversity, which positions young people as diverse in their lived experiences, backgrounds and identities; and creativity, whereby young people are significant consumers and creators of cultural product (Richer in
Lamoin, 2002:4-5).
In the article, “Navigation and Self-narration: key points for working with young people in the arts” (2000), Richer effectively summarises key issues when working with young people, drawing on the occasionally oppositional views of Angela Mc Robbie and Henri Giroux. Giroux sees young people as “victims of a landscape with shifting boundaries in a society where meaning is contingent”
(in Richer, 2000, p.5). Alternatively, McRobbie suggests that “young people had
118 already responded positively to post-modernism, demonstrating their resourcefulness through the invention and development of new cultural forms”
(in Richer, 2000, p.5).
Richer believes that:
…young people are equipped with the skills to deconstruct and
aesthetically respond to popular cultural forms [and…] over the past few
decades, young people have challenged some of the dominant values that
previously determined what is good and what is bad art. Popular culture
responds to this challenge by mainstreaming young people’s inventions,
initiatives and innovations (2000b, p.6).
On an institutional level, these priorities connected with broader programming goals for QPAC: Cultural Development, Reconciliation, Industry Development,
Occupancy and Education (QPAT, 2001 in Lamoin, 2002:5).
The essence of such philosophical underpinning was the valuing of the audience as culturally capacious, and shaping the festival as a space in which young people curate their own festival experience.
4.6 Strategy Two: The consultation process
Before each Stage X or OUT OF THE BOX festival is programmed, a detailed process of consultation is undertaken with a variety of groups who are stakeholders in the resultant festival; the most significant group is the target audience itself. This privileging of consultation is a crucial underpinning to the
Programming Unit’s festival practice:
119 If young people are to enter a space or a context that has been
constructed by a mainstream institution, they need to be able to
recognise a validation of their presence, interests and ideas within that
institution’s planning. Validation is more likely to occur if vehicles that
allow for two-way communication are in place (Richer, 1999, p.4).
For Stage X the audience comprises young people between 13-26 years.
Consultation with these groups is augmented by discussions with young artists, and other interest groups such as youth arts organisations, teachers and young artists. For Stage X 1999 and 2001, young people were asked particular kinds of questions about their interests, their concerns, their idea of a festival, taste in music, responses to marketing, and so on. The aim was to glean an informed view from as wide a demographic as possible: regional, inner city, public school, private school, privileged, underprivileged, single sex and co- educational4.
The consultations with the target audiences for both festivals involved a period of in-schools consultations, which focused on specific issues as articulated by the team; for the OUT OF THE BOX process in 2000, this was focused on the issue of validating children’s experiences, which was complemented by other key imperatives including the provision of
“opportunities for children to share their own stories and artistry”, and well as communicating “directly with children during lead up, implementation and evaluation” (Richer, 2000a, p.8).
The consultation process is hardly exhaustive. What it provides is a snapshot that illustrates the kinds of issues relevant to young people at the time of each
4 The consultation work undertaken by the researcher for Stage X 2003 also provided detailed and valuable insight into the kinds of issues that preoccupied young people at this time, and is employed in 4.6a.
120 festival’s inception, in terms of social, cultural, aesthetic and political concerns.
The process brings to the fore issues common to all groups consulted, thus further consolidating the validity of issues that young people perceive to
impact upon them. From this research, the Programming Unit further shapes
the festival and reflects on its own ideas regarding the issues they had
highlighted themselves, as worthy of investigation.
Furthermore, the process of consultation is to an extent manipulative. Richer
has a particular agenda informed by her own knowledge of and research into
the target audience, and at one level, her preparatory consultation work with
target audiences is a means of testing this. A specific example was in the
consultation process for the 2004 festival: one of the underpinning “themes” that Richer was exploring was the idea of hope, influenced by Mary Zournazi’s book, Hope: new philosophies for change (2002). Richer was producing the key
curated work for the festival, The Red Tree, based on the children’s text by
Shaun Tan, and wished to evaluate children’s connection with her reading of the
text, which she viewed as being about hope. A series of in-schools
consultations was held with Year One and Year Two students, workshopping
both the text and the idea of hope in detail. The children’s responses to this
concept impacted directly onto the manner in which The Red Tree was shaped
as a piece of theatre for this age group. This consultation process is more
detailed than that which is employed in conventional festival management
practices. It is far more than a matter of sending out a survey, asking young
people what they think. It is an intensely concentrated conversation. The
process aims to measure how young people react to and engage with a particular
set of ideas that Richer is keen to explore. But Richer, in consultation with the
team and specifically with John Kotzas, makes the final decision regarding
which issues are privileged, and which are omitted. This is a necessary process
in order to provide shape and focus to the event. Significantly it is a highly
121 informed focus, grown out of consultation and research into current youth trends.
4.6a Stage X 1999 and 2001: The consultation process
As already indicated, the process of consultation for Stage X involved working with a group of high schools, usually about five or six in number, which reflects a heterogeneous representation of Brisbane, as outlined above.
The schools were essentially chosen via a network of teachers who were responsive to the work of Stage X, or who had some connection with either the organisation of QPAC, or have perhaps been past students through the
Queensland University of Technology (QUT), whose Department of
Performance Studies has strong connections with Stage X and OUT OF THE
BOX, via staff and practicums.
The specific process within schools involved asking students key questions, and engaging them in specific activities that would crystallise various attitudes regarding issues relevant to the group. For the 2001 process, for example, students were asked to articulate what they understood a festival to mean, along with questions regarding their taste in music, and their thoughts on consumerism.
For Stage X 2001, the aims of these consultation sessions were to connect
“with a diverse sample of young people about their perceptions of festivals, their musical tastes and responses to 1999 Stage X marketing” (Lamoin and
Richer, 2001, p.2). 147 young people were involved, comprising high school students, university students and arts advocates. Obviously such a relatively small sample does not provide a comprehensive representation of young people living in Brisbane, but it does function “to highlight a number of key focus areas
122 that enables Stage X to connect with a number of young people regarding their arts and cultural interests and needs” (Lamoin and Richer, 2001, p.2).
From this consultation process, a number of clear issues emerged for Stage X
2001. The issue of consumerism became a dominant trope, and was a key impulse in shaping the Shopping Mall component of the key curated work, Five to Midnight, which is examined in 4.9b.
A complementary process in which the researcher was significantly involved
further substantiates the nature of the consultation process: in 2003, for the
Five to Midnight event to be held in December of that year as part of Stage X
2003, the researcher facilitated the consultation process with students. This
undertaking involved asking students to design their ideal event, to articulate
what elements constituted an enjoyable experience, and what elements did not.
Further questions were asked about the issues that concerned them, along with
their thoughts on marketing. The students worked in small groups, which
changed throughout the sessions, and they then reported to the entire cohort.
The age range for the 2003 process was Year 10 students, with most students
being 15 years of age; for the 2001 process, the focus was on Grade 11
students, and the schools consulted were Villanova College, a Catholic Boys
School, Bremer State High School, situated on the outskirts of Brisbane, Park
Ridge State High School, and Somerville House, a privileged Uniting Church
Girl’s School. The reason for the shift from Year 11 to 10 in 2003 was that
prior research by the Programming Unit revealed that there was a lack of
activity for audiences of this specific age bracket, and also because it was a
group that had not been consulted by the Stage X team for previous festivals.
The significance of beach culture was particularly potent for the young people
consulted, evoking a sense of innocence, security and a nostalgia for a time
past. The result of this motif was that the key curated event for Stage X
123 2003, Five to Midnight was be designed with strong references to beach culture, which had not been a consideration prior to the consultation process.
Returning to the 2001 process, specific comments from the young people with whom the team consulted exemplify how the consultation process fed directly into programming decisions:
1. “One of the best things about previous Five to Midnights is its level of
interaction.” (Interaction, which will be explored in Chapter 7, was one
of the key aims of the festival experience and programming for the
2001 festival aimed to make elements even more interactive in the
dance tent in Shopping Mall);
2. “It is a unique event, unlike any other experience in Brisbane.” (This is
a point that was echoed in the Audience Reception Studies undertaken
for the Five to Midnight 2001 event, evinced in 4.10c, and is an
element that the Programming Unit wished to consolidate. Since
inception, Five to Midnight contained an arts component that featured
the work of young emerging artists. It is this component which sets
the event apart from other concert-based events for young people,
and was included specifically to profile the work of these young
artists, and to expose audiences to their work. Freakshow, as it was
titled in 1997 and 1999, and which then became Shopping Mall in 2001,
was shaped via the Programming Unit with a particular bent, parodic in
tone and highly potent in connecting with contemporary cultural
tropes, yet also drawing on traditional renderings of the carnivalesque,
which is explored later in this chapter);
3. “Freakshow could explore consumerism, for example, it could be a
shopping aisle and look at notions of bargain, purchasing, showbags,
124 branding, ethical consumerism.” (This exact issue became the focus
for Freakshow in 1999, as it connected strongly with current theories
about consumerism, and the event was subsequently renamed Shopping
Mall for the 2001 festival);
4. “…create a more intimate experience and encourage more active
participation.’” (Again, this sense of intimacy was one of the recurring
positive comments provided by audience members of the Five to
Midnight event in 2001, as the results of the Reception Studies in
4.10c evince. In contrast to other band-driven events for young
audiences, this sense of intimacy was a crucial factor in the success of
Five to Midnight).
These specific comments were also connected by the Programming Unit to dominant research themes: Post-postmodernism and New Consumerism.
The consultation process proffered a ‘testing ground’ for the ideas being explored by the production team of Stage X, and also allowed an insight into the ways in which young people experience their world, and how a festival can connect to those experiences, illuminate them and even transform them. Were the processes more detailed, involving larger numbers of young people over a protracted period of time, the results would obviously have been more exhaustive.
4.7 Strategy Three: Marriage of these elements into programming
From the strategies articulated here, then, each festival program is created as a result of the issues expressed by young people, married with the team’s shaping of themes and resonances, drawn from its research. These themes are rarely overt, but do impact directly onto programming, in order to employ the
125 festival as a site for exploration and dialogue with young audiences. An examination of each festival in isolation highlights this marriage of research and consultation:
4.7a Stage X 1999: Programming
The initial Stage X Festival was a ten-day event held in September, 1997. For
Stage X 1999, the event was held in July, and ran concurrently with the
Brisbane Biennial International Music Festival. Its format was expanded from the previous time frame to 16 days overall, and also included a program to connect with young people in regional areas.
Programming was a melange of key-curated works and bought-in product, and reflects the consultation and research process significantly. There were certain parts of the program that were specifically chosen for the festival by the Programming Unit, but others were works that had been programmed prior to the specific articulation of the festival’s philosophy, but were included in the festivals. This was somewhat problematic, in that the festival did not have complete autonomy regarding its total program. However, the final program presented a strong variety of pieces across a diversity of art forms (see
Appendix B).
The most adventurous piece of programming took shape as Five to Midnight, a seven-hour event held in the QPAC forecourt, involving popular bands and a range of arts based activities, with a key arts component, Freakshow. In this event, the choice of bands was the event’s key selling point. Programming ensured that the bands embodied a balance of styles, and that there was variety in the choice of headlining bands and emerging local acts.
126 4.7b Stage X 2001: Programming
In terms of structure, Stage X 2001 shifted dramatically from its predecessor, moving from a more traditional festival model of a ten-day event of intense activity in 1997 and 1999, to running more obliquely over a four- month period, from September to December. The format of the festival was
in constant evolution, as a means to create a model that was flexible enough to
suit the particular aims of each festival. As previously noted, this was the
festival’s first positioning as ‘boutique’: “In planning a ‘boutique’ style festival,
Stage X will focus directly on its target audience and with its marketing and
programming strategies converging to provide a strong market approach”
(Richer, 1999, p.1). This particular term positions the festival in a potent
cultural place, as Chapter 5 analyses.
By the time of this festival, the Unit was also problematising the very notion of
‘festival’ itself, as a meaningful term for young people. This problematisation
was timely, given the plethora of festivals globally was causing a cultural
critique of the form. As Michael Billington has suggested: “It would be a dull
world without festivals. But there are many that start as a celebration and
carry on as an institution […] Too many festivals are resurrected simply out of
habit; the good ones constantly redefine themselves” (Billington, 2001, p.20).
And it is this definition that both Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX aimed for, by
a constant process of evaluation and self-development.
During the 2001 planning process, the Programming Unit further problematised
the labelling of Stage X as a festival, with the word ‘festival’ written on the
advertising material and deliberately scratched off. In so doing, the
Programming Unit essentially rejected the concept of festival, viewing the
implications of that term as mainstream and therefore a “turn-off” (Kotzas
interview, 9 October 2001) to its target audience of 12–26 year olds.
127 Accepting this point, however, it must be noted that Stage X possessed strong festival qualities, especially if the term is contextualised historically: the idea of a particular community celebrating its uniqueness; and particular to
Freakshow was the sense of subversion and inversion evident in medieval events like the Feast of Fools, whereby the status quo is parodied for a short window of time. These connections are further addressed in 4.9a.
This problematising of the notion of “festival” can be connected to Giroux’s belief that:
As artists and educators, we need to develop pedagogical practices in
which discourses and representations of the adolescent body in its
relationship to others are mediated through considerations of power,
politics, and ethics […] Not only do young people need to become critical
agents able to recognize, appropriate, and transform how dominant power
works on and through them, they also need a pedagogy steeped in
respectful selfhood, one that does not collapse social into personal
problems, systematic oppression into the language of victim blaming. In
short, they need a pedagogy that provides the basis for improvisation and
responsible resistance (in Epstein, 1998, p.49).
The program for the 2001 festival aimed to embrace such notions of participation into key cultural debates and art forms (see Appendix C), with a significant variation on the Five to Midnight idea: the Freakshow of 1999 became Shopping Mall, and the space was reconfigured so that it now comprised three central entertainment elements: the Bandstage, which featured five bands, Shopping Mall, which featured more than thirty artists and twenty installations and performances, linked by some kind of thematic critiquing of consumerism, and the Pocu Palace Dance Space, which featured local DJs as well as dance and swing lessons. The design for this space
128 featured recycled plastic products and inflatable plastic sculpture, providing further connections to the focus on consumerism.
Thus, the programming was expanded in size and scope, and drew on a greater diversity of young people’s cultural experience than the 1999 festival.
4.8 Strategy Four: The management model: i) the key team, ii) a democratic management process
Two key elements have been identified as crucial to the efficacy of the
Programming Unit’s management: i) a core team which has worked together for a number of festivals, and ii) a democratic, ‘flat’ management style. Each of these elements informs and shapes the other.
As already outlined, the core team producing Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX consisted of John Kotzas (Executive Producer), Susan Richer (Creative
Producer) and Deborah Murphy (Program Manager/General Manager), as well as a small team of producers and technical staff, and a core of young arts workers with particular skills in areas such as design, production and specific art forms.
The team was committed to key social justice issues embedded in youth culture, as well as a management style that was consultative, inclusive, and effectively weaved those management and marketing strategies into that philosophical framework. The Programming Unit’s combined knowledge, experience and history together within this process of protocol, meant that it defined an effective model of festival production.
The Unit was committed to “empowering, engaging and presenting a youth voice"” (Kotzas interview, 27 April 1999), which was realised via the target audience substantially authoring its own festival experience. This is evident in creative managerial processes involving the designers, technical crew, marketing team, bureaucrats, caterers, and most crucially, the commissioned
129 artists and target audience. It occurred through the initial processes of consultation so that members of the festival teams went into schools, and talked with children and young adults, their teachers, tertiary students, young artists and stakeholders.
At the time of commencement of this research project, John Kotzas was the
Producer of the Programming Unit, and the style of management was largely democratic in that each person was free to express ideas. Meetings were run as a round table discussion, rather than a head of table positioning; however, the final decision-making process for major concerns rested with Kotzas.
While there have been a number of different festival administrative models at
QPAC, the models for these boutique festivals grew out of these previous experiences, so that there was a core who had worked together over a number of years, developing a strong sense of protocol and practice, and who, at the time of writing, continue to do so. This ongoing management can be seen to significantly sustain ability, the evolution of ideas and the fostering of community connection.
This core team has worked together over a significant number of years. Kotzas joined QPAC in 1989 as Education Officer, and subsequently became Senior
Project Officer, Education. Richer began as an associate Producer with Stage
X in 1997 and Murphy commenced in 1996 as part of the Public Programs component of the Warana Festival. Over this period, the group has built a potent working relationship, knowing each other’s strengths and limitations, so that with each new festival, processes have been long established and improved, ensuring that each event does not have to be completely recreated.
This provides stability and a through line that builds upon each event. This familiarity has built an environment in which the notion of “festival” can be played with, because the Unit has developed a philosophical and managerial
130 shorthand that ensures that many of the issues of staff dynamics have already been worked through. New staff members can be inserted into this structure, even though the difficulty for a new member gaining insight into processes that are so well established can at times be problematic. Furthermore, issues such as clear role specification and acknowledgment are often blurred, and with contracted staff, the essential need to match the person to the job, can prove difficult.
John Kotzas suggested that a key ingredient for festival management was
“project protocol” (Pippen interview with John Kotzas, 10 August 1997). This pertains to issues such as being able to discern the needs of each particular project and the needs of those creating it, which has a particular dynamic when working with young or relatively inexperienced artists; being knowledgeable about funding in terms of whether it comes from within QPAT or other sources; being able to facilitate team dynamics at their production site as well as welding these to festival processes (Pippen, 1997, p.6). Thus, a key tool employed was a constant monitoring of the situation, where both resources and organisational structures could be shifted, as required.
Kotzas also suggested that the other key issue was compromise. “The elements that have to be played off against each other are funding, marketing, resources and facilities” (Pippen, 1997, p.7).
During the 1999 festival, the issue that came to the foremost significantly was
the workings of the core team itself, and the practice of working with the core
team over a number of years became problematic. Field notes highlight how
this close personal relationship within the core team caused enormous stress
and anxiety. When personal issues came to encroach on the workplace, it
added to what Deborah Murphy felt was an extremely short lead time, when it
was initially proposed that the festival be held in September (notes from mid-
131 May 2001), as no acts or artists or staff other than the core crew had been appointed. Furthermore, the OUT OF THE BOX festival had been moved to an earlier time frame for 2002 (May) of which Richer was the Creative Producer, as well as Stage X, creating an extremely intense production schedule.
The atmosphere was markedly different from the 1999 process, in which there existed a sense of camaraderie and trust, and in which issues could be openly thrashed around, until a positive decision was arrived at by everyone. For this event, there was a profound sense of despondency, of feeling unsupported, and that issues were insurmountable, at least in the late stages of May.
However, further discussions between the key Unit members and the researcher in early June presented a different complexion. It was proposed that Five to Midnight, the key curated event, should occur in December, which gave everyone much needed breathing and planning space. Furthermore, solid professional relationships were re-built, so that ultimately the Unit could effectively work together again in a trusting and respectful environment.
The sense of ‘the team’ was further intensified by the Unit’s physical separation from the rest of the organisation. This physical separation afforded the Unit the freedom of distance and position to create a management style that best suited the group itself and the work it was producing, without immediately being at odds with the rest of QPAC whose administration was more conservative and formally structured.
Thus, the research suggests that in this specific situation, the experience, expertise and ultimately the solid friendships within that group, salvaged the situation, so that the process could be re-engaged. Consequently, the advantages of a key team working together over a substantial period of time largely outweigh the negative aspects of this dynamic.
132
4.8a Stage X 1999: Management model
The methodology employed by the Programming Unit for Stage X 1999, aimed for a consultative approach, melded with current trends in youth culture:
Large institutions are hierarchical, that’s their nature but Programming
per se always saw itself as a democratising place in that it’s really
important to bounce ideas around […] if we can be more generous and open
and cater for a broader open way of working, then we’ll find that young
people, our audiences will find more ways of accessing us and so it’s quite
deliberate for us to […] work in the way that we’re working and that’s
quite supported by the rest of the organisation, even though we’re often
seen to be the group that breaks the rules all the time (John Kotzas
interview, 27 April 1999).
However, whilst the process involved deep levels of consultation with the community and with artists, this was not to the exclusion of a sense of artistic vision or shaping. There were always key philosophical issues that drove the festivals, as Strategies 1, 2 and 3 have illuminated.
Without such underpinnings, Stage X would have exhibited little shape or consistency (a criticism, incidentally, often hurled at the Brisbane Festival).
However, these themes are never officially stated:
If we analyse either Blurred or Five to Midnight then the process involved
in building product that is ultimately the evening or the piece of
entertainment, there’s thematic, aesthetic themes that we’re trying to
achieve, but there’s also processes of empowering, engaging and
presenting a youth voice and it’s those three things that connects it; it’s
133 when they connect that’s what the Festival is (John Kotzas interview, 28
April 1999).
The manner in which this consultation process shifted into programming was through a democratic style of leadership, meaning “group members take responsibility for their own style of operation, the processes they use are robust and they have the skills to intervene when problems still arise” (Dick,
1991, p.6.). Kotzas provided an environment in which this was largely workable, however, as the Producer of the Unit, he also took final responsibility for decisions made, and ensured that the Programming Unit’s processes and philosophies connected with the key aims and responsibilities of QPAC as a whole.
Brainstorming was a technique in constant application, often including members of a relevant arts area or community being invited to discuss ideas. The advantages of this mode of administration ensures that staff members are encouraged to share ideas with those “at the coalface”, so that the processes of festival production are largely transparent. This provides a community with a dual sense of trust and ownership of the festival itself.
Such a management style was beneficial to the organisation as a whole, or so the Programming Unit thought: “Stage X won’t necessarily guarantee QPAC an audience, but it does teach the organisation alternative management practices”
(Richer interview, 27 April 1999).
A practice which Dick refers to as “minor intervention” (1991, p.93) was in evidence in the management of Stage X 1999, especially for the auxiliary staff brought in specifically for this festival, and therefore not long-term employees of the Programming Unit. Minor intervention is a practice used for all festivals under the guise of the Production Unit. It implies that ideas and enthusiasms
134 can flourish, but a safety net of support is provided if required. Kotzas admitted that this was often a precarious balance, as the reconciling of artistic and administrative areas is always intrinsically fraught, and that the administrative models need to shift somewhat to accommodate the creative endeavour (Kotzas interview, 31 May 1999). This minor intervention was particularly evident in the ways in which both Susan Richer and Deborah
Murphy worked with junior or new members of staff, or with young artists, employing an essentially open door policy, in that the artists were encouraged to seek guidance and advice from the Programming Unit, if desired. It is worth noting that Richer has been a formal mentor within Youth Arts Queensland’s
Young Artists Mentoring Scheme, with then emerging performance artist Kamal
Krishna, who has come to be one of the key performers for all Stage X festivals, so her connection with young local artists is well grounded. Deborah
Murphy’s extensive experience also nurtured less experienced staff members and artists, so that a passing on of such experience can be seen to benefit the local arts community as an entity, and in particular young artists.
Kotzas suggested that overall, “our job as curators and producers is to create the aesthetic framework within which the artists and participants create the work” (interview, 27 April 1999). The articulation of that framework or philosophy is not always made publicly explicit, however, as is the case with other festivals (for example Cate Fowler’s OUT OF THE BOX festivals had clearly stated themes, and the 2002 Adelaide Festival, in which the five core themes were openly articulated, consciously shaped programming choices, as
Chapter 6 explores). What proved timely for the Programming Unit was that in the process of consultation, these themes often emerge organically from the artists and designers themselves. For Kotzas, this suggested “thematically or philosophically, the festival’s sitting in the right place” (interview, 27 April
1999).
135 However, deciding upon how that framework should function is not always straightforward; an example of the frustrations of this process is evident in the following account of a meeting on 17 May 1999 for Stage X, with, among others, Kotzas, Richer and Murphy. The topic was the Vulcana production
Blissed Out, Distraught and Intoxicated that featured as part of Stage X.
Kotzas questioned how QPAC’s involvement would make any difference to the nature of the production. Murphy saw that QPAC’s involvement meant that the production was affordable for Vulcana. But Kotzas was concerned that support should be other than merely financial, and questioned whether this kind of support was any different from the kind of support provided by Arts
Queensland, the state government chief arts funding body. Richer suggested that Stage X supported Vulcana by providing a context for high quality product and upmarket revenue, and Murphy added QPAC was a high profile partner for
Vulcana. Still Kotzas questioned whether QPAC was disconnected from the process if the support was essentially monetary. Murphy strongly disagreed; she, as the key QPAC staff member attached to the work, felt very strongly connected to the development of the production. Kotzas was not convinced, concerned that QPAC was not really supporting the company in terms of the spirit of what was happening. He asked if there was an invisible wall of support from QPAC or was it an impenetrable wall?
The situation was not easily resolved, but it illustrates how seriously issues of support for the artists were felt by the staff. Furthermore, Kotzas wanted to ensure that the artists felt connected to the organisation, and also to avoid a production turning sour so that QPAC was publicly admonished. This was especially important for the festival because word of mouth was the event’s biggest marketing tool, especially for Stage X, which didn’t yet have the reputation of OUT OF THE BOX. Thus, it was essential that the artists felt supported by QPAC, and would publicly acknowledge this. The above exchange also highlights the value of key staff such as Murphy and Kotzas having a long
136 working relationship, and in which they were comfortable enough with each other to engage in this kind of debate openly, without fear of recrimination or, at worst, dismissal. This is the real advantage to a core team working effectively together over a number of years: the discussion can be honest and meaningful.
Notes from a meeting with Susan Richer and Louise Gough, a key producer for the festival regarding Electronica, one of the performance spaces in Five to
Midnight, effectively served to highlight the working methodology of the
process: Electronica, which had also featured in 1997, was a “chillout” area, in which audiences could sit down and relax with a coffee, DJs mixing amidst a strong “retro” environment including board games. This environment reflected the aim of the producers, to focus on a merging of screen culture, fashion and electronics, whilst operating as a relaxed area where audiences could get away from the frenetic energy of the rest of the event. The shaping of this particular event raised fundamental questions and issues pertaining to youth culture. The overall concept for this event, which impacted significantly on
Freakshow as well, was the idea of how one authors oneself, how one engages
with technology. This became the hook on which Electronica was hung, rather
than the technology itself. It was decided to change the name of this space to
the Do Tank, which further reflected the sense of audience authorship.
In an interview with Kotzas and Richer (28 April 1999), Kotzas suggested that
in the processes of empowering, engaging and presenting a youth voice, when
these elements connect is the real formula for a festival’s success, and is in
fact the fundamental reason for existence: “what we’re trying for really hard
is not to have a festival that’s curated by one person about a whole lot of
different facets of young people”. The aim of the festival was to be fluid and
multi-dimensional, reflecting a diversity of youth cultures.
137 However, it must be acknowledged that as the festival is created within the auspices of QPAC, subject to government imperatives and policy, there are only certain parameters that can be stretched or subverted, rather than overturned, and the key tensions between reconciling artistic and administrative areas often prove overwhelming. For example, Kotzas suggested that there was no company infrastructure to support one of the key-curated pieces, Blurred, and thus the kinds of practices established by the
Programming Unit were at this point not easily understood by the rest of the organisation. The specific problems inherent in such a multi-layered, multimedia show, which involves young and vibrant, but in some ways, relatively inexperienced staff, were not easily tackled by QPAC, perhaps because these were issues that the organisation had never really encountered previously
(interview with Kotzas, 31 May 1999).
4.8b Stage X 2001: Management model
By the 2001 event the very notion of applying the term ‘festival’ was being problematised: “what constitutes a ‘festival’ – length, a sense of celebration, a range of thematically connected activities, a particular audience or location?
Stage X reflected some of the complexity of these ideas in its marketing and imagery, seeking to promote wider industry and community debate” (Lamoin with Seffrin, 2003, p.5). The manner in which the work was contextualised and therefore managed, also shifted somewhat.
The working process for the creation of Stage X 2001 revisited the 1997 methodology, which was structured as:
1. Project Planning, addressing the parameters of the project, a timeline,
infrastructure, budgets, forecasting.
138 2. Market Research: undertaken by consultants that utilised focus group
based methodology.
3. Literature Survey: consultation with youth arts workers, analysis of
existing data, resulting in a discussion paper;
4. Out of this the philosophical principles, goals, objectives and
partnerships were created;
5. Marketing tools: both traditional and new. Strong support from
private sector, especially large corporations;
6. Festival program: consisting of a range of arts based leisure options
for young people (QPAC Programming Unit Methodology document,
1997).
Therefore, in terms of process, the Unit was flexible in re-employing past
structures or reworking them, as occurred for the 1999 process.
4.9 Strategy Five: Positioning of the audience as author
The processes thus far discussed involving consultation, research and programming all underpin the key aim of the Programming Unit to position the audience in an authorial role. Both the consultation process and the manner in which the festivals were programmed aimed to ensure that the audience directly impacted on the experience. Such positioning can be seen to go against the traditional model of the Artistic Director as auteur, and thus creates a very different kind of festival experience for audiences (see Chapter 6 for an analysis of the more conventional model).
A key aspect of the positioning of the audience in this way, is the notion of the work “being built while you’re in the middle of it, like with Five to Midnight you see it being built before your eyes, the sense of DIYness […] it’s not a form
139 looking for form or definition, it’s a form responding to the current cultural and political climate” (Richer interview, 9 October 2001).
Obviously there is a key difference between the DIY quality of Stage X and that within those kinds of traditional community festival events still practised
“by local people, generally with no public subsidy, simply to have a good time
[which] punctuate the civic calendar in ways that are relevant to each place”
(Landry and Bianchini, 1995:40). Stage X was produced by a government statutory body, growing specifically out of government policy, and was highly constructed and curated by a team of arts professionals, with more of an aim than mere enjoyment, even though this was a key consideration. The ultimate aim, however, was to create a meaningful dialogue with the audience, and to create an atmosphere of enjoyment and celebration of the cultural interests specific to that group.
4.9a Freakshow, 1999: Audience as author
Louise Gough, one of the key temporary staff members for Freakshow in 1997 and 1999, considered that the raison d’etre for this element of the Five to
Midnight event was a “groundedness, engaging with youth cultural forms, embracing arts processes that accommodate flexible definitions and boundaries” (Meeting 23 March 1999).
The idea of Freakshow was to subvert the notion of the traditional carnival freakshow, in which what was perceived as grotesque or unnatural was stigmatised. The version in 1999 attempted to tap into that notion of ‘dark and seedy’ without actually being dark and seedy, so that there was a sense of joyously highlighting difference, rather than positioning the different as disempowered. Freakshow in 1999 extended the tone of the previous festival’s event, which had included a Peep Show installation featuring a totally beige
140 post-apocalyptic kitchen, a medicine man feature show with a midget as the medicine man, Dr. Dan and his exhibition of cow livers in a blender, a giant Dolly
Varden cake.5 It was this feature of the festival that most profoundly showcased young artists (meeting, 15 March 1999), essentially on their own terms.
For Freakshow in 1999, 51 submissions were received, which was three times as many as in 1997 – the word-of-mouth strategy to engage young artists for this event had been successful. The aim was also for Freakshow to be bigger and
more intense than in 1997 (meeting, 8 March 1999). The team was striving for
a balance between performance, static installation and performance
installation. And of course a sense of ‘kookiness’ 6 was also valued. For those
artists whose proposals were ultimately not included, the reasons given were
essentially that they couldn’t realise their idea within the $500 budgetary
boundary, or the idea was not clearly articulated. By the time of a meeting on
24 May 1999, there were 28 performers in Freakshow, five of whom had been
featured in the 1997 event.
The event was marketed as “a boulevard of curious curios, banal voyeurisms and
illustrious illusions” (Stage X Press Release, 10 June 1999) and presented cutting edge practice of young Brisbane artists. It involved the commissioning of 26 works, ranging from sculptural installations, slide installations, performance artists, mud wrestlers, a ventriloquist, dancers and an acrobatic freakshow with a stunt violinist. Rather than having provided these artists with a specific brief, what was commissioned was work already practiced by the
5 A Dolly Varden cake, employing the name of the Dickensian character, uses the head and torso of a doll and the cake is shaped like the doll’s skirt. It was very popular in the 1970s in Australia, for small girls’ birthday parties. #5
6 Although the dictionary definition of this word suggests “unpleasantly eccentric”, for this event, the tone was more of an amiable eccentricity.
141 artists, that the producers felt connected strongly to the zeitgeist of
Freakshow 1999. The only limitations placed upon them were that their vision could be realised within practical and budgetary confines, and contextually, that the work was not racist or sexually offensive. A strong degree of subversion was also highly desirable, to fit in with the sense of overturning the status quo, for the duration of the event. Furthermore, a balance between performance, static installation and performance installation, was desirable
(Richer interview, 10 April 1999).
There were 26 acts for Freakshow in total, which married the bizarre and the freakish with a tongue-in-cheek sensibility. The event projected a construct of deliberate performativity, where the aim was to highlight and parody the nature of performance itself, the ‘Here I am and don’t I look grand’ tradition of dodgy7 amateur eisteddfods. The performers, through the parodic nature of their work, and its framing, contextualised the audience’s role to both celebrate and subvert the conventions: by laughing at the deliberate dodginess or dubious nature of the acts, the audience substantially celebrated this quality. In this way, the actor/spectator divide was blurred even further. On many levels, the interaction between actor and audience made the event, for example in the Mud Arm Wrestling booth, which parodied the premise of the
Game Show, in which audiences were invited to come up and try their luck; at the Access Arts booth participants were blindfolded and subsequently involved in a schlock horror sensory experience; at Patio Party, audience members became part of the fiction of a 70s patio party, taking on drinks, fondues and interacting in the role of guests with the actors.
7 This is a term implying that something is not of a particularly high standard, and often results in a fairly contrived program.
142 Furthermore, the other key element cemented via Freakshow was the connection to ancient rituals of theatre practice, in which the event operated as a subversive device, in which the general public, for a window of time, overturned accepted social morays of good taste and behaviour.
Henry Giroux argues:
…traditionally, the body for youth has been one of the principal terrains
for multiple forms of resistance and as a register of risk, pleasure and
sex […the] developing a sense of agency, self-definition, and well-placed
refusals […] the body was outside the reach of dominant forms of moral
regulation and sexual containment (in Epstein, 1998, pp.28-29).
Such a perspective has strong connections to the importance of play in
Freakshow, the potency of which lies in its ability to subvert those elements
held “sacred” by high art: art as exultation: here it is the daggy, the off-beat,
the off-kilter being celebrated, art as a means of beautification: the grotesque
is the exalted in Freakshow. Such elements have obvious links to western
cultural traditions; the link to the celebration of the grotesque is important
here. As Twitchell discusses, regarding the traditional form of Carnival:
The power of the vulgar […] was too dynamic to be totally repressed, and
so it was institutionalized at the margin. The Carnival became its
celebration. Only in controlled display could what was considered the
‘grotesque’ be acknowledged, could youth be served, foolishness indulged
[…] the Church recognized [the Freaks’] allure as both a drawing card and
an admonition, and displayed them on feast days (Twitchell, 1992, p.57).
143 The term ‘freakshow’ alludes to the spectacle of the European fair; the
Medicine Man show of the Nineteenth Century American frontier, and of course, the carnivalesque tradition as discussed by Bakhtin who posits:
…carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal (Bakhtin, 1984, p.10).
Furthermore, Docker perceives that the “grotesque aesthetic” (1994, p.200) is now evident in contemporary television programs like South Park and The
Simpsons, which embody aspects of the grotesque, and Freakshow and even
Shopping Mall re-ignite the live performative power of the grotesque.
Freakshow taps into the sense of the carnival world duping the public with its array of freaks, who were often fake. This festival’s version celebrates the duping, so that the audience colludes with the artist in celebrating the trickery, rather than being deceived by it.
In terms of contemporary youth culture, an event like Freakshow offered young people the space to create a reading of themselves that was empowering, an alternative to what Giroux describes as:
…in the profit-driven world of advertising and fashion, the image and
culture of youth are appropriated and exploited for the high pleasure
quotient they evoke. The body in this “fashionscape” does not represent
the privileged terrain of agency, but rather serves as a site of spectacle
and objectification, where youthful allure and sexual titillation are
marketed and consumed by teens and adults who want to indulge a stylized
narcissism and a self that is all surface (in Epstein, 1998, p.34).
144 The playing with fantasy, with identity and technology, addressed wider issues surrounding youth culture during the late 1990s, and the ability to ‘play’ with the projected images and the concepts behind them, has become a key factor in what it means to be young.
Elements of youth culture are awash with such practice and young people are seen to be highly skilled in reading mixed and parodic messages, if they are indeed meant to be read at all. Gadamer's position regarding the spectator/viewer interpreting in a manner contextualised by historiography is ensconced in the programming: for Freakshow, models of youth and popular
culture purposely parody, raid, debunk myths of our historicity, the audience
being required to read both myth and parody, and it is through this perception
of the event, that the event itself becomes complete. The contribution of the
audience is vital, in both a far more immediate and long-term sense, from the
journey of consultation through to the actual reading of and participation in
the work.
Rod Wissler suggested that Freakshow draws on the ancient festival concept of the Lord misrules, as Appendix A presents, in which the public space is momentarily claimed by the other. In this instance, it can be seen that the subversion works to assist the community in valuing the other rather than consistently marginalizing it, by temporarily positioning the other centre-stage
(meeting, 31 March 1999). Similarly, composer Richard Vella suggests that such a sense of ‘topsi-turviness’ provides another dimension that encourages a different reading of the status quo (QUT Sound of Theatre lecture, 9 April
2003). In this regard, the festival celebrates youth culture on its own terms,
in its own forms and structures; it can be viewed as a celebration of a lifestyle.
This alludes back to traditions evident in Warana, which celebrates the
particular lifestyle that is Brisbane. In this manner, the use of festival is as a
cultural development tool, whereby John Kotzas in particular and Tony Gould
145 were positioned as cultural planners, employing festivals to create a cultural identity very deliberately, almost out of a sense of ‘absence’ of identity, tapping into what they perceive is not fully celebrated. This concept of the festival as celebration of lifestyle is a crucial one and will be explored in detail in Chapter 7.
4.9b Shopping Mall 2001: Audience as author
As already outlined in 4.7b, for the Five to Midnight component of Stage X, the focus for the work displaying young artists shifted considerably in 2001.
Out of the research and consultation process, Freakshow metamorphosed into
Shopping Mall:
A surreal environment where stores may not be what they seem and you
could get more than you bargained for. Stroll down the aisle, peer
through the windows, weave your way through shops, stalls, mannequins,
billboards and sales assistants. Modify your appearance, construct your
identity, make a stand (Lamoin, 2001, p.1).
Just as parody and kitsch were strong elements of Freakshow, so, too were these qualities apparent in Shopping Mall, yet presented through the lens of
New Modernism. Via an emphasis on consumerism, the event both celebrated and critiqued this potent cultural practice, as the programming of works evinces:
Wonder Rok - a promotional stand featured Wonder Roks, and included an infomercial, by Jarren Borghero; Susan’s Limb Replacement, a demented beauty salon, where audiences watched as patients had body parts replaced by magic, by Circus Minimus; Baby Max Vending, a machine which dispensed babies for which “parents” could choose the eye colour, sex, and so on, by Victoria
146 Maccoll; Cosmic Cosmetician, in which a blind cosmetician provided make-up and
colour advice to clients; and Mirror Ball, an enormous disco ball for the audience’s aesthetic pleasure, the No Kissing Booth allowed audiences to purchase sincerity, unrequited love, and genuine affection; Six hundred dollars
was an installation consisting of $600 displayed in $5 notes pegged on ropes in
a space with a closed circuit television. Money was presented as the ultimate
commodity, and audiences could choose to take the money, but whilst they were
under surveillance. Eat More Beef by Kamal Krishna, presented a space as the backroom of a butcher shop, overladen with the sense of a crime scene. This piece explored the idea of verfremdungseffekt, the sense of seeing something from a different perspective, and drew on brutalisation within consumer patterns; Take note: presented a mass of post-it notes for audiences to write
to themselves, or to take from the walls, in a kind of fortune telling of inanity,
exploring the kinds of public notes people write to each other, for example
“keep the kitchen tidy”. Audience members shared a problem with Tyrone
Shoelaces (actor David Megarrity) who shoots a suction-capped arrow at the
notes and then used the retrieved message to impart advice; Draw on art presented photographic prints which audience members customised with oil pastels, and the completed work was then exhibited, positioning audiences simultaneously as consumer and producer.
These “booth” pieces were complemented by other pieces, such as The Golden
Pineapple Club, which was a live cooking show in which every recipe included pineapple, a 70s cooking staple, and Shopatrolics, a jazz ballet performance,
also a popular recreation for girls and women in the 1970s.
From these acts as examples, the sense of pastiche is evident, as is the sense
of nostalgia and irreverence, but it is also apparent that the works address how
young people are positioned as consumers, and that they are cynical towards
mass consumption and global marketing. They reflect the sense of sameness
147 that multi-national retailing reinforces and by contrast express a desire for authenticity and sincerity. The works can also be viewed as a reaction against the homogeneity of events that are packaged globally, evident in holidays, shopping, entertainment acts, film and television.
Furthermore, such framing can be contextualised within Angela McRobbie’s observations that:
Acknowledging and even endorsing what Kobena Mercer has described as
the ‘vulgarity and stupidity of everyday life’ (Mercer 1998), is casual,
promiscuous, populist art which wishes to be repositioned inside the chat
show world of celebrity culture, alongside the sponsorship deals, in the
restaurants and at the very heart of consumer culture. This is art made
for a prime-time society, where daytime television encourages the
parading of private misfortunes (McRobbie, 1994, p.6).
The shift from Freakshow to Shopping Mall repositioned this young artists’ event to consider:
…modes of consumption and consumers – their priorities, patterning and
power. Through its various components, Shopping Mall will examine,
consider, challenge and explore concepts such as consumerism,
authenticity, anti-corporatism, global trends and bargains. Shopping Mall
is underpinned by the idea that rising globalisation and the decline of
postmodernism has changed the way we consume (Rebecca Lamoin’s notes
for Shopping Mall, October, 2001).
The performative and visual arts events that came together for Shopping Mall can be analysed in order to exemplify the mechanisms by which the boutique festival achieves its particular positioning as a cultural phenomenon, since what
148 is also apparent is that the acts are positioned so that the audience substantially “authors” the experience themselves, and that active participation from the audience is required for the art to function. By presenting such non-
mainstream work in the highly conservative setting of QPAC, there is a strong
sense of irony at play – the practice of creating access for non-mainstream
audiences via a highly mainstream location.
The process of producing this event is particularly significant to this thesis, as
it highlights the relationship of audience positioned as ‘author’, and explores
notions of consumerism. Furthermore, it embodies Leadbeater’s ideas that
young people “…aspire to a sense of individuality with creative self-expression
at its core as much as consumerism. They want to be the authors of their lives,
at work as much as in pleasure” (Leadbeater, 2000, p.201).
The notion of audience as author has already been foregrounded in Strategy 2,
the consultative process. As has been analysed, the aim of these sessions was
to consult “with a diverse sample of young people about their perceptions of
festivals, their musical tastes and responses to 1999 Stage X marketing”
(Stage X 2001 Consultation Data: 2). This kind of consultative research allows
participants more room to play with and explore the possibilities, an open-
ended question model. The closing of the loop is postponed until the production
process starts again for the next festival, passing on the feedback.
On certain levels, therefore, the target audience authors its own programming:
out of that audience, the producers take a reading about past Stage X events,
and where that audience positions itself culturally, aesthetically and politically,
and key programming is shaped out of this process; specific insights into this
area are provided shortly. Leadbeater states, “Consumers are being enlisted as
workers, designers and joint-producers” (2000, p.25).
149 The philosophies of post-postmodernism and new consumerism, drawn from research undertaken by the Programming Unit, and already articulated in
Strategy 1, reinforced by comments from the consultative process, lay the groundwork upon which five key cultural areas were of significance to the shaping of Stage X 2001: Participation, Emotional Branding, Consumerism, ‘DIY’ and local arts, and Authenticity. These areas significantly informed programming, design and philosophy, not only of Five to Midnight, but of Stage
X 2001 as a festival entity. These five areas were viewed by the festival team as directly impacting on young people’s relationships with cultural production, and were employed as philosophical underpinnings for Shopping Mall.
Participation
The event aimed to create an environment that encouraged participation, either directly or indirectly, ensuring that creativity was valued and encouraged. The breaking down of barriers between audience and performers challenged notions of what constitutes an artist and an audience. This concept was underpinned by the belief, heavily reinforced by Florida’s general view that people want to do as much as they want to watch.
Emotional Branding
Stage X can be viewed as both a physical and metaphorical space. As visual recognition of the name and logo continued to grow for the 2001 festival, it was seen by the Programming Unit that Stage X should endeavour to connect it to a feeling or sense of fun, safety, participation, and creativity, and in so doing, the event created a tradition for itself. There was the sense of the event creating its own emotional branding, as OUT OF THE BOX had done.
150 Consumerism
The Programming Unit embraced the notion that young people consume in a variety of ways, from a variety of media and for a variety of reasons. Their ability to access and understand diverse communication tools and the sheer volume of choices available to them in many ways embodies the essence of the new consumer: power. Having grown up in an age of marketing and technology they are rejecting hyperbole and hype, instead seeking out direct, honest information. Angela McRobbie’s discussion of “subversive consumerism” (1994) was evident in Shopping Mall, especially regarding her exploration of the
English ragmarket, which she describes as operating in the following manner:
…although there seems to be an evasion of the mainstream, with its
mass-produced goods and marked-up prices, the ‘subversive
consumerism’ of the ragmarket is in practice highly selective in what is
offered and what, in turn, is purchased (McRobbie, 1994, p.140).
Shopping Mall was infused with this sense, by its programming as already mentioned earlier in this section.
Do-it-yourself (DIY) and ‘Localness’
The DIY ethos has been a driving force behind young people’s creativity in western countries for some time. Young people value DIY opportunities and recognise and support ‘mates having a go’. In a similar vein, regarding Stage X as a whole, artists offering a Brisbane flavour to global trends were seen as borrowing from and contributing positively to, a wider movement.
T: the Exhibition, part of Stage X, is an effective example of a linkage between these two areas: young designers were given Stage X t-shirts to customise.
151 The resultant works were exhibited in key metropolitan sites including
Brisbane’s Central Train Station and cutting-edge fashion boutiques. The customising of t-shirts was a popular global trend at that time, especially for young people. Here, young designers tapped into this global activity, but created their own works using inspiration from their own unique environment. T:
The Exhibition was therefore a primary example of the balance of local and global so crucial to Stage X, and this balance is a prominent issue in much of the literature regarding the Creative Industries and the Creative City. Landry and Bianchini maintain:
…cities must strike a balance between cosmopolitanism and local roots. If
local identity is eroded too much, a city may lose confidence and sense of
direction. International initiatives should co-exist with festivals and
other celebrations and rituals designed to strengthen local identity (1995,
p.29).
Events such as Stage X therefore, can be seen to be linking new trends and global trends within a local context, by privileging local artists and content.
Authenticity
Those people, places and products perceived as ‘real’ are valued more highly than those that are viewed as artificial or manufactured. This is particularly evident in relation to music and musical tastes. Ellin believes:
…the late twentieth-century quest for meaning and for a center has
elicited nostalgia for cities of the past […] that which appeals is the
apocryphal simplicity, authenticity, intensity and harmony of social
relationships, along with a built environment that expresses and
facilitates these (1996, p.4).
152
This sense of authenticity can be consolidated within contemporary urban ramifications:
… there is concern about city centres and high streets. While high
streets are dominated by the same names across the world, many town
centres, have been sucked dry of life by shopping centres out of town.
There are many signs of a reaction against these trends – the search for
authentic local products and experiences and ‘heritage attractions’
(Landry and Bianchini, 1997, p.15).
In exploring these trends, Stage X was positioned, as Susan Richer suggested, as “responding to the current cultural and political climate” (interview,
9 October 2001). They can be seen to connect strongly with the issues articulated by key theorists such as Florida, Leadbeater, McRobbie and Landry and Bianchini.
4.10 Strategy Six: Evaluation of the festival
At the end of each festival, an evaluation process was undertaken by the Unit to ascertain perceived strengths and weaknesses. This evaluation process focussed most significantly on whether the festivals had engaged audiences, on both a philosophical and aesthetic level, rather than primarily employing ticket sales and audience numbers as exclusive measures of success. This is not to discount such quantitative indicators, however: key issues that were felt by the
Unit to impact on the efficacy of the festivals were financial and budgetary constraints, and reduced degrees of resourcing compared to what had been
hoped for by the Unit created a tension to provide a quality and dense program
with a small budget. This was particularly evident for OUT OF THE BOX 2000.
153 However, the commitment to the six strategies meant that the festivals for young people were grounded and connected, so that the events were meaningful for the audiences in ways that would not have been workable had the more traditional model of arts festival been employed, with an Artistic Director decreeing the programming.
The success of being able to effectively create this model of a boutique festival within an institution such as QPAC was sometimes fraught. In a meeting on 31 May 1999, Kotzas raised a number of fundamental issues such as creating a new work or a new genre that QPAC hadn’t really done before, regarding Blurred and Five to Midnight: Kotzas felt that this kind of work was not understood by the organisation as being important for festivals generally to engage with, and he saw that administrative models needed to be shifted to accommodate creative endeavour, articulating the key issue of QPAC having to
‘flex’ to cope with festival management. This was evident in the producing of
Blurred, given that many of those involved in realising the event were inexperienced, and that technically the production was a complex undertaking.
Thus, a safety net of support from the festival was required but not so as to strangle the creativity of those involved. This degree of nurturing without mothering was a crucial balance for the festival’s production, and indeed, for the success of each of the festivals addressed in this research.
Kotzas also suggested that in the future a percentage of money needed to be spent on infrastructure and a percentage on programming: balancing finances effectively was difficult but necessary. For QPAC, the artistic balance between new works and operating as venue managers was, and at the time of writing, is still crucial.
By undertaking further reflection and analysis, the festival process was monitored, re-focused and re-articulated so that each event connected with its
154 target audience, while keeping abreast of shifts both in youth culture and in young people’s cultural experience. The advantage of having a core team becomes highly advantageous in this regard, as the key players can draw on shared experiences by which to evaluate and redirect festival processes for future events. An example of this is the kinds of issues raised for evaluation; at the cessation of Stage X 1999 Susan Richer posed the following assessment criteria:
Did we achieve development, support, did we increase young people’s
networks, [the Programming Unit’s] networks, did we challenge
perceptions of young people and young people’s arts? How much coverage,
interest, did the media take and also personal satisfaction of ‘I felt that
was good’. There’s also feedback from peers and young people who tell me
the truth (Richer interview, 27 April 1999).
Thus, the views of the Unit itself, along with discussions with artists and audiences, are valued as highly as key indicators such as ticket sales.
4.10a Stage X 1999: Evaluation
Richer’s personal response to the Stage X 1999 festival was largely positive.
In terms of Five to Midnight she never expected there would be the level of interest from the community that there actually was, made manifest by the box office. She felt that the success was due to better planning, better marketing, the involvement of many more young artists, doubling the size of
Freakshow from the 1997 event, the information co-ordination was much
smoother, there was a smaller core team, collaboration worked much better,
for example with local radio station ZZZ for the Do Tank, the underground
mailing, the collaboration with the visual/digital artists, and the choice to go
more mainstream with the bands (interview, 2 August 1999).
155
Richer also felt that the process involved in getting to the end product was much more grounded in youth policy, and Five to Midnight was successful in terms of young artists working within a major arts organisation. She felt that dealings with the police were smoother this time, and that marketing was easier, because the marketing staff were willing to accept that Susan had some knowledge of the area, whereas for the 1997 festival two specific marketing staff were appointed. In 1999 there had been no appointed marketing staff and paradoxically this made the process easier, because Richer didn’t have to
‘undo’ preconceived ideas. She also felt that the issue of balancing friends with work was fairly effectively managed in 1999, even though it was difficult, especially when she had to position herself as “the boss” (interview 2 August
1999).
There were of course negatives, such as the bump-in needed to be better planned, and there needed to be another Production Manager, and that the entire bump-in process needed to commence earlier. And she felt that she needed to “crack the whip” more, especially with the bands (interview, 2 August
1999).
For the Freakshow of Stage X 1999, a number of participating artists were interviewed regarding their views on the Stage X team. Comments were as follows:
Stage X has taken the role of facilitator for the freakshow element and
in my dealings is working well for artists by being supported and
organised. Also Stage X seems to be facilitating well whilst the whole
time keeping a strong sense of the event Five to Midnight as whole
(Robert Kronk, DeBase productions, June 1999);
156 I found the team at Merivale Street courteous, interested and
encouraging. I heard about Freakshow only a few days before submissions
were due and was encouraged to take my time to get the submission right.
My piece changed significantly after the submission was accepted and I
checked in regularly at organised forums and impromptu individual
contacts up until the day and found the team flexible and clear about
what could and could not be done, and who to consult about it […] The
team seemed to have a clear idea of roles and responsibilities within the
group which made reference easy and engendered confidence (Paul
Cooper, “Tubby”, June 1999);
It has been very professional and efficient. They are clear about what
they can and cannot help you achieve; so as an artist I know what
proposals to submit and which ones are out of their scope […] I feel the
administration of Stage X is really effective – how the technical co-
ordinator, the publicity co-ordinator and the programming co-ordinator
work together is impressive (Kamal Krishna, June 1999).
Media coverage was not major, as it often is for OUT OF THE BOX, but what
was presented was largely positive. One article suggested:
The Performing Arts Complex is not known for its ‘street cred’, but last
night a sea of teenagers invaded its forecourt for a music spectacular.
More than 6000 people enjoyed performers ranging from Powderfinger to
a freakshow…Organiser Gabe Cramb [publicist for Stage X in 1999 and
2001] said the reason for the concept’s popularity was simple: “It’s going
off” (Sunday Mail, 18 July 1999, p.11).
There were comments regarding areas that could be improved upon also, such as the desire to have had more complimentary tickets and t-shirts for helpers
157 of artists. Also, sound problems occasionally arose when Freakshow artists had to compete with acts performing on the main stage. An ‘after-party’ would have been advantageous, as would more help, and the process could have been less rushed. Finally, the documentation for each art installation would have been really useful.
The researcher’s experience of observing the 1999 production of the Stage X
Festival suggested that the process was fundamentally democratic and empowering for both staff, artists and audiences, which, whilst at times problematic, since the key team had been working together for a number of years, adverse situations could be overcome.
Time frames were always extremely tight for the Unit, as were budgetary constraints, but the research suggests that the strategies employed embrace an effective and highly appropriate means of festival production for target audiences.
4.10b Stage X 2001: Evaluation
An interview on 12th December 2001 with Rebecca Lamoin, who was most particularly involved in Shopping Mall, provided some key insights into the way in which the festival was assessed. Following are those insights:
Lamoin’s immediate reaction of Five to Midnight (which occurred on Friday
6 December) was that the atmosphere at the event, especially evident in the early stages of the evening, was relaxed and playful. She was delighted with the hands-on contact from the audience with the event, and felt that the level of interaction was profound.
158 This was especially obvious in the souveniring that occurred. The designer had created a number of elements for audience members to take, for example the helpful hints brochure, free thongs, and a large number of cardboard cars that
were displayed at the entrance, to engage with the car park spaces of shopping
malls. Furthermore, props like beanbags, silver balls that were displayed in the
fountain areas, and foam letters were all “souvenired” by the audience. For the
Unit, this suggested that there needed to be a clear demarcation for audiences
regarding the items that were for souveniring, and those that were not.
However, as these kinds of specific items inevitably are consigned to QPAC
storage, and are rarely employed for other events, it was not particularly
disadvantageous that so many items were taken.
A negative factor for the event was the rain, which no doubt contributed to
lower than expected ticket sales. Another detracting factor was that because
of the level of interactivity (and souveniring), for those audience members who
came later, the experience was diminished and in some cases an arts site was
almost stripped bare. One of the installations was destroyed: the artist left
the space and it was difficult for the audience to differentiate what was meant
to be taken and what wasn’t, so people took everything!
In terms of the protracted time frame, Lamoin felt that from her perspective
it allowed her more time on each project and she could focus on each event
more fully, so from this perspective the extended timing was a positive. From
an audience’s point of view, however, she didn’t think it had been as positive as
the team had hoped – the idea that they could profile more people’s work or
give it a heightened platform didn’t necessarily happen. She felt that the
Programming Unit needed to educate the audience about the changeover in
timeframe in a different way; that they needed to be taken through the
change. “I don’t think they got it. I think the shorter, sharper thing has a
159 greater impact from an audience’s point of view” (Lamoin interview, 12th
December 2001).
However, in terms of projecting into the future of Stage X 2003, Lamoin felt there were a number of event models that were really successful, in particular,
X Squared; the City Council dance event, as the concept underpinning it was really strong and the audience engaged with it in a really positive manner;
Scrapbook, which was quite successful and well received; and Five to Midnight, which consolidated its position on the cultural calendar for young people.
In terms of the major theatre pieces, Lamoin felt that such works operate differently in a traditional festival model in that they are contextualised more obviously. Within the protracted time frame, Stage X wasn’t necessarily seen to own or encompass these events very clearly. Lamoin considered that overall, a shorter time frame works more easily, but this isn’t to say that it has to be a two-week time frame; a longer period of time of perhaps two months could be considered.
Furthermore, it was suggested that Five to Midnight could occur every year, but expand biannually to include a broader program of Stage X events. Having the key curated event occur annually would ensure that the momentum is easier to keep in motion.
Apart from ticket sales, Lamoin suggested that she personally measured the success of the event, particularly Five to Midnight from the feedback from audiences, artists and contributors. She recalled how many of the artists came and thanked the team and expressed their enjoyment of “the event as a whole, as well as producing their own particular art works, and being brought together with a group of artists from Brisbane that they might not otherwise
160 necessarily have been able to interact with” (Lamoin interview, 12th December
2001).
Another gauge for Lamoin was to watch audiences in the space, and to be part of the event itself. The sense of being in a safe public space was an issue that the team worked hard to achieve, and this was certainly a success. Further cementing this was the sense of both audience and artists feeling really proud of being part of Brisbane, in terms of the sense of safety and the beautiful surrounds.
Furthermore, positioning Five to Midnight in December proved highly advantageous for producers, audiences and artists, as opposed to the initial scheduling of the event in September. The justification for the later time slot were that December is traditionally a slow time for artists and thus would provide them with much needed work. Furthermore, it would provide some entertainment and specific activity for the Schoolies time frame, which traditionally has nothing happening for young people in Brisbane. There were several other major arts activities happening for young people in September and Stage X could not compete with them: Livid, a major rock music event, and
the Goodwill Games which also hosted a number of concerts for young people
with major artists; and perhaps most crucially for Susan, this longer lead-in
time meant that proper consultation could be realised (Discussion with Susan
Richer and Rebecca Lamoin, 5 June 2001).
Additionally, during this period, both Richer and Murphy were made permanent
staff members, which provided a great sense of relief and sense of real
stability for the core team.
Thus, from the findings presented, it is reasonable to suggest that festivals
such as Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX have significantly contributed to the
161 cultural lives of young people in Brisbane, and therefore to the cultural dynamic of the city as a whole so that young artists feel that Brisbane in particular is a more acceptable place to live and create, rather than feeling necessarily inferior to more sophisticated southern locations. This was echoed for Lamoin by a young writer who included a piece in the Scrapbook, who felt that after the success of Nick Earls’ work (a local writer whose fictional works about life in Brisbane have become nationally popular), it was okay to write about
Brisbane, that she didn’t have to locate the work in a city like New York or
Sydney that would be perceived as more interesting.
However, from the researcher’s perspective, it was felt that time and money permitting, the evaluation process could be taken much further, and provide a great insight and analysis. To this end, two major Audience Reception Studies were undertaken for this thesis, for Five to Midnight in 1999 and 2001:
4.10c Reception Studies
For the Five to Midnight component of Stage X in both 1999 and 2001,
Audience Reception Studies were undertaken (see Appendices D and E for the transcripts of the responses, and a quantitative analysis of them), in order to evaluate how audiences reacted to the experience. The scope of these studies provided responses from 394 audience members in 1999 and 218 in 2001.
The specific aims of this portion of the research were firstly to determine a demographic landscape of the audiences, and to this end each research subject was asked his or her general age, where they lived, and their employment situation.
162 Further questions focussed on audience members’ mode of transport to the venue, with whom they came, where they heard about the event, and what was the main reason for their attendance.
This information was of considerable use to the Programming Unit, providing key indicators of the manner in which audiences were being targeted, and the best measures for future advertising, as well as being able to gauge whether the event was actually ‘sitting in the right place’.
Many of the comments for both events focused on the bands playing; in 1999, the headlining band, Powderfinger had proved extremely popular, suggesting that this choice was effective in attracting a wide audience. It was also a prescient choice, as the band has since gone onto international success. For the 2001 event, the most popular band was the John Butler Trio, which has similarly enjoyed great success.
In terms of the specific ingredients of each event, in 1999 a disparity was evident between the way that younger audiences and older audiences read
Freakshow. In general, the younger (that is, school age) audiences didn’t
strongly connect with this element of the programming, either finding it ‘weird’,
or if they did enjoy it, this was essentially for this ‘kookiness’, rather than
engaging with its parodic nature.
Conversely, the older audiences (that is, 17 and over) who did not like,
Freakshow were more inclined to refer to it as ‘daggy’ or ‘crappy’, feeling that
more money needed to be spent on it, thereby supporting the Programming
Unit’s frustration regarding lack of resources. But many in this age bracket
did enjoy this, and viewed it as an effective addition to the mainstage event, in
that it was original and complemented the bands.
Regarding Shopping Mall in 2001, the general reaction was more consistently
favourable. Comments focussed on the enjoyment experienced in including this
163 kind of arts activity, even if audiences didn’t always understand the work. For a number of people, it was an unexpected bonus. The acts that were particularly popular were Mirrorball and the No Kissing Booth.
More general comments in 1999 highlighted that audiences felt the entire event was value for money, and many commented on their enjoyment of the
Rave Room, a dance space, and the Do-Tank, and that they felt the choice of bands was effective, and that it was a positive event for the city of Brisbane.
In 2001, the most popular element articulated by subjects was the location, on the riverfront in front of the QPAC building, as was the sense of intimacy that the space evoked, especially in comparison to other live band events such as
Livid and Big Day Out. The diversity of ages apparent in the audience was viewed as really positive. Again, the choice of bands was considered a good balance.
Negative comments were similar for both years, and focused largely on logistical issues such as the small number of toilets available, and the security procedures for obtaining alcohol frustrated many. However, when catering for the 13-26 years age bracket, the issue of access to alcohol will always be problematic.
But what was apparent from these studies is the sense that for young people, the city of Brisbane is a far more acceptable environment to live, play and work in than it was even a decade ago. The sense of pride that audience members felt at Five to Midnight is indicative that there is a shift in the conventional embarrassment about coming from Brisbane. Festivals, when successful, can be seen as directly attributing to that sense of pride, celebration and consultation of community. A key realisation of this consolidation is through the festivals’ use of space: Youth theorist Andy Bennett discusses the issue of “social
164 geography”, referring to the “changing and highly contested meanings of space as it is appropriated by diffuse and conflicting interest groups” (2000, p.63).
The forecourt at QPAC functions in a dynamic manner in this regard, working as a public thoroughfare, as the playground for the audiences of OUT OF THE
BOX, and as a rock venue for the Five to Midnight event of Stage X. For the
length of these festivals, this public space is very certainly inscribed as the
realm of those particular communities for whom the festivals are produced.
And this is an issue not lost on audiences; at Five to Midnight, in 2001, a number of audience members commented on the juxtaposition of the audience demographic with the mainstream audiences attending a performance within
QPAC, who at interval “lazed out” of the glass walls at the “mosh pit” below them:
“It’s good to have the event here. Good to have the routine cultural place
just behind us. It was interval before and they [audience members
attending productions in the QPAC building] were out on the balcony
watching us”;
“The set-up is unbelievable, it’s fantastic, next to the river, yahoos and
beer drinkers in one section, and chill out in the other”;
“I love it because it’s my city.” (sample of comments from Audience
Reception Studies. The full commentary is in Appendix E).
These comments clearly demonstrate the changing and contested use of space as articulated by Bennett, and the way in which this festival environment provides young audiences with the physical and philosophical space to “take over” the site.
For OUT OF THE BOX, it was envisaged that the space be transformed both by the physical presence and the cultural expressions of young people, so that the audience’s experiential residue would determine that they view the space in
165 a transformatory manner, creating the possibility for these audiences to view
QPAC in a more inclusive and age appropriate manner.
For a more metaphorical discussion of space, Richer discusses the success of events like Big Day Out and Race Around the World8 that she views as being successful:
…because they encouraged young people to take up public space and ‘do it
themselves’. Both projects recognise the diverse backgrounds, tastes and
interests of young people, positioning them as capable and resilient
cultural consumers and creators. Rather than ‘dumbing down’ information,
they created a shared language – a sense of being ‘in the know’ or ‘in the
club’ (Richer, 2000b, p.7).
The way in which QPAC’s forecourt is transformed can be seen in light of this encouragement, creating a shared language between young people and the
Programming Unit.
Events such as Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX are deliberate attempts to create space for the voice of young people to be heard, via the use of aesthetic forms and uses of public spaces, and through the process of consultation, so that young people, via the festival, can effect change in areas of social and cultural policy.
8 Big Day Out is a large rock concert held each year in January, and which tours nationally, profiling a mix of local and international acts. The event lasts for hours. Race Around the World was a television program in which a number of young filmmakers were armed with a camcorder and had to complete an around the world trip in a certain time frame, producing stories as they went. The stories were broadcast on television, each week of the journey.
166 4.11 Future directions for the festivals
At the conclusion of Five to Midnight 2003, Rebecca Lamoin suggested that
QPAC was in a state of flux and roles were being evaluated and consolidated.
(Rebecca Lamoin interview, 20 February 2003), and the result of this
restructure saw the future of the festivals diversify enormously.
As has been articulated, the processes used to produce both festival events is
similar – the dual practices of consultation and research are the key elements
that shape each festival program. Where the events diverge most sharply is in
their profile. OUT OF THE BOX is widely recognised and applauded, and it
could be argued it is a far more ‘branded’ event. OUT OF THE BOX has a long
tradition, however: it was first produced in 1992 whereas Stage X has only
been produced since 1997. OUT OF THE BOX also receives higher levels of
funding than Stage X and therefore can create a far bigger profile, and
thirdly, OUT OF THE BOX has a unique place in the cultural calendar for very
young people; there is no other event like it for them, where they can interact
with and create their own experience over a number of days and in such a
public manner. Due to its public success, the future for OUT OF THE BOX is
solid, as it has now become part of QPAC’s core business, with Collette Brennan
as the General Manager, an industry professional with a strong background in
young people’s arts, as the former director of Youth Arts Queensland, the
state’s primary youth arts organisation, and Mark Radvan as the Artistic
Director for 2006. It would seem that at the time of writing, the festival’s
profile, which had been considerably downsized especially in 2002, will be
expanded again. With this team, the process will be suitably consultative and
researched, but with a new Artistic Director, the model will undoubtedly shift
considerably from the processes employed by Kotzas, Murphy and Richer, but
hopefully will be heavily informed by these processes.
167 Stage X has always suffered a degree of identity crisis because by and large the public see Five to Midnight as Stage X, whereas OUT OF THE BOX brands itself very successfully. By 2003, Five to Midnight occurred as a freestanding event in December, being the sole evidence of Stage X. At the time or writing the future for Stage X was being evaluated. And perhaps the event has achieved what it needed to do at a particular time in Brisbane’s cultural life, to profile young people’s cultural interests, in a very public manner. Perhaps it is appropriate that the event metamorphose into something else entirely.
In summation, the processes of consultation and research are key strategies in shaping these festival events. Regardless of the kinds of festivals that eventuate in the future, it would be difficult to imagine that these fundamental pillars of process would shift. The structure of QPAC has shifted dramatically since this fieldwork was undertaken. At the time of writing the organisation had restructured so that CEO Craig McGovern heads the organisation, with
John Kotzas as the Artistic Director. Susan Richer is Artistic Associate and
Deb Murphy is Manager, Commercial Programs. Each role is a promotion, and thus key team members of the Programming Unit have moved into senior infrastructural positions. The philosophies that shaped the boutique festivals explored here, now shift into the core of QPAC’s programming structures.
Kotzas has implemented in those areas of QPAC under his jurisdiction a process of programming which would seem to directly reflect the kinds of processes employed by the Programming Unit at the time this ethnographic research was undertaken. Thus, the philosophies of the Programming Unit have been aimed to be positioned at the heart of the organisation, at least at the heart of Programming, and in so doing, aiming to truly realise the notion of creating room in the mainstream.
168 4.12 Conclusion
The Stage X 1999 Discussion Paper suggests, “festivals can provide memorable entertainment experience but should also stimulate a culture of learning”
(1999, p.5). It has been argued that the festivals addressed in this chapter effectively attempt a balance of both entertainment and provocation for festivals for young people. The implementation of the six strategies articulated here provide a highly significant manner of festival curation and production. The production of Stage X highlights the processes of audience empowerment undertaken by the Programming Unit, and its ability to connect with an audience that is so young, in a truly meaningful manner.
This chapter has provided an analysis of a particular process and positioning employed in the production of festivals for particular audiences, aiming to engage those audiences in a particular manner, by positioning them as dual consumers and producers. This is achieved by the six strategies of research, consultation, the marriage of these to inform programming, a management model that is both longitudinal and democratic, the privileging of audiences as both consumers and producers, and an evaluation process which informs subsequent festival production processes. The analysis has highlighted both the strengths and limitations of that process, but has maintained that this kind of approach is successful in its positioning of audiences largely as authors of their own festival experience.
Furthermore, these strategies consolidate Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX as boutique festivals. The strategies employed aim to create a festival product and experience which can be read as democratic, building productions from the interests of the audience, but also aiming to push those interests onto a wider cultural landscape, so the festival programming process is both consultative and innovative simultaneously. These strategies focus on a particular audience, by
169 engaging and consulting with them. The festivals focus on that particular audience and position that audience in a particular manner: as simultaneous audience/author, consumer/producer.
The significance of these festivals therefore has a wider dimension, in that this kind of ‘boutique’ festival construct raises key issues regarding the very nature of festivals for contemporary audiences. Chapter Five explores this construct of the boutique, and further examines how this particular festival model, embracing strategies of engagement and democracy connects significantly with the contemporary climate, raising questions that sit at the heart of current cultural consumption.
170 CHAPTER FIVE - TOWARDS A MODEL: THE BOUTIQUE FESTIVAL
5.1 Introduction
Chapter Four has presented a detailed analysis of the strategies employed by
QPAC’s Programming Unit to produce renderings of the boutique festival and the manner in which it aims to empower audiences. On a wider scale, the strategies strongly connect to cultural preoccupations with self-authorship, identity, participation and models of consumption. The boutique festival,
therefore, is a significant tool in that it foregrounds a number of key cultural
emphases that require detailed analysis, as well as the form’s contextualisation
within chief festival models.
To preface this analysis, it is necessary to re-articulate how contemporary
festival practice has come to operate. Appendix A advocates that
contemporary festival forms essentially function as the high arts festival
event, or the community model, both of which are potent tools of political and
cultural expression by social structures such as nations, cities and towns, and
by individual citizens and artists.
The boutique festivals analysed in practice in Chapter Four provide significant
models of contemporary cultural engagement, via processes of consultation and
the manner in which audiences are engaged. The idea of audiences authoring
their own festival experiences, and the manner in which the festival itself
serves to function as a dialogue with audiences, proffers an alternative model
of cultural expression from the community arts or high arts rendering, and the
implications of this are significant. The boutique festival can be seen to draw
from both these constructs, but it operates in a different kind of cultural
framework than these conventional models, essentially through its positioning
of the audience. This chapter explores the shape and ramifications of the
171 boutique festival, focussing on key areas of audience positioning, community and space, both physical and conceptual, and it will be seen how such a model resonates deeply with issues of contemporary culture posited by social commentators Richard Florida and Charles Leadbeater.
This festival form can be read on two dichotomous levels: as a reworking of traditional festival practice (as Chapter Four has shown through the connections to the carnivalesque) and as innovative via its potential to respond to the construct of a ”creative city”, a key consideration for Cultural
Industries discourse which explores the reinvigoration and sustainability of urban culture:
Creative cities are not likely to be stable or comfortable places; but
they must not have surrendered to total disorder either. Rather,
almost invariably they are places in which the established order is under
prolonged challenge by the new creative groups, whether or not that
challenge takes an explicitly political form (Hall, 1999, p.39).
The boutique festival has powerful implications within creative city discourse, as it strongly connects and envelops issues and forms relevant to contemporary urban cultural life. As Chapter Four has elucidated, its processes of consultation and engagement reconfigure the festival as a potent process of simultaneous production and consumption for audiences, so that they connect significantly with contemporary patterns of cultural production and consumption.
The construct of the term ‘boutique’ crystallises such patterns, as beyond the more elitist connotations of the word (as it is now often perceived), is a model of cultural engagement that perfectly illustrates the key functions of this festival form. Thus, in order to exemplify what is meant by the term “boutique
172 festival”, an analysis of the boutique itself, from which the term ‘boutique festival’ is derived, provides a rich insight into both the innovative and potent cultural positioning that the idea affords.
5.2 The Boutique
Whilst Richard Hall’s ideas (cited above) regarding the creative city were published in 1999, the sense of city evoked therein could as easily be applied to
London in the 60s, a time in which notions of culture, community, tradition and conservatism were actively challenged by the burgeoning youth population and its increasing independence and power. Fashion historian Valerie Steele suggests that it was not only demographics that privileged young people at this point, but also:
…because social and economic developments had given young people […] a
self conscious awareness of themselves as a distinct and unified group
that they were able to respond to political events, in the process
creating their own culture (1997, p.50).
This was obviously reflected across the geography of cultural activity: music, theatre, art, literature, film, visual arts, and most relevant to this discussion, fashion. The means of expressing oneself sartorially became a key cultural outlet for many young people, and a particular form of retail experience was born through which to stimulate such expression: the boutique.
Regarding fashion, the term ‘boutique’ was first employed in the late 50s to articulate, “boutique departments in the big stores designed to fill the gap between custom-made couture clothes and those made by wholesale houses”
(Fogg, 2003, p.7). The concept of the boutique had of course been in existence
prior to 50s Britain: the term, consolidated in France in the mid-18th Century,
173 was employed to denote a “small shop selling specialist goods or services”
(Encarta Concise English Dictionary). However, it was during its fermentation in the London of the 60s that the concept, as it is applied to this study, truly consolidated, creating a different process of consuming contemporary trends.
These retail outlets focussed essentially on the young, and sold garments “that were not quite ‘one-offs’, but were made by individual outworkers producing small quantities in a limited range of colours and sizes” (Peacock, 1998, pp.7-8).
Into the early 60s a number of individual boutiques arose in the bohemian and emergent fashionable areas of London, which provided individualistic clothes by young designers, at affordable prices. What is of crucial interest to the argument extrapolated in this thesis is that the process of provision and consumption of goods was enacted as a conversation between designer, retailer and customer. Garments were a marriage of trends picked up from what the target customer group (that is, ‘hip’ young people) was wearing on the street, and aesthetic innovations implemented by designers. This process was a marked shift from the way in which clothes had been created before.
Previously, the couturier had determined what was tasteful, the garments were then purchased and flaunted by the wealthy, and a highly watered down cheap version was manufactured in mass versions for the rest of the population for sale in the department store. However, with the rise of the boutique, the process became far more interactive: a dialogue between consumer and producer: “sharing attitudes, values and practices with customers was an instrumental factor in the successful development of boutique culture” (Fogg,
2003, p.17).
Prior to the rise of the 60s boutique, the experience of clothes shopping for the young middle class was largely that of accompanying an adult (usually one’s mother) to a department store buying clothes deemed appropriate by the parent: a rite of passage into adult respectability. As fashion academic Marnie
174 Fogg recalls, “I can remember being made to wear white gloves and carry a handbag like a miniature middle-aged woman” (2003, p.8). She describes the department stores as embodying the formality of town halls and libraries,
positioned in the centre of the city, huge and almost overwhelming with “large
areas to display some of the commodities available inside to the passer-by, a
tantalising glimpse of the merchandise on offer” (Fogg, 2003, p.10). The
experience proffered a sense of maturation, respectability and conservatism.
English designer Sally Tuffin remembered of her sartorial experiences in the
Britain of the late 50s that “There weren’t clothes for young people at all. One
just looked like one’s mother” (in Steele, 1997, p.50).
For those not fortunate enough to participate in the lofty experience of the
department store, the alternative in post-war Britain was to be found in small
pockets of stores addressing the growing expansion of suburban sprawl. These
stores existed either to provide mass produced items, with little consideration
of fashion or self-expression, or conversely in the wealthier areas, what Fogg
refers to as “madam shops”: “enterprises usually eponymously named and
offering a more personal service than the department store” (2003, p.10), took
shape.
The boutique model existed outside both these models, and aimed to provide an
experience that allowed the consumer a greater sense of personal expression,
and a means of identification with a particular social group. The definitive
boutique Biba created and operated by Barbara Hulanicki and her husband and
business manager, Stephen Fitz-Simon, aimed to offer absolutely immediate
fashion for young women earning ordinary salaries in London. She suggested:
I didn’t want to make clothes for kept women […] I wanted to make
clothes for people in the street, and Fitz and I always tried to get
prices down, down, down to the bare minimum (in Turner 2004, p.13).
175
This emphasis can be seen as a reflection of the many other social shifts occurring in the 1960s, especially in terms of young people shaking the foundations of accepted social practice, by refusing to take a cultural apprenticeship. Until this time, a young person was expected to gain experience as an underling before being allowed to become fully fledged in a profession. The post-war baby boom meant that young people, vast in number and thus a significant socio-economic force, were impatient to undertake a professional and social tour of duty; they wanted to ‘do it now’, and by so doing, fundamentally shifted cultural behaviour, in part due to the sheer force of their numbers. In terms of consumption “the entrepreneurial ethos of the 60s that resulted in teenagers ‘doing their own thing’ meant that young consumers could now become the young producers” (Fogg, 2003, p.13).
This pattern of consumer as producer was evident in the practices of Biba:
What Biba was helping to create was the concept of shopping as an
experience, a leisure activity for the young. Breaking from the 50s
pattern, this was no longer something that a girl did reluctantly with her
mother, it was a social event in its own right to be shared with peers.
Those who knew about Biba – and despite the lack of a name above the
shop, despite the obscure location, there were plenty who did – saw it as
being an essential place to meet and be seen (Turner, 2004, p. 15).
It has been suggested that during the 60s “the entire structure of the fashion system was challenged from below” (Steele, 1997, p.50). This had major ramifications for the purchasing of fashion, further entrenching the process of consuming and retailing operating as a process of dialogue. The boutique selling experience was about being completely up to the minute, providing the most contemporary items for young people at an affordable price. Boutiques were run by young entrepreneurs, creating an environment in which young people
176 could feel comfortable browsing, under little pressure to purchase. This was a completely different atmosphere from that of the formality of department stores, with mature and often intimidating sales staff. The aim of the boutique was “not only to provide the merchandise, but to give shoppers a good time while they were looking for it” (Powe-Temperley, 1999, p.11). Thus, shopping in this environment became an experience of empowerment for the consumer who felt valued as an individual, and the retail space itself became ‘owned’ by consumers in a manner not available or even considered in the department store.
The boutique had few fixed ideas about seasonal fashion, or about the more specific 50s fashion categories, of ‘formal’ and ‘casual’ (Howell, 1978, p.258).
Old divisions about what was appropriate to wear in particular situations were dismantled. A British Vogue article of 1962 suggested:
For the first time the young people who work in the rag trade are
making and promoting the clothes they naturally like: clothes which are
relevant to the way they live…ours is the first generation that can
express itself on its own terms (my italics, in Howell, 1978,p.259).
Thus boutiques often provided a platform to expose the work of young innovative designers to new customers, by providing them with the badge of extreme desirability when they were stocked by the leading shop.
Boutiques were therefore perfect environments to support the much touted ‘do your own thing’ culture that the 60s came to epitomise:
Fashion became a proclamation of individuality [… ] It had nothing to do
with class any more. There was a new orientation, a new social grouping.
177 What people wore no longer symbolised their social or material
alignments in the old vertical pattern (Ewing, 1997, p.230).
In terms of consumption, Ewing quotes from Your Future in Clothing, published in 1970, which suggests, “A striking feature of consumer attitudes towards clothes is the development of a ‘Personal style’” (in Ewing, 1997, p.231).
Biba, the definitive boutique, created a fantastical retail and cultural experience. One customer, an American ballet dancer, suggested, “It’s like a theatrical set with nobody to watch the performance. Which, of course, was the appeal to those who bought into the fantasy; the blurring of the roles of spectator and performer was what Biba did best” (my italics, in Turner, 2004, p.81).
Thus, the process of consumption was multi-layered, and not merely a process of providing non-elite customers with what they wanted: it also provided cutting-edge ideas, exposing them to influences from not only other designers, but other cultures: “…to add to the deluge of ideas from home-grown designers, boutiques were selling every unusual thing in the world that you could wear, from rough Greek wool sweaters to saris; kimonos to harem pants; caftans to half-cured sheepskins from Turkey and Afghanistan” (Howell,
1978,p.258).
It could of course be argued that within this retail construct, the former elitism of couture was redirected into that of the young and fashionable (and perhaps elitism is unavoidable in any fashion movement, even the anarchism of the anti-fashion movement Punk). However, certainly at the time of the boutique’s rise, the opportunity to be ‘in’, and to individualise clothes design, was afforded to far more people than previous retail models had allowed. Biba
‘s highly affordable garments were testimony to this.
178
Furthermore, for Biba, the role of consumer-producer was so intertwined that instead of window displays to entice customers, couches and chairs were utilised, on which perched customers for hours on end, embodying the store’s aesthetic, so that onlookers constructed the customer as the definitive producer and advertiser of the company (Turner, 2004). Thus, the retail experience, especially for young consumers, had radically altered from an almost passive practice of sartorial maturation into adulthood, into a proactive, self-determined experience, in which the purchaser was positioned as a producer of one’s own image.
5.3 Key elements of the boutique
This analysis of the clothing boutique highlights the cultural significance of the term, especially regarding the manner in which the customer was positioned.
This assists in crystallising the term ‘boutique festival’, and the way in which audiences are placed, which is significantly different from the high arts (or department store) model, and the community arts festival. The key elements of the retail boutique can be identified as:
An experience focussed on a specific age group, in this circumstance,
young people (the aim is to connect specifically with that age group on
their terms, and create a space both physical and philosophical of which
they have a strong sense of ownership);
Shifting notions about cultural models outside the mainstream
(presenting alternative cultural forms as valid and as legitimised as
mainstream practice);
A blurring of boundaries between particular kinds of cultural practice,
which were not exclusive or necessarily Anglo-centric, and which were a
179 mix of traditional and non-traditional elements. By the 60s a playing with and pillaging of history was positioned as a means of new ways of cultural expression, and came to have significant impact on the postmodern aesthetic of the 70s, 80s and 90s;
The creation of a multi-layered cultural environment, in which diversity and difference are privileged;
The privileging of work by local young artists by positioning young designers and artists as potent cultural contributors for what they do in their own environment now, not for their potential to ‘make it’ in those arenas deemed prestigious by mainstream culture;
The catering to a variety of styles and tastes, and celebrating that diversity;
The sense of creating ‘from the ground up’, that is, drawing significantly from the input of the clientele, so that the work is valued because of its street credibility, not because a designer/ couturier or arts maven has deemed it so;
The retail space as owned or easily inhabited by the consumer, in which young people could ‘do their own thing’ (creating a space for the clientele to feel at home) so that browsing is as acceptable as purchasing;
The issue of ‘quality’ and desirability was still a key factor. Items were well-made yet still affordable, with the focus firmly on being well-made, but within reach of a young person’s finances;
180 And, of crucial impact, the interwoven relationship between consumer,
artist, and/or producer, so that the process is about a ‘cultural
conversation’ (to employ a term coined by Susan Richer), and not a
design decree.
These issues can be seen to lie at the heart of the boutique as a retail experience, and as the analysis that follows attests, they fundamentally lie at the heart of the boutique festival model also, with its aspiration towards democratic patterns of production and consumption.
5.4 The Boutique Festival
The Boutique Festival operates as an arts-driven event or series of events over a designated period of time, for a specific audience group, in which audiences have been actively involved in either the creation or direction of programming, and in which events are highly interactive. Programming is the result of significant consultation with target audiences, and the programming embodies, reflects and responds to socio-political and cultural trends and issues that impact on those target audiences. The Boutique Festival aims to provide programming which is accessible and challenging, innovative and of quality, supportive of the local but contextualised within global trends.
Just as the retail boutique is located between the high (aesthetic) and popular
(cost) end of consumer taste, so too is the boutique festival located between the department store model of arts festival production, with audiences purchasing tickets for a range of often avant-garde and dazzling international aesthetic experiences, and the community event, in which the focus is on the experience of the participant, and not focussed on polished dazzling work.1 The
1 Both the arts and community arts festival models are examined in detail in Chapter Six.
181 boutique festival aims to provide a dialogue with its audience, in that works are presented which are the result of consultation and research. Yet within this connection, the aim is that the work is diverse, and quality-driven. These issues of connection, diversity and quality sit at the heart of the Boutique
Festival.
Furthermore, the role of the audience is specific and crucial for the boutique festival which caters for a particular audience, as opposed to major arts festivals in which programming usually aims to cast as wide an aesthetic net as possible. The producers of the boutique festivals examined in this thesis aimed to connect actively with their target audience prior to the festival, in a way that encouraged the festival construct to function as a dialogue between producer, artist and audience, rather than as a department store model of cultural wares which the audience consumes in a relatively passive manner, the work having been pre-ordained, by a purveyor of products (that is, the festival director) with acknowledged expertise and intuition in consumption patterns as well as advanced knowledge of leading taste patterns (like the couturier) long before ever being exposed to an audience.
The programming process for the boutique festival operates in a manner whereby the producers present an event, informed by prior ‘conversation’, in which audiences then play a participatory role through physical and conceptual mobility, and by which the producers present a program that aims to connect to the cultural lives of that audience. It is as if ideas and aesthetics are held up for audiences to engage with and in so doing, a conversation is engaged in, positing, “Is this what you perceive?” “Is this what your experience of this world provokes?” “How does our perception of the world connect with yours?”.
It may be argued that the Artistic Director of a more conventional arts festival may, in essence, pose the same questions to the audience. However, for the boutique festival model researched in this thesis, the audience is
182 connected with such dialogue in a more immediate manner, and the programmers do not adopt the pose of omnipotence that underpins the traditional role of the Artistic Director.
The positioning of audience for the boutique festival is different from that of the community festival as well: in the community model the focus is on consolidating a community, often a geographically or socially marginalised group; the festival in this context operates as a “public expression […] of community”
(Hawkins, 1993, p.xvii). For the boutique festival, the sense of community is more opaque, and even problematic, for although the work is aimed at a particular age group, this in itself does not immediately constitute a
“community”. For young people in particular, the variety of groups to which one may belong is highly divergent, arguably even more so than for other age groups. Thus, for the boutique festival the aim is not clearly driven by the sense of empowerment or consolidation in the way that it is for the community event; it is not essentially a means of self-expression or cultural access
(Hawkins, 1993, p.118), as it is for the community arts festival. It is not ultimately about the “political importance and pleasure of self-representation, the authority of people speaking for themselves” (Hawkins, 1993, p.130) as is the case with the community festival2, even though at particular points such
elements are implicit in the boutique event.
Furthermore, the boutique model does not focus on a specific community in the
way that an ethnic or locally oriented festival does, even though the target
group is specific, in the instances addressed here, either young people or
children. Whereas a community festival celebrates the commonalities of that
2 This is a practice that in terms of Community Cultural Development, came into existence in the late 60s and early 70s. (Hawkins, 1993, p. xviii)
183 group, the boutique model more likely celebrates the variety in that group, and programmes to cover a diversity of interests and tastes for that heterogeneous group.
A further difference between the community arts model and the boutique construct is the notion of excellence, a concept highly privileged in the major arts festival, or department store model; but which is of secondary importance in the community arts model, as the emphasis there rests substantially on the sense of participation of the focus community, and not necessarily on the privileging of the quality, or level of mastery of the final product. Indeed, the notion of excellence is highly contested within certain sectors of community arts, seen as exposing “self-serving elitism” (Hawkins, 1993, p, 158), in which concepts of excellence are laced with agendas of exclusion, privilege and snobbery.
For the boutique festivals analysed in Chapter Four, quality is always a major consideration, not as a means of exclusion, but in the dual beliefs of providing a platform for the work of young cutting-edge artists, whose work is thereby exposed to a wider audience base, and also of valuing the audience, by providing such aesthetically challenging and finely crafted work. The boutique festival model encourages audiences to engage with sophisticated artistic forms and narratives, because they are positioned by the festival producers as culturally capacious. In this manner, the boutique festival has a similar agenda to the high arts festival construct. The boutique festival is underpinned by a philosophy that audiences are agents of cultural consumption, production and change, and are highly adept at mediating the array of cultural agendas flung at them through media, popular culture, high culture, culture in all its guises. This positioning is as true for the very young audiences of OUT OF THE BOX as it is for adolescent audiences of Stage X. Creative Producer of both festivals,
Susan Richer, reacts against what she sees as the ‘dumbing down’ of young
184 people’s aesthetic experiences, with the abundance of formulaic, predictable, easily digestible entertainment, and instead provides a multi-layered environment of plural narratives, which audiences read differently in relation to their own experiences as young people.
Thus these boutique festivals aim to provide a very different kind of cultural experience, and in so doing, they can be connected to the aims of arts festivals in general, often seeking to offer audiences the unfamiliar and unpredictable, the avant-garde and occasionally, the provocative. In the boutique festivals discussed in this thesis produced by the Programming Unit, the programming aims to provide works that are dazzling and often quirky, employing cutting- edge local, national, and occasionally international artists to engage with audiences on a variety of levels.
As indicated above, another connection between the boutique festival and the high arts festival model is the positioning of the Artistic Director. The community model is quite different. For example, for the early renderings of
Warana, or a recent example such as the Rapid Festival for young people in the
Pine Rivers Shire, north of Brisbane (in which professional artists work with
young people, often focussing on a particular issue or idea of specific
significance to the region (www.strathpine.net/pinerivers/arts.html), if such a
person exists at all, the role is often deeply embedded in the processes of
festival making, so as not to result in the event being emblazoned with the
aesthetic and philosophical imprint of one person. Conversely, for the high arts
festival, the imprint is often highly recognisable in programming, operating as
the signature of the festival itself, especially if the Artistic Director is a
prestigious figure. For the boutique festival, the imprint is in place, albeit in a
more negotiated manner. For example, whilst Creative Producer Susan Richer
has strong ideas about what she wishes to explore via programming, it is a
process drawn out of detailed research into current youth philosophies and
185 movements, with ideas being tested on target audience groups for resonance.
It is a process more akin to dialogue than to dictum. Here, the Artistic
Director is as much conversationalist, as s/he is couturier.
Thus, the process of making and delivering this kind of niche festival has particular resonance with the workings of the 60s boutique. It operates as an environment in which audiences and producers share notions of what ‘festival’ is, and in which the work of young innovative artists is profiled for audiences to interact with. It is a process of reflecting youth culture, but also proffering something about it, for audiences to experience and consume. Marnie Fogg’s comments regarding the sharing of attitudes, values and practices as being an instrumental factor in the success of the boutique (2003, p. 17) are just as applicable to the boutique festivals analysed in this thesis.
The boutique festival therefore, is a potent cultural tool because it provides the performative and philosophical space in which key issues impinging on contemporary society, especially regarding contemporary living, may be foregrounded. However, the key issue that ensures the potency of the boutique festival is the positioning of citizens as consumers/ producers.
5.5 Audience relationships and identity
The relationship between the audience and the event is crucial in the boutique festival, and can be most effectively addressed in terms of patterns of consumption and production, just as was true of the retail boutique. It is through the dialogue and coalescence of producer and consumer, and of consumer positioned as producer. Leadbeater suggests:
The largest productivity gains of the next decade will come from
companies that demolish the demarcation line between consumption and
186 production. Consumption is becoming more interactive and often the
last stage of the production process (2000, p.25).
This point regarding the productivity of companies can be extended to the sustainability of cities. The notion of ‘company’ as one form of a complex system, allows the discussion of the city as another: the company depends on
productivity and company gains, and in terms of the city as a complex system,
its sustainability is equally dependent on relationships between production and
consumption. And citizens having an equal role as consumers and producers is a
shift which is important to the sustainability of contemporary cities. Thus,
this positioning of consumer/audience member in such a proactive manner, has
major implications for the contemporary positioning of ‘citizen’ and the identity
of the urban dweller.
As has already been articulated, the position of the audience is crucial in an
understanding of the boutique festival. The notion of audience as active participant in creative experience can also be explored in terms of producing meaning. Not that this is a phenomenon unique to recent theory. Cultural
Studies has always positioned the audience/consumer as active, even resistant.
Ang suggests:
The audience no longer represents simply an ‘object of study’, a reality
‘out there’ constitutive of and reserved for the discipline which claims
ownership of it, but has to be defined first and foremost as a discursive
trope signifying the constantly shifting and radically heterogeneous
ways in which meaning is constructed and contested in multiple everyday
contexts of media use and consumption (in Bennett, 2000, p.55).
In the more conventional audience model, the audience ostensibly watches a
performance, meaning construction is active, and multiple, and audiences “bring
187 previously acquired cultural competencies to bear on texts, so that differently constituted audiences will work with different meanings” (Barker, 2002, p.167).
But regarding notions of interactive consumption, as described by Florida, and as audiences are positioned within the boutique festival, a meaning construction process is engaged within which an injection of the idea of consumption creates meaning in a different way. It is a more creative way of making meaning because the audience member is a producer as well, and the involvement is more active in terms of making meaning, because the audience colludes in creating the work, and does not only experience it from the position of audience member.
The issue of audience connection is crucial to Florida’s analysis of the Creative
Class, and his suggestion that “members of the Creative Class prefer more active, authentic and participatory experiences, which they can have a hand in structuring” (2003, p.167). This has significant ramifications for the boutique festival model as practised by the Programming Unit. These ‘authentic’ environments favoured by the Creative Class create the space in which Florida states it is difficult to differentiate ”between participant and observer, or between creativity and its creator” (my italics, 2003, p.166). This highlights the positioning of the boutique festival as fundamentally blurring the boundaries between audience and spectator, indeed, in which many of the performance or art pieces require interaction to actually exist.
However, the issue of ‘authentic’ requires unpacking here, and suggests that the experience is somehow sincere, in opposition to the synthetic culturally mass-produced events that dominate our cultural lives. But would it be more appropriate to consider that experience, rather than claiming to be authentic, instead as “the creative recombination of existing items to forge new meanings” (McRobbie in Barker, 2002, p.70)?
188 Florida intensifies this argument when discussing the popularity amongst the
Creative Class of extreme sports such as rockclimbing, because this group craves a sense of “continuous engagement […] variety and novelty [,,,] the ‘I’m doing it’ factor’” (2003, pp: 180-181), and the festivals discussed here strive very much to value similar experiences: the sense of inclusion, dialogue, participation and achievement. This notion of achievement is worth considering, in terms of the challenges faced as an audience member and the ideas being dealt with in an arts experience. One wouldn’t usually experience the same sense of mastery watching a concert as with rock climbing, but there may be some sense of achievement in understanding, or in actually participating. This is most evident in the workshop program of OUT OF THE BOX, in which children participated in key contemporary artforms, and created not only the experience, but also the product for themselves. Examples of this are the diverse range of workshops offered, including the Mini-Mix DJ workshops, the
Bling workshops and the Gardening workshops.
For the older audiences of Stage X, particularly in Freakshow and subsequently
Shopping Mall, events also highlighted this sense of participation, most
significantly in works such as the Patio Party of Stage X 1999, and the Take
Note and Draw on Art pieces in Shopping Mall, 2001. Furthermore, Shopping
Mall afforded young artists the opportunity to provide a proposal that would
explore ideas of consumerism, from a parodic or offbeat perspective, as parody
and kitsch had been strong elements of Freakshow. The acts for this event played with notions and patterns of consumption, employing a perverse and subversive slant on what we consume and why. Key notions that were explored via the artworks were notions of authenticity, anti-corporatism, identity (in terms of being able to buy an image), and the exploration of how young people consume. Artistic elements were varied, ranging from performance, installation, interaction, participation, and even the inclusion of an area for
189 audiences to modify and alter their appearances. Thus, the engagement with a key cultural thrust was immediate for both artists and audiences.
Furthermore, Florida suggests “consumers are coming to favour the consumption of experiences over traditional goods and services” (2003, p.167), and thus the process of consuming, according to Leadbeater, is far more interactive than previously: “We are increasingly implicated in producing what we consume, as the line between production and consumption blurs”
(Leadbeater, 2000, p.25). This has further ramifications for the boutique festival, just as the fashion boutique in the early 60s redefined the differentiation between producer and consumer, retailer and customer. As is highlighted, the boutique festival requires the immediate involvement of the audience member’s active participation for many of the pieces to be complete, which intersects potently with contemporary cultural life:
Experiences are replacing goods and services because they stimulate our
creative faculties and enhance our creative capacities. This active,
experiential lifestyle is spreading and becoming more prevalent in
society as the structures and institutions of the Creative Economy
spread (Florida, 2003, p.168).
In fact, the experience of consumption has become so central to contemporary existence that Wyn and White suggest, “…identity is constructed through both the consumption and production of culture” (Wyn and White, 1997, p.73).
This is an issue that has ramifications beyond the individual. Landry and
Bianchini note that “participation is more than a slogan […] Participation creates ownership; people are more likely to become stakeholders in projects they have participated in” (Landry and Bianchini, 1997, p.29). And it may be this issue of
190 ownership that connects the boutique festival experience most immediately to contemporary urban life.
Florida too identifies the importance of changed patterns of individual consumption and societal production, in his exploration of the task of
“developing new forms of social cohesion” appropriate to what he refers to as
“the Creative Age” (Florida, 2003, p.12). His argument rests significantly on what he perceives as the desire of the Creative Class to engage in a “passionate quest for experience” (2003, p.166) and the kinds of experiences craved for are those referred to by the author as “indigenous street-level culture” (2003, p.166); in other words, those kinds of experiences that are part of the life of the very city itself. Florida discusses the fundamental role of cafes, galleries, restaurants, and discusses experience that “grows organically from its surroundings” (2003, p.182). He views such experience as being “native and of- the-moment, rather than art imported from another century for audiences from the suburbs” (2003, p.182). Thus, experiences that are organic within the environment, that grow from within, rather than the importation of cultural experience are crucial: “a creative city needs constant feedback from its citizens” (Landry and Bianchini, 1997, p.53). It is this sense of connection that is fundamental for the boutique festival, and for a sustainable contemporary urban lifestyle.
5.6 Key issues
The boutique festival is a potent cultural form because it intersects with fundamental issues pertaining to contemporary urban life, most specifically the positioning of the audience in relation to the producing of the festival. The boutique festival accommodates these elements via its form, which aspires to create a largely democratic model of production and consumption, both for the festival producers and its audiences, as the six strategies presented in Chapter
191 Four attest. The boutique festival functions as a dialogue with audiences regarding these key issues because it creates out of its community, and positions its audience as producer/consumer, and the retail/performance space is re-negotiated, creating a community between retailer/performer and vendor/consumer/producer.
The issues of connection, diversity and quality are fundamental concerns by which the boutique festival aims to embrace contemporary audiences, connecting with them on a meaningful level by positioning the festival as a process of dialogue. The representation of diversity in programming aims to embrace the notion of plurality within communities, to privilege the difference within groups that are often homogenised, such as children and young people.
Furthermore, the boutique festival aims to value audiences by the provision of programming that demonstrates high levels of conceptualisation. Via these strategies, the boutique festival positions its audiences as culturally capacious, able to engage not only directly within the festival experience itself, but within the social debates that this form, by its very nature, raises.
What makes this model of festival production so pertinent for contemporary life is that it is inherently pluralistic and contrary. It aims to celebrate consumption as a part of everyday life, as well as critiquing it. By being actively part of the production and the consumption, the audience is located both inside and outside the process. The interplay of the tropes of “critique”, the
“aesthetic”, “fun”, consumption and production, local and global, all characterise the boutique festival, making it a form that actively embraces cultural concerns of the contemporary world. The boutique festival is embedded with the pattern of buying and selling of products and connecting this strand within a
Creative Industries framework, which is to do with acknowledging consumption as a driving force in current society. In free societies there tends to be that
192 kind of availability of open exchange in the free market place. The audience empowerment is significantly intensified through this model of consumption.
Furthermore, the concept of boutique focuses on an exchange of products; is it a kind of transaction that draws from approaches about the consumption of a product, which especially for the age groups targeted by both Stage X and
OUT OF THE BOX, is something with which they are highly conversant.
The tropes articulated are indicative of Shopping Mall as well as Five to
Midnight as an entire event, and of Stage X as a festival. The dual celebration
of, and critique of, the processes of cultural consumption are at the heart of
this rendering of Freakshow, and in consequence, move the event out of the
realm of the carnivalesque sideshow alley, to function not just as an
objectification of the freak, but as a celebration of it, and a recognition of the
parodic potential within the freak. The process is about critique and celebration – an active process that makes it different from wandering through sideshow alley. It is the complexity of the tropes that lifts the boutique festival experience firmly into the realm of the aesthetic. Yet the links to sideshow alley are still in evidence. John Docker talks of the fair as:
…a crucial point of intersection between the European citizen and the
‘imperialist’ spoils of the nation-state, where show would increasingly
include exhibition of exotic colonised peoples, from the West Indies to
the South Pacific to Africa, as freaks and monsters (Docker, 1994,
p.192).
In Shopping Mall and Freakshow the freak virtually parodies the ‘normal’, and in
so doing, the revenge of the colonised is played out. However, the sense of the
aesthetic takes it beyond mere parody.
193 As Chapter Four has articulated, especially via its analysis of Freakshow (4.9a) and Shopping Mall (4.9b), this kind of festival model is significant to contemporary culture, through the following key concepts:
The blurring of boundaries of particular kinds of cultural practice, and
examples from Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX highlight this;
The creation of a multi-layered environment, in which audiences
experience a variety of forms and events, somewhat akin to a county
fair;
The privileging of the local, but within the context of global trends;
The celebration of diversity, by which a reading of the audience as
heterogeneous, possessing a diversity of tastes and interests, providing
a festival site which caters for difference;
The sense of building from the ground up, by consulting audiences in the
early stages of festival production;
The transformation of space (even though this is an element of all
festivals, but within the boutique festival, creating a space in which the
audience feels a strong and connected sense of ownership);
The issue of quality and desirability, by ensuring that the programming
presents works of skill and a high level of conceptualisation;
And most fundamentally, the interwoven relationship between consumer,
artist and/or producer, which is nourished by all of the above, and which
sits at the heart of the boutique festival. The multiple opportunities
194 for audience engagement to either “browse” amidst the festival events,
or to fully engage as a participant in the work. The provision of varying
pathways of engagement is crucial to the efficacy of this festival form.
These key concepts are underpinned by the strategies articulated in Chapter
Four, and it can be seen that the cultural practices listed above, of diversity, democracy, use of space, quality and audience relationships can be seen to grow out of the strategies of research and consultation which are married into the program, democratic management practices, positioning of the audience, and the ultimate evaluation of the entire process.
The boutique festival provides a diversity of elements that connect potently with contemporary cultural impulses, most notably the role of the individual regarding patterns of consumption, and the ambivalence with which we regard this dominant social process.
5.7 Limitations of the Boutique Festival
The analysis of the boutique festival thus far has focussed on its empowering elements, most centrally via its positioning of the audience. However, it is also a model with limitations. Significantly, the sense of community it addresses is both specific and opaque, and just as with the retail boutique, although attempting to democratise shopping in terms of moving away from the elitist
‘madam’ shops and department stores of the late 1950s, it inadvertently creates its own kind of elitism. The audience, while positioned as producer as well as consumer, was also positioned as part of an in crowd. The boutique Biba
provides a potent example of this positioning as “an essential place to meet and
be seen” (Turner, 2004, p.15).
195 Paradoxically, in aiming to democratise fashion, Biba ultimately created a new kind of exclusivity:
…there was an intangible, value-added benefit of being a Biba girl: there
was the sense of belonging and of status that it brought. ‘You’d really
feel proud to get on a bus to go home in your Biba outfit because
everyone knew you worked there,’ remembers one, whilst another points
out that ‘to work there was special. I got a big buzz that I worked for
Biba’ (in Turner, 2004, p.50).
Whilst this degree of exclusivity cannot be fairly compared to participants or producers of Stage X or OUT OF THE BOX, the construct of the community involved provides some parallel. There is a sense of being special and unique, in a manner that is substantially different from what is experienced under both the high arts and community festival models. The experience can be set apart from the high arts festival because the audience has had a strong connection
(even if not strictly personal) to the programming of the event, via the processes of consultation, and different from the community program because of the emphasis on a quality and aesthetically-driven experience, as opposed to the social justice-oriented aims of a community arts event.
Furthermore, the sense of community created within the boutique festival is a very particular construct: given the emphasis on the critique of consumption, and in particular the privileging of individual patterns of consumption, a reconciliation with an inclusive sense of community is extremely problematic.
Thus, the boutique festival excludes many elements of the community, and therefore does not engage with a wider sense of community as models such as
Warana did, and arguably, as does the Brisbane festival. This is not seen necessarily as a fault of the boutique festival, but merely as a limitation, amidst its many potent connections with contemporary culture.
196
5.8 Conclusion
This chapter has highlighted the key qualities of the boutique festival, and identifies that it is a potent cultural tool because it provides the performative and philosophical space in which key issues impinging on contemporary society, especially regarding contemporary living and the individual’s relationship to consumption, are foregrounded.
In so doing, the boutique festival, while inherently contemporary, also continues the trajectory of the festival’s raison d’être from its earliest renderings. The role of the audience is as crucial and immediate to the boutique rendering as it is to the medieval pageant, even though the function of these two events is quite distinct. Festivals by their very nature must connect to the communities that produce them, though, as Appendix A explores, this has been made manifest with varying degrees of efficacy.
The boutique festival does not attempt to create a sense of empowerment for a marginalised group as the community festival does, or as indeed did carnival for the oppressed in the middle ages and beyond, even though strong carnivalesque tropes are apparent in certain boutique festival events, especially
Freakshow as examined in Chapter Four.
Nor does the boutique festival attempt to dazzle its audience, through pure
aesthetic artistry, into a kind of stupefied daze, as did the Royal Entries of
the Medici, or the grand gestures of the major arts festivals.
What it does attempt is a dialogue with its audience, a chance to engage with
issues that it deems important to that community, in a highly interactive and
aesthetically articulate manner.
197
However, whilst the boutique festival can be viewed as a potent form in contemporary cultural life, as this chapter has argued, it can also be seen that other kinds of festival structures are being developed. Alternative festival models are being redeployed as a means of addressing and connecting to key impulses in contemporary cultural life, which can be seen to sit outside the charter of the boutique festival, in particular an exploration of a wider rendering of community.
Conversely, elements of the boutique festival model can also be seen in other kinds of festival experience, however: at the time of writing, a conflation of both the arts, community and boutique models was becoming apparent, and this can be seen to foreground further questions regarding the role of the festival in contemporary urban culture. The most nationally significant of these reconfigurations is Peter Sellars’ 2002 Adelaide Festival, as it aimed to marry a number of parallel elements of the boutique festival within a high arts festival context, the result of which has had major ramifications regarding the construction of festival. Sellars’ reworking of a high arts festival of international significance to include certain elements also apparent in the boutique festival construct, raises potent questions regarding trends in contemporary festival practice. Chapter Six explores the ramifications of transferring certain qualities of the boutique festival to a more conventional arts model with a prestigious tradition and reputation.
198 CHAPTER SIX - PLAYING WITH THE MODEL: THE ADELAIDE
FESTIVAL 2002
“Business is about what’s possible; art is about what’s not possible”
(Peter Sellars, Opening Address, Australasian Drama Studies Conference,
Newcastle, July 2000).
6.1 Introduction
Of all the arts festivals produced in Australia, it is the Adelaide Festival that has been at the forefront of bringing globally exalted artists and practices to
Australia. Over its 45-year history, the Adelaide Festival has established itself on the world stage as one of the great arts festivals. Within this context, this chapter will examine the role of the dynamic Peter Sellars in his
Artistic Direction of the 2002 Adelaide Festival, and in his attempt to use this festival as an alternative model to the conventional arts model employed by past Adelaide Festival Artistic Directors, which had largely functioned as a reinvocation of the Edinburgh model. The controversy surrounding his
appointment was augmented by the debate regarding the philosophical
underpinning of his approach (which differed dramatically from the role that
the Adelaide festival had traditionally played), the kinds of management
structures adopted, the programming, and Sellars’ resignation and subsequent
return.
Yet beyond both the controversy and the public persona of this Artistic
Director, what kind of festival was actually produced? How can the 2002
Adelaide Festival, with its emphasis on ecological sustainability, cultural
diversity and reconciliation, be read? …. as anathema to the Festival’s tradition
of bringing ‘the best that has been thought and said’ to Adelaide? …. as a
199 disastrous exercise in Sellars self-promotion? Or can it be viewed as seminal and transformative, substantially shifting the position of this major festival from a department store of arts consumption, to an inclusive and cutting edge phenomenon? Is it that the Sellars concept of cultural activism, that for many seemed strained in this festival, will be viewed as revolutionary in future renderings? Such questions will be explored in this chapter.
Comparisons will also be drawn between Sellars’ model and the festivals produced by QPAC’s Programming Unit, which ultimately invites discussion regarding the role of the arts festival as a contemporary cultural phenomenon.
It will be seen that strong points of connection can be found within the two festival models, in terms of consultation and research, along with the subsequent forging of the program of events, a more democratic management style, and the relationship of the audience to the festival program.
6.2 History of the Adelaide Festival
Since its inception in 1960, the Adelaide Festival has been the jewel in the crown of sophisticated, cutting edge arts practice, aiming to bring the best of international arts practice to Australian audiences. On many levels the
Adelaide Festival has operated as the quintessential department store model, providing a range of extraordinary arts experiences for audiences, which would otherwise be largely inaccessible for them outside of the construct of the high arts festival event. Over the course of its history, the personality and public image of the Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival has always impacted on the reception of the festival. However, the history of the festival has also been punctuated by cultural and administrative tug of war between dynamic festival directors and their largely conservative boards, fuelled by agendas from other interested parties such as the media and the arts community.
200 A host of Artistic Directors has left an imprint of the event: the inaugural position was held by Professor John Bishop, continuing in this role for the subsequent two festivals. Yet even as far back as 1964, Robert Hughes attacked “the nervous cultural snobbery of the organisers” (Whitlock, 1980, p.42), stating:
The Festival is becoming a little too conscious that it is a tourist
attraction. It does not want to offend anyone, puzzle anyone, or issue
challenges […] Festivals are not meant to play it safe. They are
showcases for the new. But this festival is a pure extension of
establishment thinking and committee ideas […] it gives few indications
that the avant-garde exists. It plumps for the crowd pleasers every
time (in Whitlock, 1980, p.42).
Thus, from its earliest incarnations, debate about the function of this festival was evident, and still continues, although with Sellars’ 2002 event, the discussion became more of a public shouting match.
Internationally renowned Australian dancer Sir Robert Helpmann, who was the
Artistic consultant for the 1968 event, became the Artistic Director for the
1970 festival, firmly placing Adelaide on the international arts stage, via his reputation and public profile. However, his festival was also rife with tensions between himself and the Board, as Pamela Ruskin revealed: “administrator Louis van Eyssen […] has had to steer a very tricky course between the explosive
Scylla of Sir Robert and the hidden reefs of the Board’s Charybdis” (in
Whitlock, 1980, p.48). The effects of this were so intense that Helpmann only directed one festival, and Louis van Eyssen took over in 1972. Anthony Steel directed his first festival in 1974, and remained as Artistic Director until
1978. Steel’s festivals also caused enormous debate, but due to what was viewed as his unapologetic cultural snobbery. In his first press statement at
201 the commencement of his term as General Manager of the Festival in 1974 he suggested:
[T]he true roles of an arts festival [should] include the commissioning of
new works of the highest potential quality, the support of local
companies and artists of the requisite professional standard, and a
judicious blend of programmes […] which bring to Australia new and vital
influences, essential to the health of our theatre if we are not to pursue
a totally isolationist policy (in Whitlock, 1980, p.52).
Thus the focus was on excellence, with an emphasis on overseas works, with little consideration of youth, indigenous or even regional programming. It is interesting to note however, that Steel’s second festival in 1976 also included a film component (although these works were not commissioned especially for the festival), prefiguring Sellars in a limited sense by nearly 30 years. However, in direct opposition to Sellars’ philosophy, Steel also scrapped the Festival’s traditional opening event, Flower Day1, announcing that it had no artistic merit
(Whitlock, 1980, p.166). However, as one of the best-recognised figures in the history of Adelaide, Steel certainly must take credit for cementing the reputation of the festival as an international vessel of excellence.
Subsequent appointments included Jim Sharman, avant-garde Barrie Kosky in
1996 and the popular Robyn Archer2. Yet, even the generally warmly regarded
Archer was criticised for a festival image of the Madonna playing the piano accordion for the 1998 festival, that had to be changed after sponsor pressure
(Debelle, 2001d, p.3). Thus, whilst the programming of the festival was forged
1 This event included a public parade, similar to that of Warana, and the tone was very much a community one.
2 Archer had already established a positive public profile for herself before her appointment to the Adelaide Festival. She was a cabaret artist of great repute.
202 by a diversity of outstanding arts personalities, the administration of the event has maintained a highly conservative stance throughout the festival’s history.
This range of personalities in the role of Artistic Director provided a variety of aesthetic experiences, from an initially parochial rendering, through to a palpable emphasis on the international, especially evident in Steel’s events, to the avant-garde vision of Barrie Kosky, and Robyn Archer’s popular yet elegant interpretations. However, the constant washing over the spectrum of artistic temperaments has been the privileging of excellence: of virtuosity, of high standards of cutting edge arts practice. This privileging has been evident since the inaugural festival: “[t}he highest possible standards of performance were considered essential and were…maintained throughout the festival” (Report of inaugural Adelaide Festival, cited in Whitlock, 1980, p.28). The concept is evident even in Archer’s festival: in her preface to the 1998 program she writes:
…I hope [this festival] will engender in you, the audience, a reminder of
all those things of which the Festival’s proud reputation rests –
undisputed excellence in every art form, contemporary work which
pushes the boundaries of ART and an eclectic program which boasts
truly something for everyone (Telstra Adelaide Festival Booking Guide,
1998, p.2).
The sense of excellence and innovation has traditionally been made manifest in the festival by the inclusion of at least one glittering international event per festival, devised or performed by legends of international performance practice: the first festival included performances by Yehudi Menuhin and Dave
Brubeck; the 1962 festival featured the London Philharmonic Orchestra, in
1964 the Australian Ballet featured in a work created by Helpmann, as well as an art exhibition of the Queen’s Pictures, along with further exhibitions from
203 the Guggenheim and the Victoria and Albert Museums; the 1966 event featured the London Symphony Orchestra and the Modern Jazz Quartet, and an exhibition of Turner’s watercolours from the British Museum; in 1968 Marlene
Dietrich and writer Anthony Burgess were drawcards; Helpmann’s festival in
1970 included Benjamin Britten, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Rudolph
Nureyev. In 1972 the program included the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-
Fields, Jim Sharman’s production of Lloyd Webber and Rice’s Jesus Christ
Superstar, and Cleo Laine and the John Dankworth Quartet; the 1974 festival featured the Stratford National Theatre of Canada and the Nimrod Street
Theatre and an exhibition of Sidney Nolan and the Moscow Circus. In 1976
Merce Cunningham performed and Morris West and Tom Hughes appeared as part of Writers’ Week; in 1978 the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra appeared with Zubin Mehta conducting, and Oscar Petersen also performed; Peter
Brook’s The Mahabharata was staged in 1988, Robert LePage’s The Seven streams of the River Ota a decade later, and Peter Greenaway and Louis
Andriessen’s Writing to Vermeer featured in 2000.
The Adelaide Festival thus developed a tradition of bringing the ‘great’ works and practitioners to Adelaide, and more importantly, to Australia as a whole.
The significance of the function of this kind of excellent or department store festival model, especially to a country such as Australia, and particularly in the
60s and 70s, cannot be overlooked. For many Australians, both artists and non- artists, the opportunity to experience the masters of cutting-edge arts practice was only afforded them via a structure such as the Adelaide Festival.
The tyranny of distance meant that many Australians would have little alternative opportunity to experience such arts practice. Anthony Steel suggested that festivals are therefore “…also good for the annual visitor numbers, they add value and they can usually be shown to have had a strong positive economic impact” (Steel, 2004).
204 Of course, it can be argued that this format further intensified the deeply ingrained cultural cringe that reinforced a national inferiority complex regarding Australia’s abilities as a potent cultural producer. However, it was a formula that was largely successful, aesthetically, and in terms of drawing tourists.
6.3 “The Great Dictator” or the Couturier
Such an array of global cutting edge arts practice has cemented the reputation of the Adelaide Festival as a means of bringing world excellence to local audiences, and indeed, before the festivals of other capital cities gleaned strong reputations for themselves, to the country as a whole, facilitated via a hierarchically structured organisation overseen by a visionary Artistic
Director. This can be viewed as the Great Dictator model of festival production (albeit usually a benevolent one), or, to draw on the fashion metaphor established in Chapter Five, the Couturier, and characterised the
Adelaide Festival for the main part of its history. However, the appointment of Barrie Kosky and subsequently Robyn Archer in the 90s began to shift the festival from such a rigid adherence to the department store model, but the commitment to excellence was still firm.
With the department store model, the Artistic Director is placed in a kind of deific role, having virtually complete control over programming. The tradition of this model has been long established within Australia, most obviously in
Adelaide, but in other states also, whereby an artist or administrator of national or international renown (different roles, and sometimes inherent in the one person, but always a figure with a national or international profile), such as
Robyn Archer or Leo Scofield is placed at the helm of a festival organisation, to wield their creative magic, drawing on the ‘excellent’ connections they have made during their professional lives. They weave a dazzling arts program,
205 bringing to Australian audiences those works that would otherwise not be seen here, with little funding potential outside of the national and international festival circuit.
The Artistic Director plays a crucial role within this kind of high arts model, whereby the festival’s programming is largely a result of that individual’s vision.
Such festivals bring prestige to the city in which they are held, and this is a key reason why they are often substantially funded by governments and viewed as a potent arts platform, from a political perspective. Such festivals possess the ability to provide, as John Kotzas has suggested, “big bangs for your bucks”, a short, sharp and sexy shock of arts activity that is highly visible and immediate.
This arts festival model is therefore rooted in excellence, committed to bringing the best and most avant-garde to local audiences, and occasionally creating the opportunity for new work to be presented by local or national companies, who once again, outside the structures of this festival model, would not have the opportunity to work in a new way, or bring their work to audiences outside of their usual programming strategies.
The model is highly advantageous, therefore, in that it provides opportunities for local arts companies to be exposed to international trends and impulses, and also creates new audiences for their works, and for audiences, exposure to a department store of dazzling and varied productions.
It can be argued, however, that audiences in this model are essentially positioned passively, in that the program provides an array of aesthetic wares, from classical music, to contemporary dance, from a piece of ‘great’ theatre, occasionally risqué and controversial, featuring an equally ‘great’ actor, to avant-garde physical theatre. In such a model, audiences have little connection
206 to the process of production, but immerse themselves in the final spectacular product. Essentially, the experience is about creating a sharp burst of activity for audiences, providing a heightened state of aesthetic awareness, which then subsides, until the excitement of the next festival starts to mount. There is little residual effect from this model in terms of the festival’s legacy for the community.
This ‘Great Dictator’ model of Artistic Direction is in direct contrast to the
Community Arts festival event, in which a team of arts workers work with a particular community to create a celebration, or at least recognition of that
community. The emphasis here is on accessibility, not excellence. The event is the result of community collaboration, not of a singular vision. If there is an
Artistic Director, his or her personality and tastes are not central to the shape of the festival; the role is largely about being able to facilitate bringing a community together and to paint over the cracks in community affairs, or to work towards solving them. Government funding is often minimal, and the emphasis is largely on process rather than product, and how the event will further contribute to a sense of community consolidation.
For the smaller niche events, the model employed sits somewhere between these two extremes, and an example of the niche, the boutique model that was employed by the Programming Unit for the festivals addressed in Chapter Four, has resonance for the model that Sellars employed for the 2002 Adelaide
Festival. Such a shift called into question the function of the Artistic Director
of an arts festival, begging the exploration of the democratisation of the role.
6.4 Enter Peter Sellars
When American ‘enfant terrible’ (or as some would see him, ‘idiot savant’) Peter
Sellars was appointed to direct the 2002 event, there was little doubt that the
207 discussion about the kind of festival that would eventuate would be rigorous: those who knew anything of his reputation were aware that the concept of excellence is not a lynchpin of his festival programming philosophy. Here is an interpretation of the festival as an event that should focus on communities as much as artistic practice. Sellars proclaimed:
These events are about finding a community’s self-focus […] If you get
the event right, you don’t have to do a speech about reconciliation or the
environment, because the event itself does it. We use events to
equalise the world. Think of it as stuffing cash flow into part of the
community that would not otherwise get it […The Festival is] about
pleasure, release and connection. It’s a genuine celebration as opposed
to pseudo-celebration (in Bolton, 2001, p.73).
The aim for Sellars was to build a festival ‘from the ground up’, as opposed to the Great Dictator/department store model in which programming is directed from the top down.
Furthermore, Sellars had been publicly damning of that key consideration of most festival directors already alluded to: the notion of excellence. In his address, Cultural Activism in the New Century he said:
…the Nugent Report [has just come out] – and it’s about funding
excellence. I am outraged at the cupidity of this approach. My attitude
is the only good footy teams are Essendon and Kangaroos and everyone
else should be eliminated because they don’t win often enough. The
Crows may have been good once but sorry, they’ve got to go based on
this season’s record! Only feed your children on the days they do well in
school! What are we talking about? We’re talking about culture, culture
is cultivation, culture is you’ve got to cultivate everything around you
208 because you don’t know where the next excellence or surprise will ever
come from, and therefore is impartial, generous and a continuous
activity where actually the very thing that you didn’t have any hope for
at all turns out to be the very thing that we’re all eating dinner off ten
years from now […] Any movement is not about this or that individually
brilliant person, a movement is a movement and right now we’re all
suffering from the nightmare of this highly individualised approach to
everything (ABC television broadcast, 19 August 1999).
His advocacy of looking beyond the obvious semblances of excellence is
consolidated by his belief that “…you can’t judge something by its polish or
presentability. In fact, frequently the absence of these things is one of the
primary strategies of the arts” (in Debelle, 2001b, p.4).
Journalist Penelope Debelle characterised Sellars’ work as a “left-wing festival
vision [which] is one of a community dialogue about contemporary issues with
people who are not usually heard and he derides the comfortable model in which
audiences file into theatres to be served the best from abroad” (Debelle,
2001a, p.32).
Sellars viewed the traditional festival model itself, of which Adelaide had been
a shining example, as anachronistic: ”[T]he old model isn’t working. Whether
you look at Perth or anywhere else, the losses are endemic and it’s nobody’s
fault. I would emphasise that. There is no point in having a witchhunt. It’s the
cultural model that needs to change” (in Debelle, 2001b, p.4).
Yet of his own model he suggested, “It’s actually very low risk: it just doesn’t
feel like it. It’s very risk averse. It’s very different to an avant-garde
tradition of somehow shocking the public. This is actually out there to connect
with the public, with many publics in many different ways” (in Debelle, 2001b,
209 p.4). The final result could not be read quite so optimistically, however, as is discussed later in this chapter.
Nonetheless, Sellars was always very public about what kind of festival he was interested in programming in Australia, and why:
I love the fact that this festival is very closely identified with the
social-political economic identity of South Australia. It’s very rare that
you are in a part of the world where people understand that culture
plays a central role and energises the entire society. And that’s
beautiful […] For me it’s a chance to do what I couldn’t do in America or
Europe and really create an approach to cultural activism that has the
dimensions it had for the Greek or Aboriginal culture, where all matters
of life are interconnected. And where ecological issues and life-choice
issues are understood culturally. Not as conservative or liberal but as
larger questions about life (in Vermeulen, 1999, p.19).
Furthermore, of his desire to move away from the traditional Edinburgh
Festival model on which Adelaide had directly been based, Sellars suggested:
…a festival should gather people’s energy and focus it. It’s about
identifying things that need to happen and make them happen; about
creating a scene, a movement; a sense that everything is moving. A
sense that we have larger goals that are very ambitious and that can
create a cultural and political infrastructure for the next decade […] I
do feel that in Australia there is just so much that is ready, waiting to
move. Because the old models have been taken as far as they can go.
And the advantage of Australia is that the country is in a position not to
imitate what has been done elsewhere but to actually be the laboratory
210 where what will be imitated elsewhere will be created (in Vermeulen,
1999, p.19).
Thus, the dazzling product from the other side of the world evaporates under the considerations of a local emphasis.
Given this kind of rhetoric, and rhetoric that was well documented in the public arena during the lead-up to the festival, there could have been little doubt that the Sellars appointment would have caused serious debate among arts workers, administrators and audiences alike, because of his obvious opposition to the well entrenched role of the Adelaide Festival. But what was unprecedented was the degree of venom with which certain sectors of the community, most notably elements of the local Adelaide press, publicly spat their disapproval at
Sellars, both on a personal and professional level. Media reports throughout his appointment positions Sellars as the Wayne Carey3 of the arts sector. For
example:
The average Australian does not respond well to the huggy, touchy-
feely, get in touch with your inner self, type of approach, especially not
if it comes packaged with an American accent. Not racist, just an
instinctive wariness of the pushy snake oil salesman in the weird clothes
and promising a cure-all for whatever ails you (Ryan, Editor of The
Adelaide Messenger, 2002, in www.the-idler.com.au).
3 Wayne Carey is an Australian football player who came into public disrepute around this period in late 2001, when he was discovered to have been having an adulterous affair with the wife of his team’s Captain. As Australians take their sports personalities very seriously, Carey’s shamefaced portrait was splashed across the pages of all the major newspapers and television screens for weeks on end. Sellars’ public image was similarly unpopular to Carey’s, at least in the Adelaide press.
211 What is worth considering is that Sellars was not the first Artistic Director to refocus the Adelaide Festival into a concentrated study on looking inward, rather than essentially as an internationally driven arts event. Barrie Kosky’s
1996 Festival focussed substantially on the city of Adelaide itself, and employed the festival as a means of focussing on Adelaide’s history, and how that history had significantly impacted on current realisations of the city, so that he foregrounded “the tensions and contradictions in Adelaide’s view of itself” (Hunter, 2004, p.37). Furthermore, a degree of introspection was also a feature of past Artistic Director Robyn Archer, elucidated in a 1998 interview,
“A festival should push the boundaries of art, but it’s also meant to be a meeting place for the community and to be festive” (in Cosic, 1998, p.9).
In fact, Archer’s philosophical aims for the 2000 Festival could be seen as akin to Sellars’ on several levels, when she stated:
The humanitarian task for all of us is to look at how you preserve that
balance between the creation of beauty, living a moderate and useful
life with a devotion to family and friends, as well as a global concern.
It’s about having that life but within a world that needs help. It seems
to me that if there were a millennial question, that’s the fundamental
one (in Litson, 2000, p.34).
There were many arts advocates, however, who viewed Sellars as revolutionary:
Ronald Vermeulen of The Weekend Australian saw him as “a true creator [who] can make things move” (1999, p.19), and Jim Sharman, a previous Artistic
Director of the Adelaide Festival and Board member at the time of Sellars’ appointment said, “He is a very singular, remarkable, inspiring, and yes, often infuriating, artist. In my view, one of the greatest” (in Morgan, 2001 a), p. 18).
212 Thus Sellars invoked highly oppositional readings. But in order to judge the degree of efficacy of his festival, and the significance of his program, it is necessary to consider the course of events that shaped the Adelaide Festival of 2002. What occurred offstage fundamentally impacted on onstage events,
and highlighted a key issue: that the structure of an organisation inherently
affects programming decisions, and that it is impossible to evaluate a festival
without addressing the organisation that produces it.
6.5 The Adelaide Festival 2002
The 2002 festival history formally commenced with the appointment of Sellars as Artistic Director of the Festival in June 1999. He subsequently announced a team of ten Associate Directors (this eventually became eight); these were people from a diversity of backgrounds including architecture, theatre, multimedia, writing, indigenous cultural practice, and restaurateuring, and the aim was that they would consult with key community and arts groups to formulate the program, with Sellars overseeing, but being out of the country for substantial portions of time (this flexibility was written into his contract).
Of this process Sellars suggested:
The festival itself is being programmed in working groups. Probably
around 300 people will end up choosing what is in the […] Adelaide
Festival and developing it […] What you want to do is get the most
interesting folks you can gather and all work on it together, create a
space where the best ideas can begin to emerge (October 2000).
Thus, from this initial announcement, it was clear that Sellars’ festival model was to be substantially different from the kind of approach that both administration and audiences were used to, and not surprisingly, this new
213 process was problematic for the organisation, as will be discussed later in this chapter.
Administratively, problems also began early: in March, 2001 Board Chairman Ed
Tweddell resigned, followed swiftly by three other Board members, citing a variety of reasons for their departure. In July 2001 serious glitches were found in the budgeting process: a deficit of $1.152 million from Archer’s previous Festival proved substantially more than originally thought; the official
Festival 2000 Report stated the deficit was about $74,000. Archer responded by suggesting that a new festival model was needed. In October 2001 the
South Australian Government provided an extra $2 million to rescue the already financially stressed festival.
In August, Chief Executive Nicholas Heyward announced his resignation, and ex-Festival of Melbourne Artistic Director Sue Nattrass was appointed to this position. Soon after, the program was launched, highlighting a heavy emphasis on Indigenous and community-based events. The Board was disgruntled with both the length and breadth of the program (or lack thereof, as it was viewed) and Sellars was instructed to expand upon the program. Sellars was unwilling to do so, especially given that he had been vocal about the size and content of what he had always envisaged.
In October, the situation worsened when an advertisement featuring an image of Adolf Hitler was proposed, with the accompanying text:
In 1908 Adolf Hitler was turned down by Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts.
If only his artistic side had been embraced and nurtured, who knows
what he might have put his energies into? The arts do make a
difference, as you are about to find out.
214 Telstra, as chief sponsor, advised the Board that unless the advertisement was pulled, their sponsorship would be in jeopardy. The company stated publicly:
“Telstra is not prepared to be associated in any way with an organisation using this person’s name or image to obtain publicity for itself.” The Board then ordered the advertisement to be removed, further damaging the reputation of and lead-up to the festival. In November 2001, Sellars resigned, citing his presence as “an impediment to the realisation of the 2002 Adelaide Festival”.
Sue Nattrass was then appointed Artistic Director, and to salvage the event, at least in the Board’s eyes, she programmed several events such as Max Gillies’
Your Dreaming and David Hare’s Via Dolorosa, works that connected with more
conventional notions of the Adelaide Festival, and would appeal to audiences in a
more obvious manner than the rest of the program. Shortly after Sellars’
resignation, Board member Jim Sharman resigned in protest over the Board’s
lack of support for Sellars’ vision.
However, in February 2002 Sellars returned to direct El Nino for the festival as originally planned, and on 1 March 2002, the festival opened, with Sellars again very publicly making his presence felt around Adelaide.
Thus, the journey of this event was enormously fraught, and on several levels can be seen to have significantly divided the national arts community, forcing discussion regarding what constitutes a national arts festival, which in itself was a significant result.
In order to extract a deeper insight into this festival, and indeed, the complex processes involved in festival production generally, a detailed analysis of the implementing of the festival needs to be unravelled.
215 6.6 Implementing Sellars’ festival
Perhaps the most interesting element of Sellars festival was the philosophy behind it, and the manner in which he was attempting to utilise the arts festival. Firstly, it should be realised that to actualise Sellars’ concepts in real terms was a highly complex task in itself; he often articulates a sweeping world vision, and in so doing is highly dynamic, but this is difficult to transform in terms of actual festival administration. For example, in October of 2000
Sellars said:
…one of the ways the Festival is structured is I have hired eight
Associate Directors and in turn we have a 20-person steering committee
of artists from across the country and those artists are architects,
film-makers, chefs, poets, a whole range of people who do not normally
see each other […] The Festival itself is being programmed in working
groups. Probably around 300 people will end up choosing what is in the
next Adelaide Festival and developing it (Sellars, October, 2000,
University of South Australia).
The approach was significant because it was such a shift from conventional means of festivals programming, and in direct contrast to the more traditional model, in which British commentator Bernard Levin described the Artistic
Director’s role as being “a secondary creative artist [who is] given carte blanche to carry out whatever his or her programming vision is” (in Steel,
2004). For Sellars, the aim was to build that programming vision collectively.
Apart from the team of Associate Directors, the way in which this was made manifest, at least in part, was via the commissioning of a number of local and at times marginalised communities, to create work. There were no ‘excellent’ works by legendary directors like Peter Brook’s Mahabharata, or performances
216 by the Berlin Philharmonic. In fact, ironically, one of the few big-budget, avant-garde pieces was Sellars’ own work, the opera El Nino.
Essentially, this was a program aimed at creating a dialogue between the
festival and its birthplace, and the programming and its audiences, but with
little interest in dazzling or mesmerising them. What was of further interest
was that Sellars aimed to physically program beyond the geographical environs
of Adelaide, so that areas never previously located within the festival ‘site’,
became part of the experience, with the result that there was little sense that
this was an urban event, ignited by an inner-city festival buzz.
An innovative and generous way of working, undoubtedly, but for the festival
organisation itself difficult to administer, especially given that it was
significantly hierarchical in structure. Unless a quantum shift in the
organisational model could be facilitated, Sellars’ inherently collaborative model
would be virtually unworkable, and thus it ultimately proved to be within the
organisation. However, it must be emphasised that what Sellars proposed, and
whom he wanted to connect with, had been made public from the beginning. As
Andrew Clements of The Guardian argued:
Anyone who is aware of Sellars’ political preoccupations, or has any
knowledge of what he presented when in charge of the Los Angeles
festival in the early 1990s, or has seen his recent stage work, would not
have been in the least surprised that his plans for Adelaide were very
much concerned with the rights and culture of minorities and with
promoting community relations. That is the package you get when you
hire him (Clements, November, 2001).
It is curious that the organisation did not seem to attempt to accommodate
this different model. Was there a sense of sabotaging the event from the
217 start? Or perhaps an inability to shift the culture and traditions of the festival administration?
Sue Nattrass has suggested that festivals in the future would have to move in the direction of locally developed events, which franchise a community, with only a small number of overseas works. The reasons she cited for this shift were largely economical, such as the relatively low exchange rate of the
Australian dollar in the early 90s, insurance costs, and sponsorship being ever more difficult to attract. Thus, the financial structures of festivals were become increasingly difficult to support, and therefore, for purely economic reasons alone, she saw that the festival construct in general, would move in the direction that Sellars was advocating (Sue Nattrass interview, 6 March 2002).
Perhaps it is only in hindsight that the true value of the Sellars model can be evaluated.
6.7 The Board
A further key issue which must be profiled in this discussion is that of governance. The Adelaide Festival Board has largely been conservative, as has been attested in 6.2, and given the number of new Board appointees at the time of Sellars’ appointment, in this instance, it was also a somewhat inexperienced one. The demographics of the Board included only one artist: Jim
Sharman, who, as has already has been cited, resigned in disgust at the Board’s lack of support for Sellars. The relationship between this kind of Board and the Artistic Director can only be problematic therefore, when that Artistic
Director makes comments such as:
Art is about living in contradiction. Art is about not being frightened of
a contradiction but being able to have this side and that side
218 represented and I think sometimes I am a little misunderstood in the
Festival because I am constantly trying to take very hot political issues
and work with them as an artist (Sellars, 5 October 2000), and not,
arguably, as a business person.
Sharman said in an interview in November, 2001, after his resignation:
”Originality, controversy and quality have always been hallmarks of the
Adelaide Festival and I see no reason this won’t continue to be the case in
2002. I feel Peter Sellars was asking the right questions about the role of the arts in today’s society” (in Debelle, 2001c, p.5).
Ironically in May of 2001, Sellars had suggested that the Board was relaxed with his vision and recognised that new yardsticks were needed (in Debelle,
2001b, p.4). Thus, he was appointed by a Board which surely had some degree of understanding of the Sellars aesthetic, and furthermore:
Even the Lord Mayor of Adelaide said to me: ‘I hope you’re not just
going to bring circuses and insult our intelligence. I really hope you are
bringing work that’s challenging and meaningful and deals with issues in
people’s lives.’ Now to be told that by the Mayor: that’s just beautiful,
that’s just phenomenal! (Sellars cited by Vermeulen, 1999, p.19).
It is important to remember however, that this kind of tension between
Artistic Director and Board was nothing new for the Adelaide Festival. Was this history further intensified by a deep-seated sense of nationalism and resentment in that an American was producing a festival that focused substantially on the workings of an Australian city?
A further fundamental factor that should have been prominent in the Board’s overseeing of the festival, was that Sellars’ reputation as a financial manager
219 had already been established as questionable. Even colleague Sue Nattrass, who was highly supportive of Sellars’ vision suggested: “He’s got a wonderful intellect but he’s not a good manager […and] He was asked to broaden the program with no more money” (Sue Nattrass interview, 6 March 2002).
His 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals both resulted in major financial deficits, and copies of reports of these events were read by Board members and management after his appointment. When he was appointed director of the American National Theatre in 1986, and prior to that the Boston
Shakespeare Company, both organisations lost serious amounts of money under his auspices (Crook, 2000, www.the-idler.com.au). It seems extraordinary that effective budgetary measures were not put in place in Adelaide for his appointment.
Or indeed, why measures had not been positioned even earlier than Sellars’ appointment; given the ‘found’ deficit in a February 2001 report from the previous Archer festival, the accounting practices of the festival would seem in need of a substantial overhaul. While the explanation for this by the chief executive at the time, Nicholas Heyward was due to: “incorrect attribution of
$350,000; reserve funds incorrectly shown as an item of income; and overstatement of available reserves” (Bolton, 2001, p. 73.), surely the practices needed to be streamlined.
Thus, the 2002 Festival was dogged by financial imbalances, further exacerbated the loss of monies from Ansett4, and the difficulties in gaining new sponsorship, in a nervous political climate, after the September 11 attacks.
4 Ansett, Australia’s second domestic airline, went bankrupt during 2001. It had been a major sponsor of the Adelaide Festival and the loss of its sponsorship impacted significantly on the event.
220 6.8 Administrative structure
The organisational structure of the Adelaide Festival provides a further issue of consideration: essentially the Adelaide Festival operated as a split organisation (as suggested by Sue Nattrass). It operated in this way:
BOARD
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Artistic Director (Sellars) Publicity administration
Associate Directors Economy
Figure 2: The Adelaide 2002 Festival management strategy
(Source: drawn from Sue Nattrass’ description in her interview with
Jacqueline Martin and Willmar Sauter, 6 March 2002)
On the Sellars side, the model is essentially flat and democratic, whereas on the side of the CEO, the structure is essentially hierarchical. And these two elements were supposed to operate in parallel with each other. Thus, there were two virtually opposing structures in place operating simultaneously, with the CEO portion taking the greater amount of resources and funding. When
Sue Nattrass was appointed, she eventually took over both positions of Artistic
Director and CEO, in an effort to provide consistency and manageability.
Inherently, then, the infrastructure by which to provide a festival was
fundamentally problematic.
221
6.9 Insider views
The views of those immersed in the festival process provide a more insightful perspective into processes of producing this festival.
Lynette Wallworth, one of the team of appointed Associate Directors, considered that “the key problem was the organisation itself”, in terms of its structure and practice, and that it was ill-equipped to deal with the model that
Sellars advocated: “Here is an organisation that is used to a new Artistic
Director every two or four years, but for this year’s event, there were eight new people introduced into the organisation”, the result being that the administration essentially “seized up” (Wallworth interview, 29 May 2002).
Furthermore, the Adelaide Festival is an organisation used to dealing with far more conservative work practices in terms of deadlines, marketing and programming, and for this festival, in which a number of the key projects such as the Cultural Residencies Program, (addressed later in the chapter) for example, did not expect or require a finished product, those traditional marketing strategies did not work.
Had Sellars been given a two festival contract, and been ensconced over a four- year term, perhaps there would have been more opportunity for the shifts in organisational culture to be ironed out: “If the organisation won’t change, the festival won’t change” (Wallworth interview, 29 May 2002).
Furthermore, Wallworth felt that the entire debate regarding Sellars’ festivals was superficial, focussing on the personality of the man himself, and that the fundamental issues were not really being addressed. She felt that it was completely unrealistic to hold Sellars responsible for the workings (or lack thereof) of the event. She suggested that he was the one who conceptually
222 seeded the event and ignited ideas, but that it was the eventual team of eight who did the community groundwork. The festival was really a process of research and development (Wallworth interview, 29 May 2002).
Presciently, in June 1994, a report on the structure and operation of the
Adelaide Festival had been released. It highlighted a number of issues that are interesting to explore in retrospect, and in the way in which they echo issues surrounding the 2002 event. The one of most interest to this research, is that surrounding the festival’s relationship with local organisations: “The
Working Party believes that there needs to be a total management approach to the involvement of local organisations” (p.25). It goes on to suggest that:
The Adelaide Festival offers an opportunity for local companies to be
showcased to international and national visitors […and…] the prestige
for local companies to participate in the Festival is considerable […] The
Working Party recommends that recognition be reinforced of the
showcasing role of the Adelaide Festival for local organisations (1994,
p.25).
On several levels this was also the aim of the 2002 event. Thus, it is interesting to note that such issues were aired eight years prior to Sellars’ event, and yet had evidently not been addressed within the organisation.
Another key issue articulated by Wallworth was that of funding. She viewed that the Adelaide Festival had been shaped by considerations of where funding had been derived from in the past, via national, state, tourism sectors, and so on, and relationships and reputations are based on what’s happened before and the kind of product produced before (Wallworth interview, 29 May 2002).
Thus, there was an entrenched culture which impacted significantly on the nature of the event and its programming.
223
Issues were not only to do with audiences, but with corporate relationships.
Wallworth felt that it was an irresponsible act to expect that all these changes could occur within a two-year timeframe. There needed to be a commitment to time to redevelop areas of marketing, publicity administration and infrastructure, to effectively reinvent the organisaton (Wallworth interview,
29 May 2002).
For Wallworth, the crucial issue became, as Sue Nattrass also suggested, that the department store model of national arts festival programming was becoming virtually unsustainable, due to rising costs and after September 11, the world seemed less willing to interconnect (Wallworth interview, 29 May
2002). Certainly, since 2002, there has been evidence, as this research suggests, that in certain sectors, the conventional arts festival model is shifting, although there are still many examples of its more recognisable renderings.
Associate Director Jonathan Parsons saw that what the Festival was attempting was to “open up spaces within institutions” and that it was about planting the seed for change for festival models in the future. He saw that:
…the programming for this festival was a mixture of the old festival
model and a different way of doing things, which are hard to program in
a traditional and straightforward manner […Parsons thought the festival
operated as] two different forms colliding and found that there was lots
of resistance within the organisation itself […that] there was an
established, hierarchical structure that has a long history, and a
collaborative structure was inserted into an organisation that didn’t
know how to deal with it […] The entire communication strategy has been
really problematic (Jonathan Parsons interview, 4 March 2002).
224
Conversely, though, there were members of the local community who felt decidedly excluded by the Sellars aesthetic, and were insistent that he had failed in presenting any sense of the ‘shock of the new’. Several established
Adelaide artists expressed their disappointment with the Sellars festival, on a number of levels. Contextualising Sellars’ festival within recent traditions of the event, [these artists considered the 2002 festival as lacking], in comparison to the 2000 event which was viewed as the impossible festival – high risk and high art, a festival full of world premieres of new work, and traditional in the sense of coming together and sampling the best (Parsons interview, Adelaide, 5 March 2002).5
A key concern - regarding Sellars’ privileging of non-professional performers – which was evident in productions like Shishka-car (examined in 6.10) was the
lack of standards: “a lot of things that can’t hold their own as pieces of art
really, so you’re left in a difficult situation, where the issues are important but
is the art up to standard?” (Interview, Adelaide, 5 March 2002).
Furthermore, “as an artist living in Adelaide, you sort of replenish your
batteries through the festival […] you see a company like Peter Brook’s
company and you go ‘We can never do that but someone is, and that book The
Empty Space you read in 1978, now it starts to make sense” (interview,
Adelaide, March 2002).
The artists addressed the very role of the Adelaide Festival itself:
5 The artists interviewed wished to remain anonymous, for fear that overt criticism of the festival would detract from their professional lives. One of the artists interviewed had a piece programmed in the Adelaide Fringe Festival of 2002.
225 …I actually think what they’ve set up is quite interesting, but not for a
mainstream arts festival. And it brings up questions of what is the
responsibility of an Artistic Director and artistic panel when you’ve got
a mainstream arts festival […] I think it’s almost criminal for an
organisation that’s funded that highly to behave in the way that it has
done over the past two years […] there’s a lot of money pushed into it
and it feels that if it fails that it’s okay. I do support that to an extent,
and as a person who pays their taxes I would like to see a little of
something (interview, Adelaide, March 2002).
The artists’ evaluation of the festival highlighted:
…the festival should’ve been the torchbearer of that […] the festival
failed because of the Board and inability to promote that, and because
they didn’t engage many local artists in the first place […] so you got the
local artists offside. Peter came in and it would’ve been good if he
worked with the local artists […] he set up so many large consultative
panels […] all these people were involved and then they weren’t in the
consultation process […] there aren’t many local Associates; local artists
who had worked with the community would’ve been best placed to advise
Peter as to what was going on in the first place[…] What is good is that
people have talked about the festival itself – whose festival is it? It’s
good to talk about what is the role of a festival (interview, Adelaide,
5 March 2002).
And lastly:
Maybe they could have done it in increments, so in 2010 you’ve got this
festival and everyone fully embraces it […] people haven’t found it for
226 themselves […] it was Peter saying, “This is my vision of what I think you
want” (interview, Adelaide, 5 March 2002).
Thus, for a number of those with a vested interest in the Adelaide event,
Sellars’ version was sorely wanting – understandably in certain ways, as there were none of the blockbuster events normally associated with Adelaide, apart from Sellars’ own production of John Adams’ El Nino, which by all accounts was
not a success. But more importantly there were no obvious categorical
delineations between Theatre, Opera, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, nor the
inclusion of spectacular highbrow events. The aim was more to synthesise
cultural elements, with the focus often on process rather than product. Sue
Nattrass believes that “we’ll feel the ripples of Sellars’ festival for years”
(interview, 6 March 2002). Yet such an event was undoubtedly difficult on a
conceptual level for many audiences, arts workers, journalists and indeed the
organisation itself.
6.10 Programming
What was being attempted philosophically was in certain aspects fundamentally different to the way the festival had been produced previously, and resulted in a number of events that had never been included in a festival like Adelaide:
Shishka-car was staged at the Murray River Speedway, a venue about an hour’s drive from Adelaide. It was a community-based event, featuring the inhabitants of the region, and was a paean to the car, a hymn to the Holden,
Australia’s iconic car. The cast included almost 200 locals, yet the work sits outside other huge-scale productions often mounted in arts festivals, because the emphasis was on the process and the community, and not on a dazzling polished final product. This was not spectacularly ‘great’ theatre; it was often rough and mistimed, but for the community that created it, it was undoubtedly
227 an unforgettable exercise that harnessed and consolidated a sense of communitas.
Another production that sits uncomfortably within typical festival programming was The Longest Night. Whilst ultimately performed by professional actors from Sydney-based theatre company Urban Theatre Projects, this production was the result of an extended workshop process with the inhabitants of a depressed and marginalised housing estate on the borders of Adelaide. It was an exercise in gritty realism of the most immediate kind, exploring the shabby and miserable aspects of life for many subsisting on welfare. It was performed within the estate’s community building itself, the Parks Community Centre, which consolidated the sense of grimness and reality. There was little sense of the glamour often associated with a festival event.
In such works, the audience was positioned in an alternative cultural space than in more conventional festival programs, particularly those who were actually involved in the process. But even for audience members (including the researcher) who weren’t, they were situated in a different space: there was not the sense of witnessing a rigorous intellectual or aesthetic exercise as characterised the kinds of festival programming that Steel invokes, when he points out:
Audiences can be enticed to dip their toes in entirely untested and
unfamiliar waters during a festival, having once been attracted by the
idea, and can easily be persuaded that if the whole turns out to be
bigger than the sum of its parts they will still have had a jolly good time
and will have been a bit adventurous in the process (Steel, 2004).
Whilst it may have been adventurous for audiences to see something unfamiliar as with The Longest Night, there was little sense of having a jolly good time.
228 It was sobering, difficult, and at times even disturbing because it was so immediate, because what was witnessed was a docudrama. It was about being exposed to Adelaide, not as a glamorous festival city, but one with sizable social problems, in an unspectacular and physically close manner, especially as there was the opportunity for direct dialogue with the cast and members from the community after performances. The experience was more akin to community-based theatre than an international arts festival.
Furthermore, the geographical locations of both these pieces took the festival out of its traditional urban base, concentrated in the city centre, and into sites that gave a new meaning to Adelaide’s reputation as ‘the festival state’.
The Cultural Residencies Program afforded ten emerging artists from the
Pacific Rim the opportunity to develop their work in Australia for a three- month period. The emphasis was not on the creation of dazzling or disturbing pieces for an exhibition, but on providing artists with the space and time to explore their practice, without the pressures of having to create work for public consumption.
There were also a number of key indigenous works, which highlighted a key focus of Sellars' festival. These included The Career Highlights of the Mamu,
written and performed by Trevor Jamieson and members of his family. The
multimedia piece focused on a ghostly figure, the Mamu, who “symbolizes the
spirit of the past” (Martin and Sauter, forthcoming, p.1). The other most
notable work was Skin, by internationally renowned Indigenous dance company,
Bangarra Dance Theatre, employing the music of Indigenous music legend
Archie Roach.
A group of films was especially commissioned for the festival. It is this facet of the festival program that proved most successful. Sue Nattrass suggested
229 that this policy to commission films was unprecedented: “film is the medium preferred by young people, so we hope they will bring in more young people” (in
Usher, 2002, p.4). Sellars was awarded a further $1 million from the government of South Australia for the commissioning of films (Usher, 2002, p.4.). The five commissioned films were: The Tracker by Rolf de Heer, featuring David Gulpilil, who won an Australian Film Institute Award for Best
Actor for his role, Australian Rules by Paul Goldman, Walking on Water by Tony
Ayres, Kabbarli by Andrew Taylor, and Ivor Sen’s critically acclaimed Beneath
Clouds, in which lead female actor Dannielle Hall won a Best New Actor award at the Berlin Film Festival. The thread running throughout these works was
Black and White relations in Australia, which were highlighted as fractured, tense and at times, irreparable. This is the one portion of the program that seems to have found favour with most critics, perhaps because if the subject matter was difficult, each film was beautifully crafted, sitting more easily within a festival program in terms of conventional notions of excellence and aesthetic quality, than most of the other festival pieces.
Furthermore, it widened the frame regarding what is possible to include in festival programming. Bridget Ikin, who partnered the project with Sellars, and who is a former head of SBS Independent (a national government-founded television station which caters for cultural diversity) has suggested, “No film festival has ever been involved in commissioning new work on a scale like this”
(in Usher, 2002, p.4).
Director Rolf de Heer suggested that he found the exercise of making a film for a festival emancipatory: “I felt I had to make it worthy of discussion in the context of an arts festival. I probably would have not been brave enough in other circumstances” (in Usher, 2002, p.4). The awards mentioned above highlight that the films have had great success, and invited national debate:
Australian Rules has caused a lot of controversy, due to its unrelenting
230 depiction of racism within the football arena, territory extremely close to the hearts of most Australians.
Thus, the context of the festival can indeed provide artists with the framework to extend their work, to be able to explore ideas and practices which otherwise would be too risky, in terms of finances or marketing. In this way, Sellars’ framework can be linked to the avant-garde notion of festival production, positioning the arts festival as a space for the new and the different, promoting that work which cannot exist outside the festival construct.
Such programming has direct and significant implications for the festival as a cultural structure, and provokes issues such as: who is an arts festival for, and in what role does it place the audience? As Lynette Walworth asked - who was the audience of the Adelaide Festival? She regarded the Sellars festival as a barometer of “how hard it is to turn a festival around, but that it can be done.
But you have to bring the audience with you” (Walworth interview, 29 May). In
the labyrinth of media debate regarding the 2002 Festival, this fundamental
issue was rarely discussed.
The model of the main festival and the Fringe festival in 2002 could almost be
viewed as reversing their positions, as the Fringe on several levels could be
considered more mainstream in its featuring of a number of well-known
Australian comedians such as Will Anderson, Rachel Berger, Rod Quantock, and
Lano and Woodley. It also included several works that had been acclaimed at
the Edinburgh Festival, 3 Dark Tales, (which won the Total Theatre Award at the 2000 Edinburgh Festival), Shakti, which also performed at Avignon, and
Susannah York in The Loves of Shakespeare’s Women. The Fringe program was
extensive, featuring over 300 events. It could be argued that the main
231 program took on the sense of inversion, usually the role of the Fringe, whilst the Fringe itself read more like an arts festival in terms of its programming.
6.11 Key connections between the Sellars’ model and the Boutique Festival
It is apparent that Sellars’ 2002 festival has significant points of connection with the boutique festival as produced by QPAC’s Programming Unit, and it is the positioning of the audience in relation to the festival’s production that is central to both models. As articulated in Chapter Five (5.6), this is accommodated via the festival form itself, which in both the case of the boutique festival and Sellars’ rendering, aspires to create a largely democratic model of production and consumption for festival producers and their audiences. Both festival processes can be essentially viewed as building a festival “from the ground up”, by engaging in consultation with audiences, and employing audiences to physically be involved in a number of the works themselves.
This process of consultation was evident, particularly in works such as The
Longest Night, in which a specific community was directly involved in the creation of the production. This is also true of Shishka-car. Furthermore, the festival was in essence programmed by a team of eight rather than a single figure constructing the festival production process itself as inherent.
The importance of research into issues impacting on cultural practice was also a feature of both festival processes, given Sellars’ academic engagement with key contemporary impulses, as well as the diversity of backgrounds of his team of Associate Directors.
Furthermore, this production team illustrates, at least in theory, a commitment to a democratic management style, in which programming is a collaborative
232 process, rather than the playing out of one person’s vision. Both festival models were striving to employ a democratic model of management, which was far more appropriate for the programming priorities, and both were working in conservative institutions, and experienced difficulties in producing their festivals, due to non-mainstream means of programming. However, a key difference within Sellars’ team was the fact that it had never worked together previously in the assemblage of a festival; perhaps if the group had collective administrative experiences, as was the situation for the Stage X and OUT OF
THE BOX events, the tension between the festival’s programming and the
Board would have been less traumatic. As has been argued in Chapter Four, the shared history of the Programming Unit has afforded it the ability to ultimately consolidate, rather than splinter, under times of pressure.
The redeployment of public space is a feature of both Sellars’ festival and the boutique renderings of the Programming Unit. Both Stage X and OUT OF THE
BOX essentially concentrated the festival activity in and around the QPAC precinct, especially in the forecourt area in front of the complex, a public thoroughfare, and an area not usually inhabited by young audiences. Thus, the sense of creating room in the mainstream was made manifest. However, for the Adelaide event, Sellars took much of the festival to the margins, illustrated in The Longest Night presented in a housing estate, and Shishka-car staged at a speedway. Thus, both festivals repurposed civic spaces for arts activity.
A key issue was the notion of programming itself, based on the view that festivals are about culture, not just arts. For both Sellars and the
Programming Unit, the festival is viewed as embodying a range of cultural expressions, including elements such as fashion and food, for example. Those
Associate Directors interviewed seemed to be in agreement with this philosophy. Sellars was very much interested in the festival as it relates to
233 cultural and social expression, indeed, as it relates to life, and not just necessarily in terms of aesthetic and artistic expression. His aim to bring out
Frank Gehry to discuss architecture provides a perfect example of the intersection of festival and the culture of everyday living, an issue further examined in Chapter Seven.
The commitment to a profiling of local artists is also a key feature of both festival models, resisting the trend of many other festivals to include high- profile international arts events to provide prestige.
Similarly to the Stage X festival processes examined in Chapter Four, Sellars worked to utilise the festival as a process of dialogue, positioning audiences, especially in programs such as Shishka-car and The Longest Night as both producer/consumer, and re-negotiating the conventional performer/audience spatial divide. Furthermore, both festival models aimed to represent diversity through programming, so that the plurality of communities the festivals aimed to engage with was embraced.
These obvious parallels between the philosophical viewpoint that Sellars affords festival production, and that of QPAC’s Programming Unit, is crystallised most significantly via the idea that the festival is an opportunity for dialogue between the festival itself and its target audience.
And yet, the ‘feel’ of the Adelaide Festival was entirely different to either of the boutique models examined here. Whilst on many levels the processes were similar, it is the different positioning of community, which for the Sellars festival was far more in keeping with Community Arts philosophy that resulted in such different festival experiences.
234 Sellars' key themes of “ecological sustainability, the right to cultural diversity
[and] truth and reconciliation” (Goldsworthy, 2001, p.2) highlight the fact that he was not interested in employing the arts festival as a means of highlighting excellence, but of engaging audiences with meaningful dialogue regarding fundamental social and cultural issues. Whilst the Programming Unit did not employ the programming strategy of articulating themes so obviously, the philosophy of employing the festival as a means of crystallising and discussing key cultural issues, is parallel to Sellars’ aims.
A key area of difference between the two parties, however, is in their notions of quality. Whilst neither Sellars nor the Programming Unit focuses on the idea of excellence, the notion of creating work that demonstrates a high degree of artistic merit is certainly evident in the Programming Unit. With productions such as Shishka-car, the emphasis was far more on the process for
the participants. Yet it can be seen that both resisted a high arts agenda.
Of course, the personality of the Artistic Director drives an arts festival – but
the visibility of this personality can differ dramatically. Sellars’ personality
was far more visible than Richer’s or Kotzas’, and yet their stamp on each
festival produced by them through the Programming Unit, is just as evident.
The most significant area of difference, however, can be seen as the way in
which community is constructed by the boutique festival, and in Sellars’ model.
As has been articulated in Chapter Five (5.7), the boutique festival’s focus on
patterns of consumption, especially the celebration and critiquing of the
individual’s consumption choices, is difficult to reconcile with a more traditional
value-driven sense of community as explored by Florida and Leadbeater, which
they advocate as being crucial to the sustenance of a healthy and vibrant
creative city.
235 For the Sellars festival, a sense of both the Adelaide community, especially inclusive of those on the margins, evinced in The Longest Night and Shishka- car, as well as the positioning of Australia as part of the wider community, especially the Pacific region, was evident in the Cultural Residencies Program, and most potently, the profiling of Indigenous communities, underpinned the entire festival’s philosophy and programming.
A final key difference that must be considered is that whereas the traditions of both Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX had been essentially established and continued by the Programming Unit itself, Sellars had to enter into a very different relationship with the Adelaide Festival, whose prestigious reputation had been developed by a range of high profile Artistic Directors. Sellars was an outsider who played with a well established and much revered festival model.
6.12 Evaluation of Sellars’ model
Thus, on many levels, the Sellars model was attempting to offer a new kind of arts festival experience altogether with Adelaide in 2002. His degree of success regarding this event depends on how a festival is defined. Yet the effect of his attempts was extraordinary in terms of placing the arts debate into the public domain.
However, it can be seen that Sellars was aiming to invoke the kind of community arts model commonly practised in the 70s (his creative concept of El
Nino seemed to highlight his regard for this era), in which a Marxist reading of culture meant that Art plus capitalism was equated with ‘bad’ festival making, and an emphasis on community and ‘the people’ equated to ‘good’ festival making, the categories constructed in opposition (Hawkins, 1993: 19). This was not necessarily a negative positioning of the festival, but is it workable for a major national, or international festival to employ such a localised community-based
236 philosophy? A degree of the more informed criticism focused on this issue of how a community arts model can be reconciled within a tradition of the high and the avant-garde. For many, it just was not possible. But it is interesting to note the number of high profile arts luminaries who supported Sellars’ vision, such as Sue Nattrass and even Artistic Director of the 2004 Adelaide Festival,
Stephen Page.
It is difficult to make judgements about the quality and efficacy of Sellars’ model, given the number of areas that impacted on the actual programming.
Had the organisation been able to adapt more fluidly to cope with a different
managerial style, there is no doubt that Sellars’ process could have gone much
further into shifting the festival model in a new direction. Indeed, given the
initial posturings of support that Sellars had been afforded by being appointed
to the position, he no doubt perceived that this department store model had
the capacity to withstand serious renovation, especially given the kinds of
earlier restructuring that Kosky and Archer had commenced. However, it
would appear that the flexibility of the model could only extend so far, and
that the fundamental foundation of excellence could not be tampered with.
Sellars’ successor, Stephen Page, effectively reinstated this underpinning, but
the legacy of Sellars’ approach was nonetheless evident, as will be explored
shortly.
Conversely, though, for the organisation, as many of the works did not easily sit
within the usual parameters of programming, it would have been difficult to
market these works, and in particular to shift more conventional marketing
strategies within the timeframe of a single festival.
And as Sellars himself suggested, blame should not have been attributed to one
individual for the perceived failure of a festival. What is ironic is that
certainly from the point of view of the Adelaide media, the blame rested
237 exclusively with the Artistic Director, and the kind of attack that was launched against him was puerile and in no way contributed meaningfully to the debate:
We are very glad that [Sellars] and his infernal hugs are gone. We don’t
care what he thinks of us. For all his arrogant American assumptions,
we were unimpressed. And we paid the bills. If I were a litigious
person, I would be inclined to sue to recoup some of the monumental
costs of what this critic perceives as his idealistic folly. I wonder what
he costs us – and what this schmozzle has cost all up [….] So much for
our “meaningful social participation” and a festival of ‘healing and
recognition’. We have recognised what the problem was, Mr Sellars. And
now it is gone, we feel healed (Harris, 2001).
Surely the festival construct is broad and mature enough within Australian cultural practice to be able to accommodate a diversity of realisations. Of course those major arts festival models that aspire to bring the best to our shores will continue, and often with great purpose and finesse: with his Sydney
2002 Festival, for example, Brett Sheehy aimed to bring the best of contemporary international work, and those events which he feels can’t be produced by a company in Australia. (Morgan, 2002, p.13). Furthermore, he argued:
The ‘old model’ is presumably what international festivals in Australia
have been for some time[:] a showcase for very best international and
Australian works, a crucible for the generation of brand new
commissioned works, and local and international co-productions […] while
I applaud Sellars’s decision to present a different kind of festival
[…]let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater (Sheehy, 2001, p.14).
238 And there is perhaps good reason why Sydney and even Melbourne have vigorously adopted the department store model: these major cities have far greater opportunity for sponsorship required for such expensive productions as
Ariane Mnouchkine’s The Flood Drummers, for example. Additionally there is
the personality of the cities themselves to consider; Artistic director of the
2004 Adelaide Festival Stephen Page has said, “Sydney is cheeky and
mischievous, that’s its nature and that’s the sort of festival you can do, and
Brett did a wonderful festival, especially for young audiences – a sugar hit
program” (interview, Adelaide, 7 March 2002).
It can be considered timely that Adelaide moves in a different direction: Page
talked about the importance of creating the sense of a “creative family” within
the Adelaide Festival (Steven Page interview with Jacqueline Martin and
Willmar Sauter, Adelaide, 7 March 2002). It would seem that he had greater
success in this area than did Sellars and his team, judging by the festival’s
review.
The Adelaide Festival in 2002 highlights that contemporary arts festivals can
not only push the boundaries in terms of what we witness in the public arena, on
the stage and in the galleries, but can also do so behind the scenes, and it can
be seen that the very structures of festival organisations are being challenged
to adapt. As Jonathan Parsons believes, “the programming of a festival is so
often the reflection of the structure that you put in place” (interview, 4 March
2002).
Sarah Miller has suggested:
While the outcomes [of the Adelaide 2002 Festival] were compromised
and many of the processes flawed, it was nonetheless, an essential
experiment establishing a radical interface between art and community
239 in a previously inconceivable context. By including many previously
disenfranchised artists and attempting to speak meaningfully about
issues of fundamental relevance to all Australians, the festival achieved
something unique, even if many chose not to take up the invitation
(www.realtimearts.net/r48/admiller).
Can the Adelaide Festival 2002 be seen as the failure of advocacy? On certain levels, yes, but the blame cannot be laid solely at the feet of Sellars. If anything, it is more the failure of the organisation to embrace a different model. In fairness, this is not entirely the fault of the administration, because how could an organisation be expected to adapt to a fundamentally different way of working in the course of one festival? If blame is going to be attributed, perhaps the Board itself needs to be addressed, for appointing Sellars, and then seemingly failing to support his ideas. Or was it merely bad timing involving such matters as resignations and insufficient accounting practices, but is this excusable? Shouldn’t there be systems in place that ensure that the festival can still run, in spite of such drama?
What is crucial is the discussion that the Adelaide 2002 festival has engendered: key questions about the role of festival culture, particularly as it can be constructed in this portion of Australia’s cultural, social and economic history are being foregrounded, along with more specific concerns such as is it valid for organisations like Adelaide (and others like QPAC), provided with large chunks of government funding, to bring large and glamorous international productions, when there are other private organisations which can afford to do so on a profit making basis, like Michael Edgeley6 for example? Or is this still an important function of national arts festivals?
6 Michael Edgeley is one of Australia’s longest standing entrepreneurs, whose large-scale presentations have included musicals, circuses, and major rock music events.
240 Certainly discussions need to continue on a national level. What can be seen is that Sellars’ 2002 festival was a watershed in its brave examination of the
role of the arts festival in contemporary life, and it could be argued that this
playing with the model has left a legacy for festival practice in Australia. For
example, Kristy Hume’s 2005 Melbourne International Arts Festival had a
strong philosophical emphasis on the ecology of the arts, which bears a strong
resemblance to Sellars’ notions of cultural ecology and cultural activism.
Furthermore, her programming only featured new works; there was no
rendering of cultural icons from the western arts canon. Thus, the sense of
tradition so often embraced by high arts festivals, was hereby dismissed.
Earlier, Stephen Page’s 2004 Adelaide Festival, whilst sitting more easily within
a conventional arts festival framework, focussed substantially on Australia’s
indigenous communities, a privileging that was arguably far easier for both
audiences and critics to accept, given the groundwork laid by Sellars’ preceding
festival.
The telling tale for future events is that the management structures of an
organisation must be able to adapt to shifting models. They must be able to
facilitate, and to provide variations of models of artistic decision-making, and
to explore how individuals interface with arts organisations. Undoubtedly this
is difficult to achieve, but it is essential if a different kind of festival is to
have any chance of success. Brett Sheehy, Artistic Director of the Adelaide
Festival for 2006 is eager to re-position the festival again as the country’s
cutting-edge arts event, and not as a “wide-ranging professional development
project for artists” (in Richardson, 15-16 October, p.2), as he perceived the
Sellars’ festival to be. Of the role of the festival he proffers:
We exist for 17 days every two years, for the other 713 days we have
[…] the Australia Council, arts ministries, foundations, local and state
241 companies, regional companies across every single art form […]
developing artists is their job and that’s what they should be doing for
those two years leading up, and then the best and greatest works should
appear on the festival stage (in Richardson, 15-16 October, p. 2).
For Sheehy therefore, the arts festival is truly focussed on bringing the best of the arts to audiences. Brett Sheehy is the Artistic Director for the
Adelaide Festival of 2006, now referred to as the Adelaide Bank Festival and whilst on several levels this festival showcases best international arts practice, including Il Cielo che Danza, a spectacular open-air theatre piece, and a range of internationally acclaimed performance pieces, there is a strong emphasis on visual art, via the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, as well as highlights from the 2005 Venice Biennale. This programming suggests that Sheey’s festival model, while retaining a strong sense of excellence in a conventional manner, is also attempting to extend the parameters of festival programming. However his philosophical positioning of the festival is oppositional to that of Sellars, whose focus lay in the potency of the arts in finding a sense of the arts cultivating a healthy social environment.
6.13 Conclusion
Whatever arguments for or against the Sellars model, the key legacy of this festival has been twofold: firstly, he provoked the national arts community to explore the purpose of an arts festival, and secondly, he proffered a different model of artistic directorship, a possibility for an alternative means of festival management, administration and direction. Whilst the results were mixed, it could be argued that it was a risk worth taking, in terms of providing a potent alternative high arts festival experience and legacy.
242 Major arts festivals have undoubtedly become institutionalised to some extent, and on many levels, have become conservative in their administration and organization. Experimentation with festival models allows for the invigoration of the form, even if they are not always considered critically or publicly successful.
It is interesting to note that the 2004 Adelaide Festival (on certain levels a more conservative model, with Artistic Director Stephen Page returning to more traditional programming endeavours) provided a return to ‘excellence’, including works such as The Overcoat, a Canadian piece, well polished via the international festival circuit, and Letters, a four-hour production by the State
Theatre Company of South Australia. Of the role of Artistic Director itself he has said: “It’s just a big canvas, and I felt like a giant brolga looking down, looking at creating this wonderful festival dot painting” (Fitzgerald, 2004, p.58). Thus, the sense of the omnipotent figure at the helm falls into place again, but it has a very different inflection, as Page’s direction comes from a very particular cultural impetus that sits beyond the western model of the
Great Dictator.
Furthermore, whilst there is the sense of the department store model, when
Page suggests he wanted to “do everything – Aboriginal content, a bit for the crazies, a bit of a circus. The universal smorgasbord” (Fitzgerald, 2004, p.58),
Page’s practice may be read as a department store model that is more flexible than Sellars’ experience proved to be; here is a far more supportive accommodation of diversity; perhaps an upmarket supermarket rather than a department store? Page’s model is a shift from the arts festival model of before. It can also be seen as a hybridising model in that it focuses on a privileging of individual communities, and there is a strong emphasis on the local, and the traditional. It was this emphasis that gave the festival its prestige, rather than the international program, and it was arguably this
243 indigenous focus that attracted international audiences in its highlighting of one potently unique element of Australian culture.
And Page’s appointment as the first Indigenous Australian as Artistic Director of a mainstream arts festival is significant in that through his approach and aspects of his programming he has explored the notion that Indigenous art can function as a conduit through which different cultures can converse.
In a strong sense, therefore, the legacy of Sellars has not been completely eradicated. Page was also attempting to connect significantly with the local community; in this instance the traditional community. Thus it is valuable to note that both Artistic Directors were focussing on community as a cornerstone for their festivals, and for this Page has been praised, while
Sellars was vilified.
Whilst the department store model has served contemporary culture well, it may be in danger of imploding as it becomes an increasingly expensive and exclusive institution. Experimentation with the form, role and function of the festival is not without problems, as Sellars’ attempt crystallises, yet perhaps the democratisation of this potent cultural tool is timely.
Furthermore, whilst there are obviously strong connections between Sellars’ festival and the processes employed by the Programming Unit in its realisation of the boutique festival, Sellars’ model can be seen to push the notion of festival in a contemporary context even further, with his privileging of the democracy of arts festival strategies, and the interface between festival producers and audience members. His drawing on high arts, the boutique and the community festival models for his rendering of the Adelaide Festival, suggest a kind of process that is potently hybridising elements of festival production even further than the boutique festival has done.
244
What Sellars’ attempt at shifting the role of the Artistic Director has allowed is the space for a deep examination of what the arts festival means for our times. The issue promotes the discussion of fundamental questions: What is an arts festival? Whose needs is it addressing? What role does an audience play?
In what ways can a festival engage with its audiences and artists? How does a
festival add value to its community?
The strategies employed by the Programming Unit, with an emphasis on aspiring
to administer the festival democratically, along with the further
democratisation of festival producer/audience relationships, have offered one
means of exploring these questions. In his broadcast discussion regarding
Cultural Activism in the New Century (ABC TV, 1999) Sellars articulated his vision of what role the arts fulfil in our world. He advocated:
…the question in the arts is how you break through this wall that we all
have, this mediatised wall that prevents most of us from engaging in our
real environment and changing it, entering it directly, experiencing it
totally, not through a membrane but actually touching […] what we’re
learning in the speedy society is people need something slow. We’re
learning in fact that there’s a hunger for something that doesn’t just
have profit but that actually has value and they’re not the same. How do
you add value in the life of a city? […] What would it be like for us to
invest our public spaces not with another stupid illiterate corporate
geometry, but profound well-being, a place where people want to be,
anywhere just to be there is to be different. You’re another person
when you go in there because the space itself invites you to be human,
invites you into an imaginary world that you would love to live in, keeps
fantasy alive in the heart of the city, says ok we know what the facts
are but now can we do something more interesting than the facts.
245 Because as we all know the facts will be discredited in about another 25
minutes, there’ll be another set of facts.
The issue of the city is paramount to further discussion regarding the future role of the festival within contemporary life, as arts festivals are, almost without exception, metropolitan enterprises, funded by governments and councils as a means of profiling and reinforcing (or, on occasion, establishing) the cultural cosmopolitanism of a city. The ‘creative city’ has become a key aspiration for contemporary metropolitan sites internationally. Creative
Industries discourse that has provided the theoretical framework for the idea of the creative city, provides an appropriate platform through which to explore the role of the festival in contemporary urban culture. Chapter Seven explores how one particular city is providing a range of different constructs, which present a range of festival experiences that engage with these questions in a range of different manifestations, via a return to the city of Brisbane.
These models of festival divergence are engaging significantly with issues raised by Leadbeater and Florida, with particular reference to the Creative
Class, and the articulation of a creative city. In so doing, these hybridising festival models proffer a range of possibilities through which to explore current conundrums regarding constructs of community, space and authenticity.
246 CHAPTER SEVEN – THE ROLE OF FESTIVALS IN CREATIVE CITY
CULTURE
7.1 Introduction
The festival brings about a suspension of ordinary time, a transformation of ordinary space, a formaliser of ordinary behaviour. It is as if a community becomes a stage set and its people actors with a battery of seldom-seen props and costumes […] the festival is an elaborated and stylised phenomenon which far surpasses ritual necessity. It often becomes the social, ritual and political apotheosis of community life in a year. At festival time one level of reality – the common and everyday – gives way to another, a more intense, symbolic and expressive level of reality (Herber Cole quoted by Soyinka in Huxley and Witts,
2002, p.376).
This thesis has emphasised the emergence of a particular kind of festival model: the boutique festival. It has been argued that the boutique festival has grown out of a long history of festival practice, which is a form that sits at the
heart of Western cultural expression. This research has advocated that the
festival has operated historically as a tool either of the people, or of the
wielders of power, yet has occasionally (most notably through the guise of the
carnival) functioned as a tool for both simultaneously.
However, the prime role of the festival can be viewed as a celebration and/or
consolidation of community, which, as Cole argues above, has the power to
transform that community; despite the diversity of constructs that the form
has occupied, it is these key ingredients of celebration and consolidation that
are the festival’s enduring raison d’être. The notion of community is
increasingly problematic for contemporary life, and festivals are responding to
this problematisation through a variety of manifestations, as this chapter
247 explores. It can also be seen that contemporary renderings of the festival are increasingly blurring the boundaries between previously distinct forms, and it is this blurring which is addressed in this final chapter.
Whilst it has been argued that the boutique festival in particular presents a contemporary positioning that is both engaging and aesthetically adventurous, it can also be viewed as but one construct of the contemporary festival amidst a range of others. This chapter brings together examples across that range, to indicate lines of development for festival culture into the immediate future.
Some of those examples connect even more rigorously than the boutique festival model with key issues impacting on contemporary cultural expression, especially regarding the problematisation of community. It will be seen that the idea of individual consumerism that characterises the boutique festival may in part be inadequate to encompass the fluidity of concepts of community currently at play in the contemporary city. The current cultural climate can accommodate and is in fact enhanced by a range of festival models that can respond to the increasingly fragmentary nature of contemporary renderings of community, which is the currency of the festival. The exploration of hybridising forms will be contained within contemporary festival practice within the city of Brisbane, which has been the chief location of interest for the praxis of festival practice in this thesis.
Whilst this research has argued that the boutique festival form draws to a degree on elements from both the arts and community festival models, this chapter will speculate that the increasingly hybridising forms in evidence in contemporary festival production, coalesce elements of these forms, and on certain levels provide richer opportunities for cultural expression and development than the boutique festival.
248 Festivals such as the Sellars 2002 Adelaide event, for example, via its positioning of an international arts festival within what can essentially be viewed as a community arts framework, can be viewed as exemplifying particular aspects of these new kinds of hybridising festival models. Such hybridising intersects significantly with and mirrors issues impacting on contemporary urban life, most potently articulated by theorists Charles
Leadbeater and Richard Florida, with particular reference to their positionings of community, space and identity.
The festival, in its range of contemporary constructs, can again be seen as a dominant cultural form, because these hybridising models engage with issues of
community, consumption, identity and place, issues which are crucial to
contemporary life, in the midst of globalisation, technology and the rapidity of
change.
This final chapter explores the manner in which these hybridising festival
renderings intersect with the embracing of the notion of the ‘creative city’, a
central trope of current Creative Industries discourse, and the new
possibilities for the development of festival culture in the creative city will be
further explored. The range of hybridising forms also re-engages the playful
potential of the festival, balancing its propagandist functions (still evident in
major arts festivals) with varying elements of the carnivalesque. This
playfulness is here addressed through a range of festival events.
7.2 Weaving the threads
At this juncture, it is worth consolidating the key issues that have framed the research. The scope of this research has brought to the fore a number of key issues which position the festival as a potent cultural and aesthetic tool, both historically and contemporarily. These issues are:
249
The notion of festival as either celebration or subversion: the historical analysis of the festival form (in Appendix A) highlights that throughout history, the festival has served either as a propagandist tool, or as a tool of popular culture. With the invocation of the modern arts festival in the post- war period, it can be seen that the form bifurcated into parallel functions, with the arts festival model essentially taking on the propagandist role, employed as a tool of civic, political, and more recently, perhaps economic leverage, while the popular culture version metamorphosed into the community event.
In its exploration of Warana, Chapter Three observed a local metamorphosis of festival form, via the shifting of the event from community to arts festival.
Such a shift mirrors and contributes to the changes within the host city of
Brisbane, and thus, the festival operated as a barometer of social and cultural change.
Through the analysis of the production of the Stage X festivals in 1999 and
2001, the researcher articulated six key strategies that addressed a number of contemporary functions of the boutique festival, the most significant being a positioning of the festival as a dialogue between audience and author, and the positioning of audience simultaneously as consumer and producer. Henri
Schoenmakers refers to this relationship in terms of the “festival participant, who is theatregoer and spectator as well” (Schoenmakers, forthcoming).
The case-study analysis led to a definition of the boutique festival model, which draws on some elements of both arts and community models, and in so doing, creates a new form. The detailed reading of this form intersects with key issues of contemporary urban life, in particular the identification of audience as producer/consumer, and the increasingly problematic construct of community in the face of expanding urbanisation.
250
Chapter Six focused on a redirection of the arts festival model exemplified through Peter Sellars’ Artistic Directorship for the 2002 Adelaide Festival, and his deployment of the community model within an arts model site. This analysis indicated a contemporary cultural impulse, a rupturing of the arts festival model with powerfully community-boxed impulses, clearly signalling that festival models are becoming increasingly hybridised.
The continuum throughout this analysis of festival forms and functions has
been the positioning of the audience, and the impact of the audience on the
shaping of the various festival models.
In concluding this analysis, a conceptual linkage will be outlined between the
festival, with reference to the boutique form and other hybridising models, and
the creative city, a positioning of the urban which has impacted significantly on
the contemporary cosmopolis. This linkage is argued to exist, specifically
because the contemporary hybrid festival allows for the dynamism between
floating notions of identity and community to be played out, and because this
dynamic is of chief concern to contemporary urban life.
The phenomena described in this chapter, rather than suggesting a definition
of a singular new divergent or hybrid model, are more productively considered a
process of hybridisation, and an emergence of new forms, to a large extent
being created by reconfiguring existing elements. This emphasis on an
emerging process must also be taken to apply to the subsequent analysis of the
Creative Class and the creative city and issues of fragmentation and diversity,
an analysis in which conclusions lie in the processes of hybridisation, rather
than a fixed hybridised model.
251 7.3 Key tropes for current festival practice
Within these hybridising forms, key trends are emerging. These are:
a) A conscious exploration of notions of community, which can be seen
as the key consideration for festival creation;
b) A conscious transformation of public space (arts and non-arts
specific);
c) The search for an authentic experience for participants;
d) The redeployment and reconfiguring of the carnivalesque.
(Regarding the authentic and the carnivalesque, there is no single
answer as to what authentic and carnivalesque mean or might mean in
future festival forms, but these are qualities which are profoundly
important.)
Each of these four arenas will be addressed in detail.
For the festival to remain the potent cultural force that it has been for 2000 years, it is suggested there are four key vectors along which conceptual and practical development can be pursued. This final chapter turns the lens specifically on contemporary festival practice in the city of Brisbane, which has already been addressed in part in Chapters Three and Four. This further consolidation of a particular city will serve to highlight how a range of festival models that are further blurring the distinctions between the community and the arts festivals divide, are engaging with key issues impacting on contemporary urban life. These festivals, in their blurring, can be seen to be further democratising arts practice, as the breaking down of the divide
252 between high and popular culture is exemplified through programming, and as audiences are increasingly positioned as active participants. Paradoxically, on these levels, the hybridising festivals are reinvoking ancient festival processes of actively engaging the host communities.
Furthermore, the highly popular rhetoric regarding the creative city, so aggressively taken up by local and state governments throughout the West, will be addressed. The manner in which the festival interfaces with this rhetoric will be explored.
7.3a Community
‘Community’ as a concept and as a practice has become increasingly problematic in a contemporary urban Western experience: “what was once regarded as
‘whole’ is now held to be a discursive construction marked by multiple lines of difference […] we are witnessing the fragmentation of culture,” (Barker, 2002,
p.72). Culture is diverse, multi-layered, in ways that are more obvious than
ever before. Leadbeater suggests:
Community itself is a problematic virtue. In an age that is both individualistic
and increasingly dominated by big business, self-organizing communities of
most kinds should be welcomed. But the Internet has also been used for self-
organizing communities of paedophiles, extreme pornographers, racists, child-
traders, terrorists and militants. Communities are not morally equivalent. We
do not just value community for its own sake but for the values it promotes:
communities can be good and bad (Leadbeater, 2002, p.136).
How can the notion of community provide any significant resonance in a
contemporary urban context, as cities become arenas in which millions of people
reside? This issue has been explored by urban theorists in recent times,
253 notably in Jane Jacobs’ seminal text, The Death and Life of Modern American
Cities, in which she problematises the term “togetherness”:
Togetherness is a fittingly nauseating name for an old idea in planning
theory […] apparently a spiritual resource of the new suburbs, [it] works
destructively in cities. The requirement that much shall be shared
drives city people apart (1994, p.62).
Furthermore, the anonymity that urban life imposes is often highly appealing to contemporary urban dwellers, its sense of liberation buttressing against the implications of containment and conformity inherent in the terms ‘community’ or ‘togetherness’. However, the fundamental human need to belong to some kind of enclave deserves also to be addressed: “A city’s very wholeness in bringing people together with communities of interest is one of its greatest assets, possibly the greatest” (Jacobs, 1994, p.119). And perhaps it is this notion of communities of interest that has greatest resonance for contemporary urbanity. It appeals to people connecting with a particular aspect of their lives, rather than requiring the kind of totality of commitment that a traditional sense of community evokes.
Naturally, community as a concept has shifted as our notions of the world have shifted. Current theories regarding the notion are explored by academics from a variety of perspectives. Nan Ellin suggests that the importance of place has diminished through processes of globalisation, and as a result people have experienced a sense of loss and placelessness. She believes that to counteract this, there is a new search for community, to preserve or rehabilitate old cities, or the building of new cities, which represent old ones. She refers to this search as a process of “retribalisation” (Ellin, 1996, p.1).
Conversely, Verwijnen argues that:
254
On the one hand we are projected and connected throughout the world,
while on the other our lives and experiences are rooted in places, in
their culture and in their history. My point is that exactly the ‘new’
cultural industries and their actors are building these cultural and
physical bridges (in Verwijnen and Lehtovuori, 1999, p.26).
And furthermore, Leadbeater suggests:
We will create a more durable sense of community only if we build it on a spirit of individuality that recognizes the importance of wider social obligations and attachments. We cannot impose a sense of viable community on a society of narrow, selfish individuals. We need a different recipe. (Leadbeater, 2002, p.206)
It is little wonder that the sense of community is problematic.
What is the role of the festival in this debate? As outlined in Appendix A, traditionally the festival worked to harness and consolidate a sense of community, albeit in much smaller towns or cities, a function discussed by
Landry and Bianchini in their analysis of the Creative City. In the past, they suggest, these festivals were:
invented by local people, generally with no public subsidy, simply to have
a good time [and to] punctuate the civic calendar in ways that are
relevant to each place (Landry and Bianchini, 1995:40).
And perhaps this is the reason why so many localised community festival events are currently produced: to reignite, or consolidate that sense of geographical community. Thus, it is a quality still in evidence in festival production today,
255 most particularly in localised festivals. However, this concept has limits when applied to the geographic frame of a contemporary city (with a population any greater than a few hundred thousand), in which many physical sub-communities are built around other conceptual frames such as ethnicity, class and gender, which may exist within the umbrella of the overarching socio-political construct of ‘the city’.
The role of community can also be viewed as problematic for arts and boutique festival models. Whilst with the community arts model, the sense of immediate physical and conceptual community is most potent, for the high arts event, and most particularly, the boutique event, in which this sense of togetherness in contemporary urban life is in many senses highly fragmented and problematic, the concept of community cannot be so easily reconciled, or productively addressed. For the arts festival, the guiding credo is very much one of excellence and therefore of exclusivity, which sets certain elements of a community apart, rather than conjoining them. Also, the emphasis placed on an individualistic sense of consumption that is such a key feature of the boutique festival, can be seen to be at odds within a wider sense of what community may mean in a contemporary context.
Yet, the boutique model as practised by the Programming Unit of QPAC points to the embracing of certain new notions of community, and varied deployments of space and audience relationships. As patterns of consumption and production are shifting, as aesthetic and cultural forms are conjoining, as the polarities of high and popular arts seem increasingly unnecessary dichotomies, as elements of one spill into the other, the boutique festival, in its potential to break down clear definitions of performer and audience, of high arts event and interactive entertainment, holds powerful prospects for an effective addressing of community by clear targeting of a relatively narrowly defined interest group.
256
It is however, by no means the only festival form that provides possibilities for contemporary readings of community. The Brisbane Riverfestival, as outlined in
Chapter Three (see 3.9), is a model that draws strongly on Warana’s more traditional and localised sense of community, and which proffers a further model for the exploration of community, via the embracing of many sub- communities within the broad city constituency. This festival explores the nature of Brisbane as a river city, within a strong aesthetic framework across a variety of community events including a symposium, and it addresses ecological and cultural notions of sustainability in a highly accessible and inclusive manner, as well as seeking to cross-fertilize sub communities or interest groups around clearly targeted concepts or cultural faultlines.
The Woodford Festival, whilst not an urban festival, is interesting in its blurring of community and arts domains. This festival is located on the
Queensland north coast hinterland, and over six days, presents close to 400 events from 2000 international folk performers
(www.woodfordfolkfestival.com). This event centres on celebrating the culture that gives rise to art forms, rather than specifically those art forms themselves. Yet while it positions itself as “a grassroots festival rather than an arts festival”, as described by Annie Petersen, the festival’s Programming
Director (festival discussion, 1 October 2004), the program is becoming increasingly elegant and quality-driven, and in so doing, it is arguable whether the sense of grass roots or community, in its more traditional sense as originally invoked by the event, can be retained. In essence, this is a community derived model, but Woodford reasserts the notion of community in a heightened manner, in a sense strongly connected to Cole’s idea presented in
7.1 that: “one level of reality – the common and the everyday – gives way to another, a more intense, symbolic and expressive level of reality” (quoted by
257 Soyinka in Huxley and Witts, 2002, p.376). It can be argued that a symbolic and expressive level of community is also in operation.
Woodford, which commenced in 1986, is seen by its producers (and undoubtedly, by many of its participants) to become home for those people who partake in the event, the ‘festivillians’ as Annie Petersen suggests. By this she is referring to the arts workers, audiences, and indeed all those who participate. She sees the event as an art of celebration, an explosion of life, a living symphony being created anew every day of the festival (Festival
Discussion, 1 October 2004). The sense of ownership of the event is vital, in that the aim is that people take the Woodford experience home into their everyday lives. The residual effect of this event in the lives of participants is argued to be the key to its success, in contrast to the more ephemeral nature of the boutique festival, which focuses so potently on immediate cultural trends. However, it can be argued, that especially regarding the examples of
OUT OF THE BOX and Stage X, the boutique festival can also achieve long- term residual effects, specifically through establishing a cultural change thrust within the organisation of QPAC, one which has created and celebrated a considerable space for the cultural lives of young people to be profiled. This change is ongoing.
Alternatively, Sellars’ 2002 model for the Adelaide Festival drew on a particular kind of community arts rendering to infuse the arts festival with a sense of groundedness in and connectedness with the host city, especially obvious in works such as Shishka-car and The Longest Night, as Chapter Seven has attested. In terms of management, Sellars created a community of
Artistic Associates, whose diversity of backgrounds forged a collective programming process, so that ‘community’ became a meaningful term, both in terms of programming, and the way in which the event was produced. This construct of community is also evident in QPAC’s Programming Unit where an
258 ongoing group of arts managers/animateurs adopt a collective responsibility for long-term evolutionary cultural change in the city, on behalf of various sub- communities.
Lyndon Terracini’s 2005 Queensland Music Festival pushed the concept of community to its geographical limits. In his mission to play to the regions,
Terracini programmed the festival to cover a vast region, from Cooktown, over
3,000 kilometres north of Brisbane, to Mt. Isa, in the west of the State, to the city of Brisbane itself. Thus, the festival connected very specifically with regional towns, but in so doing, the festival as a whole worked to construct a strong sense of a Queensland community, united through music. Even further,
Credo: The Innocence of God, a multimedia event held at QPAC’s Concert Hall, via three enormous screens, “transport[ed] the audience directly to a street scene in the Middle East […] a Jewish temple in Jerusalem, and finally, a concert hall in Belfast” (Queensland Music Festival Program, 2005, p.4). In this context, the festival is able to deploy the latest communication technologies to achieve a sense of live participation across communities and work towards a consolidation of community, from a small country town, to a global unification.
Richard Florida’s ideas regarding alternative understandings of community within a time of heightened creativity and creative endeavour (that is, the festival) are useful in understanding these phenomena, in which a striving for community is made complex by the plethora of contemporary social forces that produce fragmentation and individualism. Florida has introduced the concept of an emergent Creative Class, a class for whom creativity is employed to a significant extent in their professional, social and cultural lives. He argues that this group, now a considerable portion of the population, which works in diverse fields from business and media to education, arts and popular culture, has so influenced society over the last fifty years, that creativity has become the driving economic and social force within the Western world. This group
259 now demands different social environments and value systems from those of previous generations. He suggests this broad Creative Class no longer embodies (nor wishes to do so) the sense of community that existed in past times, that is, the domiciling within a tight frame of family and neighbourliness, of residing permanently in the same place where one is known by many. As notions of work, family and lifestyle have shifted, Florida argues, so too have notions of community, especially within cities that are becoming increasingly urbanised and sophisticated. The sense of community that is significant for the Creative Class, is being fundamentally altered by different patterns of urban living. Florida’s analysis is particularly important in the context of emerging festival forms because his Creative Class may well be the umbrella concept which encompasses many of the sub-communities which have previously been serviced by the high arts festival and the contemporary community models (such as Woodford and the Riverfestival) and the boutique model (such as Stage X). Thus the question of how this broad group engages in and with cultural expression may determine to a significant extent, the opportunities for future festival culture.
The different patterns of urban living are especially evident in the city of
Brisbane, but are applicable to other cities globally. In Brisbane, the urban sprawl of the past generation is, if not being replaced by, then certainly being matched by inner city rejuvenation, a desire to create a domestic environment within the CBD. The refurbishment of warehouses for residential purposes, and the huge increase in apartment buildings in and around the CBD, creates a completely different sense of community from that of suburban streets of houses with backyards. This new pattern of living clearly reflects Florida’s discussion of a quasi-anonymous community, in which neighbourliness is a fleeting ‘Hello’ in the lift, rather than elongated discussions over the back fence, and watering each other’s plants during holidays. For the new urban dweller, it allows a dipping into the feel of the street and city when required,
260 and yet from which the resident may retreat to the comforts of hermetically sealed apartments high above the city. Following Florida’s analysis, the sense of a street parade, or community-building project would have little resonance or appeal for this kind of urban living – or has it? Australian social psychologist
Hugh Mackay explores a further kind of contemporary living which may be more germane than the high-rise model: medium density housing, which he perceives as having:
…growing appeal to contemporary Australians who recognise that the
medium-density option not only offers the possibility of cheaper housing
but also because the medium-density concept creates a more communal
locality […] the town-house concept – and other variations on the
medium-density theme […] involving narrower streets and smaller blocks
– will become increasingly acceptable as the idea of ‘safety in numbers’
finds expression in new patterns of urban living (Mackay, 1993, p.286).
The looser sense of community that Florida addresses can be seen to infuse
contemporary festival forms: a sense of the temporary fleeting community, in
which spectators become or merge with performers, is a key factor of a
festival such as Woodford, in which all participants, audiences, artists and
organisers, converge for the duration of the event, even to the point of
camping on site for several days. Woodford can be constructed as an
invocation of an old community festival model in its grass roots, low-tech style
but it is a new version of it inflected by ‘communities of today that dissolve
tonight’. Such a rendering of community is very different from that of the
boutique festival, which connects with more contemporary constructions, in
which audience members are temporarily conjoined via specific interests, and
associate themselves with different groups for those different cultural
interests. It is, as theorist Pat Kane suggests, “…the place, or occasion, when
261 players can experience a moment of ‘being together’, despite their innate diversity and differences” (Kane, 2004, p.226).
This kind of ‘quasi-anonymity’, as Florida terms it, captures an essential element of contemporary urban living which has been increasingly identified in the literature of social geography and demography since World War Two.
Florida suggests the Creative Classes “prefer a more flexible, quasi-anonymous community – where they can quickly plug in, pursue opportunities and build a wide range of relationships” (2003, p.220).
An even more anonymous form of community, which is of particular significance to the lives and cultural expression of young people, are the rise of virtual communities (digital, online, blogging) that have shifted traditional and conservative definitions of community, so that the importance of place is essentially eradicated. Such communities connect potently with the sense of experiencing the world without ever having to leave one’s room.
How might these ‘anonymous’ relations translate into patterns of engagement by the broad Creative Class with contemporary urban festival forms? Might these patterns in part be those of Baudelaire’s flaneur within the modern city:
“a citizen who is quasi-anonymous and free to enjoy the diversity of the city’s experience.” (Florida, 2003, p.278) The flaneur came to prominence due to:
[t]he proliferation of public places of pleasure and interest [which]
created a new kind of public person with the leisure to wander, watch
and browse: the flaneur, a key figure in the critical literature of
modernity and urbanization (Wilson in Watson and Gibson, 1995, p.261).
This role, and the embedded concept of wandering, watching and browsing, have significance for the way in which an urban sense of community may develop.
262 The individual is part of an environment in which many co-exist, and partake in urban life, but simultaneously remains largely anonymous, merging for leisure, consumerist or celebratory acts, such as those of a sporting or religious nature, then dispersing into the great labyrinthine multiplicities of contemporary urban anonymity. However, there is a significant point of dichotomy here: the flaneur as articulated by Watson and Gibson is positioned as a leisurely figure, essentially a figure who watches, rather than participates.
The members of the Creative Class are defined as being participatory, actively involved. These characteristics suggest a propensity and capacity for engagement of the Creative Class in broader forms of community building and expression within the contemporary urban medium density frame. However, such engagement appears to rely on facilitation by cultural leaders who will provide the long-term long-lasting glue which ensures a fruitful accretion of residues.
The Creative Class, at least by Florida’s description, is consumed by speed, by being participatory, mobile and fast. This desire for pace can be seen as a defining characteristic of contemporary Western culture, as articulated in the works of Paul Virilio, especially Speed and Politics. Furthermore, Kornfield
views speed as one of our most telling of addictions, which results in our
becoming disconnected from others and ourselves (in Barker, 2002, p. 218).
Thus, the issue of community is paradoxical: on the one hand, contemporary
Western culture craves some sense of it, yet conversely, the sense of
traditional intimacy is also rejected. It could be argued that cultural forms
like the hybridising festivals provide a diverse reading of community: the
boutique festival, for example, creates just enough of a sense of community for
contemporary audiences, allowing a fairly intimate coming together for a fixed
and temporary period of time, but then encouraging a disbanding of it. Other
models, for example Sellars’ Adelaide Festival, draw on a community arts
rendering of community, which aims to consolidate and support those groups
263 who are often marginalised in mainstream cultural expression. The Queensland
Music Festival, as yet a further example, casts the arts net wide, so as to create a state-wide sense of community. The challenge for the future festival planners is then how to mobilise and/or respond to these characteristics.
Further regarding the localised experience, for Brisbane, as has been addressed in Chapter Three, Warana, the major festival of the 60s through to the mid-90s, was an effective tool in negotiating and consolidating the sense of community at that time, a community celebrating life in Brisbane, a city earlier viewed as a big country town, as opposed to its current maturation as an urbanised, sophisticated, yet ‘liveable’ city.1 In the 60s and 70s, its countrified sensibility meant that community was a more straightforward concept, and that festival events highlighted the local experience appropriately, consolidating a sense of communitas. But now, with a population exceeding 1.5 million people, this sense of parochialism has lost much of its credibility for Brisbane.
The Riverfestival aims to draw on a more conventional sense of community that in some ways connects with the Brisbane community celebrated in and by
Warana, in that it specifically celebrates Brisbane.2 Yet it does so in a manner different from its predecessor, in that it aims to marry the whole-community sense of Warana, with a philosophical engagement regarding issues about ecology and sustainability. Furthermore, Riverfestival aims to provide a sophisticated and cutting-edge program, commencing with a dazzling fireworks display that the quasi-anonymous city dweller watches from an apartment window, while those from the suburbs watch in their thousands while standing
1 This is a catchphrase of the Brisbane City Council, which employs the notion of Brisbane as an eminently liveable city to appeal nationally.
2 The Riverfestival is an annual festival held in the city of Brisbane, which whilst focussing strongly on community, is a highly curated event with elevated production levels. It is an initiative of the Brisbane City Council, the Queensland Government, and is partnered by local television station Channel 9.
264 on the city’s geographical precipices, the Kangaroo Point cliffs. What has occurred is the repositioning of the sense of community, perhaps shifting towards Jacobs’s notion of communities of interest, even though “the notion of community is not always transparent to those thought to comprise it” (Miles,
1997,p.93).
Hugh Mackay’s long-term social research into the lives of contemporary
Australians suggests: “The signs are already beginning to emerge of
Australians’ desire to […] re-connect with each other, to re-establish the sense of belonging to a neighbourhood, a community, a society” (Mackay, 1993, p.273).
The research is now a decade old, yet the sentiments can still be viewed as timely, especially obvious in events such as the Riverfestival and its emphasis on participation and involvement.
Thus, the issue of community in a contemporary sense is a dichotomous one, and most especially so regarding boutique festival production. On one level it is profoundly local, aiming to connect directly with its target audience. With its emphasis on ‘trendspotting’, and contextualisation with the Creative Class, whose sense of identity is according to Florida, firmly located on a global level, how can such duality be reconciled? The boutique festival is one manifestation that connects the local with the global, and that globalisation is now such a cultural given, that it no longer requires acknowledgment. Thus the experience of the local is inherently bound to the global: “cultures, languages and races are never presented in pure forms tied to place but are more mobile units of meaning operating on a global scale” (Barker, 2002, p.73). The Queensland
Music Festival, in an event such as Credo, already mentioned, explicitly conjoins the local and the global in a most direct and immediate manner.
The arts festival model exemplified in the Brisbane Festival, provides a further connection between the local and the global, via its blending of works by local
265 artists and companies, with international productions. In such a rendering, programming becomes almost a virtual concept, in that such festivals provide a global network for the live arts and the inherent tension between the uniqueness of the live event versus the paradox that it is eminently repeatable in cities around the world, which is an idea raised by Brad Haseman (“Festival as a Theatrical Event” discussion, 1 March 2002). Furthermore, “[t]here are abundant signs of all sorts of counter movements, varying from the marketing of cultural difference as a commodity to intense cultural reactions to the homogenizing influence of global markets and strident assertions of the will to be different or special” (Harvey, 2000,p.67). Thus, a range of festival models is required to address such diversity.
The boutique festival event foregrounds this ever widening community dynamic in which a diverse group but one obviously with significant similarities of taste, that conjoin them for the duration of the event. The local in this construct is seeking to form a connection between the boutique and community festival, not a full alignment between the boutique festival and the community as a whole.
This point identifies that it is a different form of community from that which is unveiled in the high arts festival and its impact on the community, which is a much looser arrangement.
This is of course, also true for other kinds of festival experiences: Willmar
Sauter, in discussing the Swedish Theatre Biennale of 2003 suggests: “During a festival, the density and temporal extension of the event heightens the awareness and displays the multitude of the experienced values. That state of mind is most likely the main attraction of festival culture” (Sauter, forthcoming). Such a sentiment can be transferred to many festival experiences, if not all. At least, this is the experience that is being aimed for.
266 However, specifically, for the boutique event, it is the sense of having been involved, at least in principle, in the creation of the events, and for the rest, the direct sense of participation is the key, the shift from the role of more passive consumer to active consumer/producer, as the analysis of Stage X and
OUT OF THE BOX has attested. Of course audiences are not solely consumerist and passive, nor have they ever been: “audiences/consumers are always active” (Barker, 2002, p.170). Florida discusses the importance of the individual’s being involved in community, not for reasons of altruism, but more to assist in the validation of personal identity within that community (2003, p.230). It could be that greater harnessing of particular kinds of communities would place the boutique festival in a stronger cultural position, and assist in implanting the creative identity of the festival, as a reflection of those with whom it is engaging, into the urban fabric of the city (Florida, 2003, p.231).
This ‘implanting’ philosophy is evident within the Riverfestival, in its attempts to create programming that addresses key issues that impact on the life of the city, such as the large-scale Riverfire, (as described in Endnote 6 in Chapter
Three) the Riversymposium, an international conference event in which leading authorities on river systems engage in debate, policies and ideas, and
Riverclean, an event aimed at both strengthening community groups by
demonstrating ways in which those communities can contribute to the
preservation of clean waterways for Brisbane. Furthermore, Sellars’ 2002
event was seminal in its aim to marry his unique festival aesthetic with the
interests of the specific communities, so that his strong community arts ethos
was employed within an arts festival construct. It aimed to bring various
communities together for the duration of the festival, for example, the
immediate community of a particular project, and the arts festival audience.
This discussion about community in relation to contemporary festival-making
can be seen to resonate within contemporary cultural movements, none more so
267 than the impulse of New Urbanism, an urban design movement that developed in the late 80s:
New Urbanist neighborhoods are walkable, and contain a diverse range
of housing and jobs. New Urbanists support regional planning for open
space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced
development of jobs and housing. They believe these strategies are the
best way to reduce how long people spend in traffic, to increase the
supply of affordable housing, and to rein in urban sprawl
(www.cnv.org/about/index.cfm.).
A less saccharine view might advocate that:
…the spirit of community has long been held as an antidote to threats of
social disorder […] Community has often been a barrier to, rather than
facilitator of, social change. The founding ideology of the new urbanism
is both utopian and deeply fraught. In its practical materialization, the
new urbanism builds an image of community and a rhetoric of place-
based civic pride and consciousness from those who do not need it, while
abandoning those that do to their ‘underclass’ fate (Harvey, 2000,
p.170).
The extreme realisation of New Urbanity can be seen in the Disney town
Celebration, in Florida, built in 1994, “when the Disney Corporation implemented founder Walt Disney’s dream of creating an idealised community with no crime
– or grime.” (Berry, 2005, p.54) Yet, this is a town with little tolerance for difference. Residents abide by a code of regulations, to which they must abide if they are to remain. Thus, the sense of security is sometimes overshadowed by a sense of civic control. One Australian resident suggested, “’…it’s like a
268 cross between The Truman Show and The Stepford Wives’” (in Berry, 2005,
p.56).
Leadbeater connects with the argument of community from an altogether more
grounded perspective when he posits:
…people increasingly want to find a source of meaning in their lives that
comes from outside themselves: a religion, membership of a community,
taking part in a campaign, an attachment to a sense of history. That
search will be part of modern identity, not a throwback to an older era
(Leadbeater, 2002 p.210).
Festivals may assist in a realisation of community, and can achieve this
realisation in any manner of ways, as the different models described here
attest. They provide opportunities for these communities of interest to be
crystallised: they can be surprised, via the machinations of the festival, to
discover that they are part of a community of interest, and the more
participatory the festival allows audiences to be, the more those communities
of interest provide a counterbalance to the sense of operating in a global
context, in the way in which the Creative Class is operating.
Thus, the exploration of community, in a playful and ironic manner, is a key
function of hybridised festival models, enveloping the many guises that
community now invokes, from a small town of 500 inhabitants, the quasi-
anonymous urban dwellers that comprise Florida’s Creative Classes, or
Leadbeater’s “collective individualists” (2002, p.200), who network via an array
of technological devices.
The diversity of constructs that the term ‘community’ now embraces has
resulted in festival renderings offering a range of experiences that engage
269 with these different positionings. This diversity works to democratise the festival, as audiences are largely encouraged to be strongly participatory, and can choose to partake in a high level of engagement. One of the most physical realisations of this engagement is via the festival’s deployment of space, and in particular, public space.
The shifting nature of urban living and the spatial ramifications regarding contemporary urban communities highlights how “the proportion of an increasing global population living in cities has doubled in thirty years and we now observe massive spatial concentrations of population on a scale hitherto regarded as inconceivable.” (Harvey, 2000, p. 64) Space has a central role to play in the destiny of city life, and its deployment both publicly and socially, is a fundamental aspect of contemporary festival practice.
7.3b Space
For cities to be more democratic, space needs to become less privatized so that individuals can interact in the open, expressing both their differences and their commonalities. These are spaces which are not bounded by walls of exclusion or inclusion – they are spaces without walls (Watson and Gibson in
Watson and Gibson, 1995, p.261).
The employment of space in terms of festival production focuses on transformation at its most potent, which impacts on audiences so that their relationship with their environment is altered. Via the festival, the city becomes a site of endless possibilities and provocations.
This evocation of transformative space has a long trajectory in festival practice. The hybridising festivals discussed here in essence work to dissolve barriers between performance and audience space, between performer and
270 audience member, so that “the common and everyday […] give way to a more intense experience” (Haseman, interview with Martin and Sauter, 30 March
2000).
This means of transformative space has a long trajectory in festival practice.
The use of public space during festivals has often been characterised by practices of re-purposing, re-invigoration and even transformation: in traditional events such as the Carnival, or the festival of Corpus Christi for example, non-designated spaces including streets, parks and city squares became performative sites. This transformation is now deployed in contemporary festivals, as is examined in this chapter, and perhaps the most potent modern utilisation of transformation has become evident in the tradition of the Fringe component of many major arts festivals.
The original Fringe event at the landmark inaugural Edinburgh Festival of 1947 came into existence due to an over-programming of events, and the subsequent necessity to stage events on the fringe of the city in warehouses and railway yards. This practice has developed into a conscious attempt to renew abandoned or rarely used locations through association with festival-based arts and other activities. The results of such deployment of non-designated performance space liberated the festival from the strictures of formal performing arts architecture, thereby allowing for greater experimentation with creative form. Thus it infused audiences with the enormous potential for an aesthetic experience outside the confines of a traditional arts environment.
Such experiences thus create a new dynamic between citizens and their surroundings.
For the Australian festival context in particular, Peter Brook’s deployment of the quarry to create the ancient India of the Mahabharata presented at the
1988 Adelaide Festival, became a landmark festival production, inserting the
271 festival directly and immediately into the landscape. In such a rendering, the festival becomes the conduit for a transformatory experience for the site, the performance piece itself, and most crucially, for the audience, responding to
Mary Ann Hunter’s question about festivals making “a significant contribution to the transformation of space and re-examination of history beyond the temporally-limited ‘spatial practices’ of the festival itself” (Hunter, 2004, p.40).
In Brisbane, the Riverfestival’s signature event, Riverfire also responds to
Hunter’s assertion, via its use of the Brisbane River as a stage, serving much the same function as the street parade or carnival of earlier festival invocations. The imaginative transformation of the cityscape proffers new ways for audiences to view their living environment, and to explore their creative relationship with it. In this event, the entire city’s population can be involved, either by being physically in attendance at the event, listening to a live broadcast on local radio station 4MMM, or via the live television broadcast on local television station, Channel 9. The transformation of the river into a performance arena, to which all participants are connected, is rare and fleeting, but a highly charged experience, in which audiences are temporarily transformed into a single entity. This sense of conjunction, as the historical analysis crystallises (see Appendix A), is the currency of festival, just as potent now as throughout its historical invocations.
Barrie Kosky’s 1996 Adelaide Festival can be seen as one of the most imaginative realisations of the manner in which a city’s cultural and social topography can be brought into sharp relief during festival mode. The festival laid the foundations for a meaningful engagement between audiences and programming, regarding the utilisation of space, as Kosky positioned the city of
Adelaide as a brass rubbing, by which the festival program functioned as the charcoal, illuminating the life and history of the city that lay beneath it. In
272 such an example, the festival functions as a potent vehicle by which to
“…contribute to a sense of place both inside and outside the temporal configurations of the festival itself…contribute to, or at least respond to, a city’s history and identity” (Hunter, 2004, p.37). The festival here becomes a tool by which the city operates as more than just itself, and its inhabitants become more than mere city-dwellers, by engaging on a deeper level with their metropolis, embedded simultaneously in its history and its contemporariness.
Lyndon Terracini’s Queensland Music Festival expands this engagement to a state level, employing the vast topography of Queensland to play out his program. In so doing, the festival transforms the entire state into a stage, yet also consolidates the sense of ‘Queensland’ with audiences travelling thousands of kilometres to be part of the same, singular festival experience.
Sellars’ 2002 Adelaide Festival philosophically transformed space, through his
privileging of community projects such as The Longest Night. The depressed
community building of the Parks Community Centre, for the duration of the
production’s season, became a performance venue, a space to which audiences
would never otherwise have gone. By going there, they experienced the lives of
the residents. In this way, Sellars assisted in shifting the city’s sense of space
past itself and its conventional deployment, to the extent that the festival
aspires to “challenge and change the conventional history and use of space as it
has been officially ‘conceived’” (Hunter, 2004, p.40). With this kind of major
festival experience as explored by Sellars, the potential for large arts
festivals to mobilise resources for major transformations, is realised. This
sense of spatial empathy can be connected to Florida’s findings regarding those
he interviewed for The Rise of the Creative Class were drawn to “street-level
culture partly because it gives them a chance to experience the creators along with their creations” (my italics, p.183).
273 Both boutique festivals discussed in this research produced ‘street level’ events outside the organisation’s physical and metaphysical edifices.3 The highly formalised designated performance space of QPAC and its environs were transformed into environments aiming to connect strongly with their young audiences, in which they can engage and interact in a direct manner with the festival, and claim at least temporary ownership of public spaces otherwise culturally closed to them.
The importance of the outside for public spaces has particular potency in contemporary cultural experience: Florida suggests that members of the
Creative Class are drawn to experiences that occur outside – “both because they enjoy these activities, and because their presence is seen as a signal that the place is amenable to the broader creative lifestyle” (2003, p.173). The streetscape becomes a site for divergence, multiplicity, and ultimately, tolerance, allowing the citizen to be both observer and participant. This is a key aspect of the power of the festival, and one keenly employed by the boutique festival events explored in this research.
With regard to young people, as focussed on in the analysis of the boutique festival in Chapter Five, this reinscribing of space can be seen to have a particular potency. Andy Bennett’s research in the use of localised space demonstrates the significance of the sense of the local on youth culture. He suggests, “the context of the local, and the idea that audiences do not merely absorb global culture, but instead, reinscribe it, creating what Lull (1995) refers to as ‘global reterritorialization’” (Bennett, 2000, p.55). Furthermore, the audience becomes active in both the “production and inscription of meaning in the products of the culture industries”. (Bennett, 2000, p.55)
3 It is worth noting that the reception studies undertaken for Stage X 2001 revealed that a considerable percentage of participants rated the outdoors environment as one of the event’s key attributes.
274
The boutique festival is significant here via a range of events, as an examination of the Shopping Mall event of QPAC’s Stage X Festival in Chapter
Four has demonstrated. Events such as Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX are
deliberate attempts to create that space for the ‘voice of youth’ to be heard,
via the use of aesthetic forms and uses of public spaces, and through the
process of consultation, so that young people can ultimately effect change in
areas of social and cultural policy. The aim however, is not merely to mirror
the attitudes and interests of the target audiences, but also, as with the
fashion boutique, to provide a new spin on those attitudes, to encourage a new
way of seeing the familiar: to create new spaces. The key notion of creating
room in the mainstream thereby becomes a deeply resonant one.
Thus, the concept of space in the boutique festival connects heavily with the
60s retail experience of encouraging and allowing audiences to ‘do their thing’,
to participate fully, and also to ‘chill out’ (as exemplified in sites within Five to
Midnight such as the Do Tank in 1999, and the Pocu Pocu Palace in 2001, and for
OUT OF THE BOX, the Crash Mat). The audience chooses to be a producer, or
merely a consumer in these spaces, but audiences are provided with the choice
as to how extensive their involvement with their space is. The forecourt at
QPAC functions in a dynamic manner in this regard, working as a public
thoroughfare and as a playground for the audiences of OUT OF THE BOX and
as a rock venue for Five to Midnight. For the length of these festivals, this
public space is potently inscribed as the realm of those particular communities
for whom the festivals are produced.
For OUT OF THE BOX, it was envisaged that the space be transformed both
by the physical presence and the cultural expressions of young people. In this
way, the audience’s experiential residue would determine that they view the
space in a transformatory manner, creating the possibility for these audiences
275 to view QPAC in a more inclusive and age appropriate manner. Such a positioning of space can be exemplified in events like Big Day Out and Race Around the
World (see footnote 10 in Chapter Four) which position young people as intelligent and creative cultural contributors.
The manner in which QPAC’s forecourt was transformed can therefore be seen in light of this encouragement, via this consolidation of a shared language between young people and the Programming Unit.
The other festivals addressed in the research connect with audiences other than young people in particular. The Riverfestival’s privileging of a philosophical engagement with ideas pertaining to ecological sustainability provides an alternative way in which audiences can be engaged in cultural dialogue, and thus the intellectual and aesthetic space in which audiences are positioned is somewhat different from a boutique festival, for example. The entire city region becomes a stage, rather than a particular area of it, and the potency of this event is drawn from the community of Brisbane in the broadest sense, being involved.
For the Woodford Festival, an ancient sense of transformation of space is reinstated, by which the physical area becomes imbued with a sense of specialness, even magic, for the duration of the event, which it is hoped that audiences take home with them.
As already articulated, major arts festivals can also function in a virtual space, as programming is often global, as a production is included in a season of festivals nationally or internationally, thus providing a global network for the live arts, and as already suggested by Brad Haseman, the event is replicated on festival stages globally (“Festival is a Theatrical Event” discussion, 1 March
2002). This tension between the immediate and the virtual explored
276 simultaneously in a work such as the Queensland Music Festival’s Credo, is an
issue that moves the festival into new territory. Is it contributing to a
‘McDonald’s movement’ in which the same cultural product is eminently
repeatable around the world, as is the case with works like The Lion King? This
concern can be contextualised within Barker’s assumption that “the new spaces
of consumer culture, such as shopping malls and Disney World, are important
because they consolidate the significance and power of culture as a form of
commerce and social control” (2002, p.166). The boutique festival is a
fascinating site in this context as it aims to create a space of negotiation
between festival productions and consumption. The role of the audience is at
the heart of this negotiation. The festival’s key contextualisation within
community and the opening up of public space in which audiences can be active
cultural participants, are perhaps the thread that aims to circumvent such
cultural flattening.
Festivals in a diversity of forms, can thus be viewed as transformatory, via
their ability to transform the ordinary and the familiar into something special:
“festival affords the integration of the sublime with the mundane, the
endowment of the familiar with properties of the unique (and this, spread over
days)” (Soyinka in Huxley and Witts, 2002, p. 376).
It has been argued in this research that festivals continue to function as
significant cultural conduits due to their harnessing of a sense of community,
and celebration. In so doing, they can be seen to embrace two key tropes that
ensure their longevity: the sense of an authentic experience, and the
carnivalesque.
277 7.3c Authenticity
The notion of authenticity is of vital significance to the construct of the festival, because it paradoxically conjoins a sense of playing with being in a
“real” environment. Authenticity provides the sense of an experience which is genuine and true, and for the festivals, it is strongly connected to a contemporary sense of play, most clearly articulated by Pat Kane, as the very construct of the festival itself is something created, yet which aims to generate an authentic and meaningful experience for participants. Referring again to Cole’s idea, “…one level of reality – the common and everyday – gives way to another, a more intense, symbolic and expressive level of reality”
(quoted by Solinka in Huxley and Witts, 2002, p.376). Play in this context is not necessarily about the false or the fantastical, but more as a sense of exploration, of identity, of form, even of community. However, it can be argued that this sense of play, drawing on theorist Pat Kane’s analysis, creates an authenticity of experience. Play is of course a key to creativity, and Pat Kane, regarding what he refers to as the “play ethic”, argues that “a proper understanding of play’s traditions is a powerful new way to describe our contemporary world […] Living as a player is precisely about embracing ambiguity, revelling in paradox, yet being energized by that knowledge” (Kane,
2004, p.55). Kane views play as our “collective identity” (Kane, 2004, p.312), and sees that “the most obvious form of collective play is the festival” (2004, p.52).
In order to engage with a bordlerless, constantly shifting world, Kane argues:
We need to be energetic, imaginative and confident in the face of an
unpredictable, contestive, emergent world. We need to accept the
complex relationship between all forms of play, whether ancient or
modern (Kane, 2004, p.63).
278
Clive Hamilton discusses how theme parks such as Disneyland have virtually created “a ‘hyper-reality’ to escape from the anxieties and stresses of ordinary life” (Hamilton, 2003, p.73). He goes on to posit:
The pseudo-individuality of modern consumer culture is isolating. The
more isolated we are, the more preoccupied with what other people
think of us and the more inclined we are to manufacture an identity to
project onto the world (Hamilton, 2003, pp.73-74).
The desire to play can be read as a call for security and comfort amidst an increasingly shifting and unstable world order, awash with virtual and simulated experiences, and it is on this level that the sense of authenticity becomes meaningful:
…something is authentic if it has been around a long time and can be
relied upon. A building, institution, custom or product is made authentic
only by being weathered by time […] The more these traditions and
communities are eliminated by the combine harvester of modern culture,
so the more we are cut off from the cultural resources we need to be
truly ourselves (Leadbeater, 2002, pp. 104-105).
The sense of the authentic, especially regarding contemporary festival practice, focuses on engaging with a ‘real’ experience, as opposed to a manufactured or synthetic one. This sense of the real is very much to do with
being in the midst of the experience as an audience member, and therefore
also as an entity contributing to the making of that experience.
Florida’s discussion regarding the Creative Classes craving extreme
experiences is especially connected here to the sense of re-discovering the
279 authentic. The potency of the past is also inexorably linked to this trope of authenticity for festival production: the sense of reinvoking a ‘genuine’, even ancient festival experience.
The Woodford Festival draws most clearly on this evocation. Via the deployment of ancient models of community and festival practice, the event is employed as a means to engage audiences with the land, in a manner evocative of the celebrations of traditional cultures. This can be constructed as a means for audiences to engage in an authentic, grass roots experience. Furthermore, through the producers drafting of a 500-year plan (Petersen, Festival
Discusson, 1 October 2004), as a means of embedding the event in our heritage, its longevity provides cultural weight.
Peter Sellars’ 2002 festival, can be viewed quite literally in its provision of an authentic experience, especially in terms of events like Mamu, based on the lives of real people, and The Longest Night, as has been examined in Chapter
Six. In such programming, audiences gain a deep and ‘true’ insight into the lives of members of a community with whom they largely never connect. In light of this example, the sense of the authentic provides a means of connecting disparate communities, albeit only momentarily.
The boutique festival in particular, in which the audience directly inflects the experience, is a potent cultural vessel through which to explore notions of nostalgia and authenticity, and yet by which also to problematise them, refusing to provide a sentimentalised and sanitised rendering of the past. The analysis of Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX in this research plays with constructs of the past and the real, and questions what we search for in our desire to re-connect with the past. The manner in which this positioning of the past occurs, however, is largely playful: through parody and the deployment of the carnivalesque, our often romantic view of the past is held up for interrogation.
280
Susan Richer believes that festivals are able to provide an environment in which audiences can curate their own cultural experiences, as Chapter Four has attested, but it can be seen that this process of curation is more valid of certain festival models that others. This research has argued that it is the boutique festival that potently affords an audience this experience of self- curation, and other hybridising models, via their embracing of a myriad of forms and functions, aim to consolidate that relationship even further.
Florida’s praise for an “authentic cultural district” (Florida 2003, p.301), referring to a district in Dublin once feted by Joyce and Beckett, and now invigorated by a team of young architects, “a winning of preserving the old while incorporating the new” (Florida, 2003, p.301), affords the question: how does a festival contribute to the manifestation of an authentic cultural district? The festival operates in real spaces, it plays with notions of transformation, nostalgia, and authenticity in its programming, location and use of space. We live in an age of aesthetics in which audiences desire to enter spaces where feelings can be re-connected and re-inscribed. The importance of aesthetic (in this context, meaning sensory) experience to our lives, the desire to be completely immersed in a cultural/aesthetic experience is a key aspect of the festival’s potency. This is further consolidated by Verwijnen’s argument that “aesthetic reflexivity raises the critical awareness and concern of people for their own environment” (in Verwijnen and Lehtovuori, 1999, p.24).
Of course, any festival model is a highly constructed entity, unlike the spontaneous unscriptedness of street life. And yet many of the experiences for audiences immersed in the festival event, particularly the boutique model, are highly spontaneous. Being involved in the performative work on offer creates unforeseen experiences for the participants. It is this sense of play, specifically constructed in the festival, via the carnivalesque, that is crucial.
281 7.3d The carnivalesque
Appendix A explores the carnival in its historical manifestations, drawing substantially on Bakhtin’s view of the potency of this “lower” cultural form and its function as “an irruption into the workaday world, a time of feasting when normally dominant constraints and hierarchies are temporarily lifted” (Dentith,
2001, www.litencyc.com). The carnivalesque is strongly linked to the idea of play, which, in light of Kane’s advocacy of the importance of play in contemporary life, also highlights the significance of the carnivalesque as a process of release and even resistance from the pressures of an increasingly complex society.
Furthermore, Hall suggests:
…ambivalence and ambiguity occupy the space of resistance as
exemplified by the transgressive character of the ‘carnivalesque’. The
carnivalesque is a temporary reversal of the order of power through the
rituals, games mockeries and profanities by which the polite is
overthrown by the vulgar and the king by the fool. However, the power
of the ‘carnivalesque’ […] lies not in a simple reversal of distinctions but
in the invasion of the high by the low, creating ‘grotesque’ hybrid forms.
The challenge is not simply to the high by the low, but to the very act of
cultural classification by power (in Barker, 2002, p.169-70).
This analysis by Hall highlights the key power of the carnival, in its ability to destabilise the very structures by which a society is contained. Carnivalesque as a term is described by Bakhtin as “something that is created when the themes of the carnival twist, mutate and invert standard themes of societal makeup” (www.english.uga.edu). Its potency in a contemporary cultural environment in which structures are far more amorphous, is arguably more
282 lessened than during its nascence in a society in which those structures were fiercely guarded. Nonetheless the sense of carnivalesque still holds weight contemporarily, and not only via the festival:
Carnival creates a festive world without rank or social hierarchy.
Carnivalesque as a mode can, Fiske argues, be then applied not only to
the anti-moralistic popular culture of the nineteenth century, but to
this century as well, as in amusement parks, video games, and especially,
TV’s rock’n’roll wrestling (Docker, 1994, p.162).
The carnival has had a new invocation as a very public and politically charged means of resistance against globalisation and corporatisation:
Carnivalesque is the use of theatrics to face off with power via satire
and parody, and invite spectators to a new reading of the spectacle of
global capitalism […] the carnival is the theatrics of rant and madness
seeing to repair the separation of worker from consumer (Boje, 2000,
www.peaceaware.com).
Boje’s discussion aims to raise awareness for the concept of carnival of resistance, which focuses on the global inequities of wealth distribution. In this practice, whilst not necessarily festival specific, the carnival’s ability to subvert dominant discourse is reinvigorated, whereby:
…the outsidedness of groups marginalised by a dominant ideology within
non-carnival time not only gain a voice during carnival time, but they also
say something about the ideology that seeks to silence them
(www.english.uga.edu).
However the sense of the carnivalesque specifically in terms of the festival, links current renderings to traditional manifestations, embodying the dual
283 elements of community and celebration, via its powers of transformation, of empowerment of audiences. Brad Haseman feels that the festival is “a suspension of the ordinary […] it is absolutely ‘life bracketed out’’ (Haseman, interview with Martin and Sauter, 30 March, 2000).
And it can be argued that it is the sense of the carnivalesque that underpins such suspension. Thus, even today the festival occupies a space that allows for temporary liberation from the familiar, the routine, and in so doing, opens up a space by which to explore the familiar and the routine, exposing it from a different perspective. The festival, via the carnivalesque, opens up spaces in which to play, both for producer and consumer.
For the boutique festival models discussed in this thesis, the sense of the carnivalesque is most immediately apparent through the trope of mockery and the playing with cultural themes and creating a cultural space so that both children and young people can engage with this play. This sense of play and irony, either as gentle or rough mockery, aligns the retail boutique with the carnivalesque, and is most profoundly witnessed in the most potent rendering of the boutique: Biba. Biba began as a small boutique, growing from a mail order business, during the youthquake environment of London in 1964. It grew in size and reputation, becoming a department store in 1973 and collapsing utterly by 1975. It was a retail phenomenon, dipping into cultural icons, nostalgia and the exotic. In a highly theatrical shopping experience, customers were on display in shop windows, rather than the wares, sitting on sofas and armchairs, in an act of complete customer production.
In this form, the boutique was really about selling what the customer evoked and represented, rather than merely a blouse or a pair of pink suede boots. In its metamorphosis into a department store, Biba became the ultimate fantastical shopping experience, acclaimed by The New Yorker as “what a
284 department store should be […] a unique synthesis of promenade, living theatre, movie palace, gallery and classroom of taste as well as marketplace” (in Turner,
2004, p.78). The environment was “more like a Busby Berkeley film set than a department store; here you could not merely witness but participate in the fantasy” (Turner, 2004, p.79).
This sense of play, mockery and nostalgia so crucial to this seminal retail moment, is also a grand tradition of the festival, most powerfully in its carnivalesque guise. It can be argued that this sense of play is increasingly important in the current political and cultural climate of technological
stampede and globalisation, and the breakdown of pure festival forms assists in
the cultural critique of these forces that impact significantly on contemporary
life.
As well as a dominant trope in the boutique festival forms, the carnivalesque is
also apparent in events such as the Woodford Folk Festival, in which the
sophistication of a contemporary urban world is subverted for the duration of
the event, so that the ancient, rural, communal, almost tribal power of festival
is invoked and embraced by all ‘festivillians’. It is this consent within the
participants to embrace this sense that imbues the event with its potency.
The Fringe component of the arts festival is a further example of a
contemporary rendering of the carnivalesque, in which all cultural and social
conventions are permitted to be lampooned, in a manner directly connected to
the carnival of the medieval world.
The importance of the carnivalesque contemporarily, just as it was for
historical renderings, is that it is Janus-faced, allowing us to explore where we
have come from, and where we may be headed, never losing sight of the past,
and utilising that past to carve out a future. This is especially important within
our increasingly borderless world, as Leadbeater attests, in which boundaries
285 are dismantled in the name of diversity and hybridity. Yet, he argues,
“boundaries provide people with a sense of belonging, attachment and identity.
They help us define the limits of community: who is inside and who is outside”
(Leadbeater, 2002, p.40). In order to accept this increasingly borderless world he maintains:
…we need to learn how better to establish boundaries through
negotiation, to make them semi-permeable and adaptive. Providing
people with a sense of stability in a less bounded world will be a vital
political task in the decades to come (Leadbeater, 2002, p.42).
This sense of borderlessness is of course a global impulse, and festivals internationally are engaging with such changes, via both programming and structural shifts. The London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT), for example has shifted from the model of “biennial events in favour of year-round activity” (in Billington, 2001, p.20). This event that was created in 1981 by Lucy
Neal and Rose Fenton, needed to shift in dynamic. Said Fenton:
We both found that we were beginning to service the institution rather
than our ideas about art and artists. The festival became a restricting
factor as opposed to a liberating frame […] sixty per cent of our
audience only go to one event […] so we thought it would be much better
to develop a relationship with our audience over 12 months and ask some
navigating questions (in Billington, 2001, p.20).
Thus, ‘playing with the model’, as the Programming Unit was doing, was a timely exercise. Furthermore, although originally a theatre festival, for the next
LIFT festival, the focus will be one major event: the coming of the elephant to
Trafalgar square, a procession of a huge man made elephant, carried by hundreds of people, as a gift to the people of London. Such events draw on the processional qualities of both the Royal Entry, and the processions of the
286 medieval world and of Classical Greece, in that they are majestic, but of the people, and yet it also plays with this grandeur, given that the elephant is manufactured and carried by people, rather than the employment of an actual elephant carrying humans.
The carnivalesque works in such events not only to play with social conventions and posturings, but also as a means of playing with representations of place. As
7.3 has attested, the relationship of the community to its surrounds is increasingly fragmented. How does a festival, on one level that most ancient of cultural manifestations, contribute to the contemporary cultural experience?
With the exception of Woodford, the festivals addressed in this chapter are specifically urban events. It could even be argued that as the majority of
Woodford audiences are from Brisbane, it connects strongly to an urban desire to escape the city. They each connect to an urban connection with lifestyle, foregrounding issues of particular significance to an urban lifestyle. The focus city of the case study, Brisbane, sits at the heart of those festivals, Stage X and OUT OF THE BOX, and obviously for the city’s two major festivals, the
Brisbane Festival and Riverfestival.
Thus, as the focus of this thesis has been urban festival practice, what in particular does the festival contribute to a city’s sense of itself? Prior to examining this issue, it is timely to address the manner in which contemporary cities are positioned in current theory. The most pertinent positioning for this thesis is through creative city rhetoric, a key aspect of Creative Industries discourse, which articulates that those metropolitan environments that will function most effectively in social, political and economic terms, are those which are ‘creative cities’.
287 7.4 The Creative City
One of the most obvious manifestations of creative industries discourse has been the eagerness with which cities around the world desire to position themselves as creative cities. This is an obvious engagement by governments and councils by which they can employ creative industries ideology to profile their environments as cosmopolitan, innovative, attractive and therefore of consequence both nationally and globally. The creative city concept can also be seen as a reaction against:
A corporate urban landscape, the product of an increasingly corporate
society [which] became the legacy of the modern environment, and
through the 1960s and 1970s a critique emerged that the planning and
design of the modern city was a blueprint for placelessness, of
anonymous impersonal spaces, massive structures and automobile
throughways (Ley in Ellin, 1996, pp.3-4).
Governments now aspire to position their cities creatively, as one means of re- harnessing a sense of identity and community, concepts that are increasingly difficult to define, as has been attested earlier in this chapter (see 7.3a). The potency of creative city aspirations has intensified with Richard Florida’s profiling of the Creative Class, who embody his key principles of tolerance, talent and technology, along with his much debated creativity index (refer to
Table 13.3 on pp.246-47 in The Rise of the Creative Class).
The creative city, which in broadest terms, can be defined as focussing on
“how local urban spaces can be reimagined, rejuvenated and re-purposed within a competitive global framework” (Crewe and Beaverstock; Abbas, quoted by Tay in Hartley, 2005, p.220) has become a major hook by which urban policy makers
“sell” their cities. This is as true for ‘great’ cities such as London (see Charles
288 Landry’s “London as a Creative City” in Hartley, 2005, pp. 233–43) and St.
Petersburg (see Justin O’Connor’s “developing Cultural Industries in St.
Petersburg, ibid., pp. 244 –58), as it is for Florida’s ranking of Austin, Texas as
“second on my Creativity Index, sixth in innovation and seventh on the Creative
Class” (2003, p.298). The concept is also being utilised by smaller cities such as Huddersfield in the UK, which is aggressively embracing the rhetoric (see www.huddersfieldpride.com) and the Creative Town Initiative, essentially the
Creative Cities ideology for smaller European cities, has been adopted by
Randers in Denmark, Dortmund and Leipzig in Germany, and Bordeaux in France, along with many others.
From an Australian perspective, the enthusiasm is just as apparent. Victorian
Arts Minister Mary Delahunty delivered a Creative Cities address to the Fabian
Society in 2005, in which she announced:
…one of the most important goals of the Bracks Government - making
Melbourne not just one of the most liveable cities but also one of the
most creative cities in the world
(http://fabian.org/library/event_papers_2005).
And specifically regarding Brisbane, the City Council’s Creative City policy clearly aims to position the city as creative:
Maximising a city’s creative potential requires certain conditions – the
presence of ambition, will, resources, energy and leadership.
Successful, modern cities are open-minded, flexible, ambitious and able
to harness the talent of their regions and beyond. They have the ability
to foster strong cultural identity, to develop local, regional and
international partnerships and to invest in a dynamic cultural life.
289 The challenge for Brisbane is to shape its own creative approach and
move beyond established practices to new ways of thinking that will
enrich the life of the city (Creative City 2003, p. 2).
The key elements similar to all of these endeavours is the aim to celebrate a city’s uniqueness, that which sets it apart, but also to embrace new models of business, communication and creative endeavour so as to be an effective player on the global stage. As the focus location of this chapter is the city of
Brisbane, it is important to explore the nature of this city, and how it can be positioned on that global stage.
7.5 Brisbane as a creative city?
As articulated in Chapter Three, Brisbane is a city that has grown enormously in scale and potential in the last twenty years. But what kind of description best suits it? The discussion of Stage X’s Shopping Mall in Chapter Five provides a key example of the characteristics of the boutique festival, which in turn raises questions about the complexion of its host city, Brisbane. The shopping mall is a construct strongly associated with the suburbs, especially as our diet of American sitcoms feeds us the image of the “Mall” awash with thirteen-year-olds ‘hanging out’. Is Shopping Mall referring to Brisbane’s city heart, the Queen Street Mall, or is the reference more reflective of that of the suburban shopping centre? How does this amorphous representation contextualise Brisbane as a city? Does much of the urbane sensibilities of writings about the city experience, the flaneur wandering through interesting architecture and fast paced activity seem a little heady for this city? Francine
Stock in her analysis of the construct of a dormitory town advocates that:
Cities with their vast matrixes or intercutting stories, have no shortage of mythology. But suburbs or dormitory towns, with their etiolated streets and
290 loose strings of detached households, will have to work harder at their myths
(1999:43-44).
Brisbane sits somewhere in between this concept of the dormitory town and the full blown city, not quite invoking the sense of “Cityness” that Sydney or
Melbourne do, but not quite referencing the dormitory town in the way
Beenleigh, a city halfway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, does, either.4
This is not to say that Brisbane is not a positive place in which to live, nor to
detract from the conscious efforts undertaken by organisations such as the
Brisbane City Council over the last ten years, consolidated in past Lord Mayor
Jim Soorley’s Liveable Brisbane document, which can be considered as a “plank
to structure a well-designed city” (Pauline Peel, 19 October 2001). It could be
argued that culture is now an integral part of the Council’s corporate plan,
further consolidated via the creative city policy alluded to above.
Creativity is increasingly embraced on a state level also, with the introduction
of the Queensland Government’s Smart State policy document. One of the key
elements outlined in the strategy is “a diverse, dynamic and creative culture:
Places that embrace new ideas and new people will support and encourage
creativity and risk-taking in innovation” (2005, p.18).
Furthermore, re-visiting Peter Hall’s quote from Chapter Five (5.1) in terms of
his idea of the creative city as unstable and uncomfortable, does the notion of
Brisbane as a liveable city detract from its ability to be “creative”? On the
contrary; the range of festivals now on offer encourages greater exploration
4 Beenleigh is a city that can easily be viewed as a dormitory town, in that it exists between two more major cities. It can be seen as more of a large country town than as a thriving metropolis.
291 of the meaning of creativity, via the diversity of ways in which they engage with Brisbane’s floating and shifting identities.
7.6 The Creative Festival
Jinna Tay highlights what she articulates as the three key considerations for the consolidation of the creative city:
• Location (cities) retain their significance in economic and
creative development;
• Consumption and innovation are implicated in strategies for
social, economic, and political revitalization;
• People need face to face interaction, socialization, and networks
to create synergies (Tay in Hartley, 2005, p.222).
These points can be seen to interface potently with certain of those issues already articulated in 7.3, namely the importance of community, in all its complexity, and the interactive processes of consumption now in operation.
These are, of course, key factors that have impacted on the nature of contemporary festival practice as explored in the hybridising festival models in operation in Brisbane. Furthermore, in recent years there has been an explosion in the range of creative festival product, especially regarding young people’s creative endeavour, as can be evinced in the consolidation of the Two
High Festival, the Straight Out Of Brisbane Festival, and the Ann’s Street
Party event.5 These creative events only work to cement the city’s liveability.
5 These events largely cater for young people yet, while coming from a different perspective than Stage X, they have been heavily influenced by it. It could also be seen that Stage X created the cultural space within Brisbane so that there is room for these independent events for young people to mature. The Straight Out of Brisbane Festival, as has already been suggested, is a festival of independent and emerging arts, curated by a large team of artworkers “who curate the work of their peers.” (www.straightoutofbrisbane.com.au). Ann’s Street Party is “a performance marathon behind the glass of more than 20 shopfront windows” (www.creativeindustries.com) in Brisbane’s hip Valley district.
292
However, for the main part, these events are very much located in and are a product of the inner city, not the suburbs, (the exception here is the Brisbane
City Council’s “Outer Reaches” program, which is located in the city’s more outer suburbs). The idea of ‘city’ here focuses specifically on the physical core of Brisbane. When Lyndon Terracini, the incoming Artistic Director of the
Brisbane Festival for 2006, views the state of Queensland, along with its capital city Brisbane as having “the excitement of Don Dunstan’s South
Australia in the 1970s. It’s poised. It’s where everyone wants to live. I love the physical sense of this city […]There’s a really incredible buzz” 6 (in Noonan,
2004, pp.1-2), the excitement alluded to is that of the inner city.
Thus, ‘city’ is a complex and loaded term, and with reference to the city’s creative life, this kind of cutting-edge, innovative aesthetic product is very much an inner city phenomenon. There are, however, indications that this city- centricity is shifting: as cities grow, so too do their geographical boundaries, so that what were once considered outer suburbs in earlier times are now considered almost inner-city. Urban festivals are responding to this, for example the Sydney Festival includes Parramatta in its programming, and there are indications that Ipswich is increasingly seen as positioned on the outskirts of Brisbane, rather than purely as a separate city some 40 minutes drive to the
West.
6 Don Dunstan was the Premier of South Australia from 1970 until 1979. He was an image of urbanity and class, with a great passion for the arts, and was of a different ilk than the majority of Australian politicians. He has become something of a mythic figure in Australian history, in a manner similar to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, as being a visionary and a statesman.
293 Terracini’s Queensland Music Festival of 2005 provides a further possibility: the event aims to play to an enormously diverse geography, making this, the largest festival in the world, in terms of physical scale. This strong connection to the state’s region strengthens Brisbane’s image as a creative city.
The impact of the festival has a key role to play in positioning Brisbane favourably: Susan Richer suggested that the report Australians and the Arts, released in 1999 by Saatchi and Saatchi, highlighted that parents attach enormous importance to arts exposure for their children. Brisbane is increasingly recognised nationally as a child-friendly city and the OUT OF THE
BOX Festival must be credited for playing a significant role in that view, in its positioning of children as capacious cultural consumers and producers (festival discussion, 1 October 2004).
And of course, the arts festival in particular still works to consolidate a city’s sense of prestige. Tony Gould, retired Artistic Director of the Brisbane
Festival, suggests that festivals will continue to be funded by governments as long as governments see them as being worth the money allocated. For the
Brisbane Festival the stakeholders are the Queensland Government, which contributed about $3.5m for the 2004 event, and the Brisbane City Council which contributed about $1m. The last Brisbane Festival in 2002 generated about $18.5m: “The people have to enjoy what they come to see but also push them so their horizons are broadened,” advocated Gould (Festival Discussion, 1
October 2004).
Such comments suggest that Brisbane is moving forward as a cultural city, as well as a liveable one. Florida would argue that the two are co-dependent, and it can be argued that the festival has played a key role in this propulsion. The current examples of hybridising festival models allow the city’s residents to further explore the challenge of what it is to be a truly creative city.
294
However, it may be seen that there are limitations regarding these festival events to articulate creative city discourse: at heart, neither OUT OF THE
BOX nor Stage X are events that have grown organically from their target audiences, and nor has the Queensland Music Festival, or the Riverfestival; they have been specifically manufactured by an organisation to connect with particular audiences.
Nonetheless, the kinds of practices engaged in, in order to produce those festivals, and the kinds of events and genres engaged with that are the festival events, have deep resonances with contemporary thinking about the modern city experience. The six strategies employed by QPAC’s Programming Unit, of research and consultation that both informed programming, a democratic management model, the positioning of the audience, and evaluation, are processes that work to shape a democratic festival model which intersects potently with contemporary cultural impulses evident in emerging patterns of urban living.
If Florida is right in his appraisal of the social, economic, and therefore cultural power of the Creative Class, the boutique festival is located in a highly charged space, and offers a model that allows the festival, a truly ancient cultural form, a way of moving forward. This is not to say that this kind of event is a definitive model, merely one that proffers choice. If, as Florida states, “regional economic growth is driven by the location choices of creative people – the holders of creative capital – who prefer places that are diverse, tolerant and open to new ideas” (2003, p.223), the hybridising festival forms, and in particular the boutique rendering, offer significant potential.
If we are to accept Florida’s view that “place and community are more critical
factors [now] than ever before” (2003, p.219), the festival as a cultural entity,
295 which in essence deals in the currency of place and community, is a vital and significant cultural phenomenon. It is a form that is both ancient and modern: it embraces the fundamental embodiments of the human need for community and celebration. Regarding the boutique form in particular, it embodies the most current, avant-garde, cutting edge ways of connecting with the world, which are absolutely of the moment, but which in a few years will have shifted considerably, perhaps even becoming obsolete. It is this aspect of the festival’s ability to shift scope and form dramatically and to embrace immediate issues that is a major part of its potency as a contemporary cultural tool.
For example, just as the clothing boutique is famous for a moment, and then shifts focus, so too the boutique festival has the ability to embrace the rapidity of ideas, trends and fashions, and yet, by its very consultative nature, this festival form creates the space to arrest these trends for a moment, and explore them from a different perspective, and, via the audience, allows for an engagement with them on a deeper level than mere fashion allows. Stage X, for example, has shifted from a festival to a series of branded events. The situation at the time of writing, by which the tagging or branding of events as
“Stage X” has become redundant, because it is perceived within the organisation that the festival has achieved its purpose of “creating room in the mainstream”, to the extent that young people’s programming occurs within mainstream programming channels and no longer requires drawing attention to itself specifically as such. This “demise” of Stage X can be seen as part of a concept of the boutique festival having a shelf life, as opposed to the more traditional arts festival, which builds its tradition upon itself each year or biannually.
However, that is not to suggest that such boutique events have no residual effect: the resonance of events like Stage X is absorbed by the city, and by
296 QPAC itself. It somehow changes the way in which the city and the organisation see themselves. Furthermore, it can be seen that festivals such as Stage X have commenced a cultural conversation (to employ Susan Richer’s terminology) which has created the space for other festivals for young people in Brisbane. The Straight Out of Brisbane festival, for example, aims to:
…create a platform to build audiences, showcasing and professional
development opportunities for south-east Queensland’s young and
emerging artists, artsworkers and creative entrepreneurs – especially in
contemporary and emerging arts practices not funded or supported by
the broader cultural sector (www.straightoutofbrisbane.com).
This young people’s event has no Artistic Director, but instead utilises a group of content co-ordinators who “review and curate the work of their peers”
(www.straightoutofbrisbane.com). In this way, a construction of the city as it occurs for young artists is presented in a manner that is substantially different to the readings offered by other festivals. However, the Straight
Out of Brisbane festival draws heavily on a DIY sensibility (initially profiled by
Stage X), a dominant feature of young people’s culture. DIY can also be seen as important for the growth of the creative city, and of the hybridising festivals discussed in this chapter.
Other contemporary festival forms engage with these differing versions of
Brisbane as well: Woodford, with its audiences comprising urban happy hippies for the duration of the festival who then revert to their urbane, urban lives, can be seen as, for the duration of the festival, existing outside of their usual identities, but then infusing their city in some way, with the hippy aesthetic they have embraced.
297 The Riverfestival aims to embrace an ‘all of Brisbane’ sensibility, by which the audience is harnessed, especially in an event such as Riverfire, as a singular community, conjoined and dazzled by the scale of the spectacle before it. This can be contextualised within a wider cultural impulse: Leadbeater’s discussion regarding the current privileging of nostalgia highlights a desire in contemporary Western culture to re-connect with romantic notions of how the past was. Leadbeater views that this:
…desire to escape, withdraw and go missing is perhaps the most
powerful response to the rise of the global high-tech economy.
Nostalgia is one, social version of that desire to escape (Leadbeater,
2002, p.65).
The festival, that most ancient of Western cultural forms, allows us to play with the past, to reinvoke a traditional sense of community, of street parades and togetherness. But the festival, by its very nature of existing within a community, encourages us to problematise the notion of community and the past as well. Festivals must provide the space for communities to explore identity, and for the metropolitan festival, notions of current urbanity as well, and the boutique festival, as argued in this research, is particularly proficient in doing this. The festival models discussed herein hold a mirror, albeit from a variety of angles, up to its audience suggesting, “Is this how we look?” “Is this what we know?”, and “How can we play with this image?”
As has already been advocated, the role of the festival is fundamental in the context of the contemporary city, because: “A city’s very wholeness in bringing together people with communities of interest is one of its greatest assets, probably the greatest” (Jacobs, 1994, p.119). The role of the festival within a metropolitan environment is crucial in bringing people together, in exploring a
298 sense of community, especially at a point culturally when the issue of community is becoming increasingly problematic, as this chapter has attested.
Furthermore, as Landry and Bianchini suggest:
…our deepest feelings about the city [are] at the moment expressed
only on special occasions, such as carnivals and festivals, which are
clearly separated from ‘normal’ activities. The creative energies which
are generated on some of these occasions are rarely carried over into
the mainstream of city life (1995, p.23).
But exactly what kinds of festival experiences create these deep feelings? Is it that major arts festivals speak more to their tourist audiences than they do to the local population? And if so, this may be highly appropriate. Florida suggests that people “increasingly act like tourists in their own city” (2003, p.224), meaning that they make greater demands on their habitats, wanting where they live to offer a wider range of facilities and experiences, and such demands may give the arts festival greater currency. This urban festival has a key role to play here, perhaps being able to contribute significantly to what Ray
Oldenburg refers to as “third places” in society (in Florida, 2003, p.225), those being places outside of the home or work environment which Oldenburg sees as comprising “the heart of a community’s social vitality” (in Florida, 2003, p.226).
The most potent festivals aim to create both these spaces simultaneously.
It is also significant that Florida rarely mentions any specific cultural examples in The Rise of the Creative Class, but two that are mentioned could be
classified as “boutique festivals”: the annual “Around the Coyote” festival in
Chicago which functions to highlight the increasing number of artists residing
in a particular enclave of the city (2003, p.233) and the “Eclectic Orange
Festival” produced in Orange County California, “a six week festival of cutting-
299 edge culture, music, art and performance, to counter its staid culturally conservative image” (Florida, 2003, p.291). Thus, the contemporary urban festival demonstrates an ability to crystallise notions of urbanity and regeneration, and to engage with them on a meaningful level.
The myriad of festival experiences, the cultural extremes of high arts model and the localised community festival, the boutique and the niche, the divergent and the hybridising, provide models of choice, by providing a reading of
“Brisbane” on a variety of levels.
7.7 Conclusions
The key issues impacting on contemporary festival practice, the form’s transformative possibilities, its inherent tension between individual and communal experience and its connection to the “authentic”, the reinvoking of the carnivalesque and the deployment of space, particularly in an urban context, are elements that similarly impact on the notion of the creative city.
The range of festival models explored in this chapter can be seen to contribute significantly to the positioning of Brisbane as a creative city.
Tay advocates that “the existence of a vibrant arts and cultural sector” (in
Hartley, 2005, p.220), is a key factor in the manifestation of a creative city, and as has been elucidated, Brisbane’s range of hybridising festivals, is strongly contributing to the city’s cultural vibrancy. But does this mean Brisbane can market itself as a creative city? The argument as to whether Brisbane can wear this badge, or tick enough boxes in Florida’s index is only one manifestation of the importance of festival culture for a city. What is far more interesting to ponder is the manner in which festivals value-add to
Brisbane as a city in a manner that is meaningful and engaging.
300 John Holden suggests, “[t]he broader and deeper the overall cultural ‘system’ the more resilient it will be in adapting to the changing needs of the society in which it both forms and reflects” (2004, p.38), and it is the ability of the festival, via an array of forms and positionings, that can assist a city to see itself from a range of manifestations. The hybridising models can also be contextualised within Florida’s argument that culturally we are engaging with a major cultural coalescence, in which traditional cultural dichotomies are blending together to the point that the idea of high and popular culture, young and middle aged, have lost all potency. He particularly focuses on the more traditional binary between the bohemian and the bourgeois. This is a concept pursued by other theorists as well. Peterson and Kern in their studies of patterns of aesthetic consumption have concluded that:
…in the latter half of the twentieth century, the candidates being championed for inclusion were so numerous and their aesthetic range so great that the old criterion of a single standard became stretched beyond the point of credibility
[…the situation exists in which we] gentrify the elements of pop culture and incorporate them into the dominant status-group culture (1996, pp. 905-906).
Such cultural shifts can be seen as part of a wider cultural and economic trend
that Leadbeater refers to as a:
…bonfire of boundaries […] a complex, mutually adaptive system – such as a
highly networked market economy – thrives on interaction. The more
interactions in a network, the more powerful the network becomes […] The
implication is that people, organizations and nations most at ease with boundary
crossing will be the most successful in future because they will be able to
adjust more rapidly to changing circumstances and to combine their talents
most productively to come up with new ideas (Leadbeater, 2002, p.39).
301 At its best, the festival transforms communities, whatever their complexion, and the spaces where they gather, for the duration of those festivals: the local racetrack becomes a marketplace, an arena to showcase local talent; the city streets become an auditorium for a fireworks display, the forecourt of the formal performing arts spaces becomes a stage for rock music.
Furthermore, the festival, and in particular the hybridising festivals addressed here, provides the space, both physically and metaphysically, to explore those concerns that sit at the heart of contemporary life: the effects of an increasingly borderless world, brought about through technology, globalisation, and an augmented value placed on multi-skilling, multi-tasking, diversity and hybridity. The strategies employed by QPAC’s Programming Unit to engage audiences provide a clear example of a democratic festival event that can embrace this fluid environment. The festival provides the cultural space for these issues to be explored across a variety of sensory and intellectual experiences, because a festival is, at heart, about the group of people for whom it is targeted, and about the spaces which they inhabit: a crucial form of cultural expression, investigation and celebration.
The launch of the 2005 Riverfestival in July was something of a seminal moment for the cultural life of the city: launched in the backyard of a traditional Queenslander (a unique architectural style of domestic housing built out of weatherboard, on stumps with a stacked roof) crystallised the manner in which contemporary festivals can celebrate what is unique, but can also question that celebration, so that both our cultural individuality and collective identity may be explored. This has always been the power of the festival, and the range of models allow the facilitation of this issue from a number of guises, underpinning those issues that impact most significantly on contemporary life: community, identity, authenticity, transformation.
302 7.8 To the future
Anthropologists such as Victor Turner argue for the indispensibility of the theatrical event […] Theatrical performances are, according to Turner, deliberately structured experiences ‘which probe a community’s weakness, call its leaders to account, desacralize its most cherished values and beliefs,
portray its characteristic conflicts and suggest remedies for them (Turner
quoted by Bennett in Tulloch, 2005, p,7).
This is equally true of festivals. As a form, the festival sits at the very heart
of Western cultural expression, from the Dionysian celebration to the multi-
million dollar arts festivals of major cities internationally. At its core are the
dual concerns of community and celebration, evident in the street pageants of
the medieval world, to the reworkings of the Royal Entry by Hitler during the
Nuremburg Rallies in the 1930s.
As with many other cultural forms as realised in contemporary cultural
practice, this research advocates that the key distinctions between these
models are converging, at least in the most dynamic festivals. The kinds of
festivals that utilise the festival form most potently are those in which aspects
of the functions and forms of the festival converge, so that the festival is a
site for communitas, but in which also innovative, moving and high quality aesthetic and cultural product are presented. This research presents a number of festival models that embody such qualities, and can be viewed as part of a global trend in which the arts festival on one hand presents a return to the festival’s roots of community, but provides a problematisation about that community through the presentation of potent aesthetic product.
Furthermore, Bristol maintains:
303 The persistence of certain festive forms down the ages, and the
relative inability of participants to account for them, have given rise to
the notion that, in historically recent times, festivals persist as a
residual survival of a forgotten sacrificial cult from an earlier, purely
agrarian, primitive society (1985, p.28).
This thesis posits that far from being merely residual, the possibilities for the festival of the future are strong, especially if the trend of hybridisation continues: it can find meaningful ways to engage with the variety of meanings of community: it can explore the onslaught of technology for unexpected creative, social and aesthetic purposes, and if it can retrieve and invent ways for communities to rediscover a sense of groundedness amidst a general social concern that we live in an increasingly disconnected world. Perhaps festivals will assist in creating “spaces – physical, cultural and personal – which are free from cacophony, which encourage reflection, thought and imagination”
(Leadbeater, 2002, p.162).
The festival is a potent vessel through which to foreground, explore, critique and expose issues of the local and the global, and to question contemporary renderings of community in an increasingly borderless world, the popular and the exalted, the sacred and the profane. The director Nigel Jamieson suggested that festivals, especially large outdoor renderings, allow us as
Australians to explore a collective mythology, serving as an alternative to feast days. They allow us to explore what our icons are. Perhaps the most resonant festivals allow us to question, subvert, and reinvent those icons as well.
Recent criticisms of the festival suggest that the word is so overused as to have been rendered meaningless. But when the festival is integrated with its community, it allows for a dialogue about what it means to be part of a constantly shifting world. George Steiner’s claim that festivals no longer hold
304 potency, as they are no longer employed as “the credo of a community or the aspirations of a political regime” (Turnball, 2000, p.1), can be strongly disputed here, as this research highlights just how potently festivals contribute not only to a city’s construction of itself as creative, but how they also provide both a site for cultural debate, and platform through which to explore fundamental issues pertaining to contemporary life.
Hybridising models explore the dynamism between floating notions of identity and community. Via their constructions of key contemporary issues of borderlessness, consumption, identity and community, these festivals are potent cultural conduits through which the arts can engage meaningfully with their audiences. As this thesis has evidenced, the festival’s ability to create that space of engagement in an infinite variety of permutations, will ensure its longevity as a potent cultural vehicle by which to explore issues of crucial social and cultural concern. Such an exploration will be increasingly necessary, as we head into evermore fractured and fractious times.
305 APPENDIX A – HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF THE FESTIVAL
A.1 Introduction
In its pure form, the festival must be defined as the paroxysm of
society, purifying and renewing it simultaneously. The paroxysm is not
only its climax from a religious but also from an economic point of view.
It is the occasion for the circulation of wealth, of the most important
trading, of prestige gained through the distribution of accumulated
reserves. It seems to be a summation, manifesting the glory of the
collectivity, which imbues its very being (Bristol, 1985, p.34).
Festival as a form of societal expression has its roots in the earliest records of human endeavour, embracing performative expressions of cultural identity, and in particular, drama: “From the beginning, Greek drama was presented exclusively at festivals honouring Dionysus” (Brockett, 1988, p.64).1 As will be shown, music and dance were also crucial to these early festival constructs, and continued to be so throughout the festival’s performative trajectory. In a broader sense, though, the festival embodies the potential of all of the arts as communion, yet also as commodity, acting either as a tool of the people, or as an arm of ‘government’. Historically, the festival is a cultural phenomenon that can be employed to subvert or celebrate, or at times, to present subversion as celebration. Furthermore, the history of the festival in its various guises embodies the often difficult marriage between the arts and the Church or state.2 In earliest incarnations, this tension was religious in focus, but was subsequently overrun by a fraught parade of emperors, kings and queens,
1 Oscar Brockett’s substantial History of the Theatre (1982) has provided key material included in the historical overview that follows.
2 The term ‘State’ is employed to indicate that body which is the wielder of power within a culture, be it Emperor, Monarch, Dictator or Democratically elected government
306 ultimately replaced by contemporary models of government, ranging from dictatorships to democracies.
At the core of the tension between the festival and the wielders of power, is this cultural form’s ability to act as a propagandist tool that supports the value systems that the power structure seeks to enforce, or conversely, the festival’s power to undermine those systems, lampoon them, satirise them, subvert them, and in certain historical circumstances, assist in overthrowing them. This chapter will explore those key points in which festival has acted in either or both of these roles.
A.2 Definition of terms
The word “festival” is derived from the Latin festum, meaning to feast, and
thus the festival was originally a particular period of rejoicing or feasting,
often in memory of a significant event in a particular culture’s community life,
for example the commencement of harvest, the coming of Spring, and so forth.
The term “carnival”, specifically relates to that time of feasting and
merrymaking that occurred in Christian cultures immediately prior to Lent,
that is, the weekday period of forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter
Sunday, a period of fasting and repentance. Thus, carnival heralded a time of
celebration and liberty, before the onslaught of a period of enforced
abstinence. The word is specifically derived from the Latin carnelevare, carne meaning flesh, and levere meaning to remove. It could be argued that the potency of carnival is far more culturally important than the mere observation of a feasting period denoted by the Church, however, as seminal festival theorist Mikhail Bakhtin maintains:
307 Carnival must not be confused with mere holiday or, least of all, with
self-serving festivals fostered by governments, secular or theocratic.
The sanction for carnival derives ultimately not from a calendar
prescribed by church or state, but from a force that preexists priests
and kings and to whose superior power they are actually deferring when
they appear to be licensing carnival (1984, p.xviii).
The significance of the carnival as a specific festival form is a key issue in this chapter, and will be analysed in detail.
Mardi Gras refers to Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday which signifies the commencement of Lent. The expression is French, literally meaning, “fat Tuesday”, thus suggesting a time of indulgence before the fasting required for the subsequent period.
Historically therefore, the terms associated with festival are specifically located within the religious experience, at least officially, but contemporaneously, have come to function almost interchangeably; today’s festival events further employ terms such as “fair”, “exhibition”, “carnival” and
“fete”, to invoke some kind of celebratory event, usually derived in a sense of commonality between the participants in a celebratory manner, but with little connection to the terms’ original meaning. This is exemplified by events such as swimming carnivals, school fetes, wine and food festivals, fashion festivals, and so on, the latter often being aggressively marketed, commercially-driven events.3
3 The impact of commercialisation and consumerism on the festival is addressed in Chapter Seven.
308 Yet in order to contextualise the meaning of festival in its contemporary role, an exploration of its historical functioning is necessary. The periods that have been earmarked by the research as being of key significance in the development of the festival are: Classical Greece, Rome, the Medieval world, the Renaissance and the Nineteenth Century. From the development of the form through these eras, the festival as it is currently practised in a variety of forms, can be analysed.
A.3 Classical Greece
Athens in the Fifth Century B.C. is considered the commencement point of the
Western cultural tradition. Whilst there were many festivals held as part of the cultural life of classical Greece, it is the festivals honouring the god
Dionysus that are of greatest interest to this discussion. The Dionysia, celebrations of poetry, wine, theatre and fertility, illustrate graphically the power of the festival to operate both politically and subversively.
The City Dionysia was a festival event commemorating the coming of Dionysus to Athens. It was held each year at the end of March and extended over several days. Both a civic and religious festival, it was open to the entire Greek population and served as a showcase for Athenian wealth and culture. The event is remembered primarily for its drama competition, for which great works that are now part of the Western theatre canon were conceived.
However, its significance extends far beyond this: the City Dionysia showcased
Athens as a civic- minded and culturally superior domain, via elements including a procession of public officials carrying gifts or escorting sacrificial animals, and dithyrambic contests, which involved hymns sung in honour of Dionysus. It is here that the festival as a model for projection of civic pride is consolidated, a feature that has been extensively deployed historically, and is a dominant feature of festivals even contemporarily.
309
At the conclusion of the City Dionysia, an assembly was convened to consider the conduct of the officials in charge of the event, and to receive complaints about the misconduct of citizens during the Festival. What is of key significance is that public behaviour that would have been considered completely unacceptable at any other time, was largely condoned by those officials acting as representatives of government. Behaviour condemned during
‘normal’ time was accepted, even celebrated: as Dionysus was the God of wine, drunkenness was acceptable; as Dionysus was also the God of fertility, sexual activity was openly engaged in, and the lambasting of public figures was also openly tolerated during the celebration. It was as if by allowing a society to have a specific period of time in which to engage in ribald and irreverent behaviour, Greek citizens were provided with an official opportunity to
‘misbehave’, so that for the rest of the time they would be content to acquiesce to government rule. Festival here affords the provision of the dissolutions momentarily of time and space; it becomes a site for the paradox of allowed transgressions, in which participants exist outside of usual time and social restrictions. As Annie Petersen, Programming Director of the Woodford
Folk Festival in Queensland suggests, historically, “festivals celebrated moments outside of normal time, and created a sense of context” (festivals discussion, 1 October 2004). This fundamental function of the festival offers some insight into the longevity of this cultural form: Bristol discusses, for example, the social function of festivity in the medieval world as “the reinforcement of social order […] those who are oppressed by social discipline are allowed to release their accumulated resentment at regular intervals so that they may then be reincorporated within the repressive regime” (Bristol,
1985, p. 27).
For Ancient Greece, however, the liberation was not solely of a celebratory and somewhat ribald nature. Within the festivals of Dionysian worship, a more
310 darkly subversive form of ‘celebration’ was engaged in. During midwinter,
Maenads, female worshippers of Dionysus:
…followed the god, left their homes and made for a wooded hillside on
Mount Cythaeron in search of a mystical and frenzied communion with
nature, to achieve a state of ecstatic possession […] The rites involved
crazed dancing […] and always ended with the tearing and eating of the
raw flesh of an animal (Harwood, 1984, p.41).
This extreme behaviour provides early indications of the potency of the festival as a cultural form, not only as a means of liberation, a freedom from everyday standards of behaviour, but also as truly transformatory, even
revolutionary. This demonstration of extremity pre-empts the dangerous and
revolutionary development of this form, particularly via the carnival of the
Medieval and early Renaissance worlds, and well into the Nineteenth Century.
Alternatively, though, the birth of comedy is linked to the festival, also
demonstrating the transformatory potential of this form. Whilst the genre
came to be included in the City Dionysia, well after the play contests for
tragedy had been firmly ensconced, comedy “eventually found its most
sympathetic home at the Lenaia, a festival observed during the winter, when
few outsiders were present and at which the playwrights were allowed to
ridicule Athenian events more pointedly” (Brockett, 1988, p.81). Such a
procedure suggests that Athens was only partially open to public criticism,
however, and thus the political potential of the festival to critique society, was
kept in check; the comedy festival was not for public consumption in the
manner in which the more ‘uplifting’ festival events such as the plays
competitions were, which were open to all stratas of society. In the formalised
events such as those competitions a further hallmark of the festival in
particular constructs, has its nascence: the power of ‘excellence’. As will be
311 shown, this quality is also to have an extremely long trajectory. Regarding the comedy festivals, it was recognised that the subversive power of comedy, particularly satire, was a potent tool of social critique, one which authorities were unwilling to substantially support. The subversive nature of comedy was also to become a fundamental tool of the festival, particularly as with regards the carnival, as the analyses in A.6 and A.7 attest. For the first time, the potential tension between civic and popular cultural expression, is exhibited.
A festival form employed seemingly for such civic purpose was the Victory
Festival, made popular by Alexander the Great, who came to power in 336 B.C., and extended the reign of Greece into present-day India and Egypt. The
Victory Festival ostensibly cemented Athens’ political self-aggrandisement, but did so via the exultation of an individual, in this case, Alexander, rather than functioning as a celebration of the state itself. The key significance of this event is the shift in focus from a religiously based event, to one in which rulers encouraged the specific worship of themselves. This exultation of a human as if a god had major ramifications for the development of the festival, as the propagandist potential of the festival form was spectacularly unleashed in the
Victory festival, and was to have extensive ramifications for the festival form historically. The Victory Festivals also embraced the festival’s potential for spectacle, as the scale of these events was enormous, often involving hundreds of performers including a range of activities such as play productions that had once been the exclusive domain of the City Dionysia. Thus, the propagandist potential of the festival is fully exploited.
A less expected development for the festival under Alexander’s reign, however, was that due to the explosion in the number of festivals, the demand for qualified performers became increasingly intense. Thus, from the context of the festival, theatre became an increasingly professional enterprise, as theatre buildings developed, and actors organised themselves into guilds. From this
312 point on, when planning a festival, the city now negotiated a contract with the nearest guild. Thus, via the construct of the festival, key developments in the history of theatre itself were engendered. The festival was to be developed even further during the Roman Empire, although not always for the greater social good.
A.4 Rome
The Romans were highly adept at reworking concepts from other cultures and
Romanising them; this was strongly evident in the city’s cultural life, which inherited many features of its religious festivals from Etruria, one of the many civilisations that Rome had conquered. Even though Rome was dismissive of many aspects of Greek culture, it was not above pilfering several key festival practices.
Religion was again at the core of cultural expression, at least initially. The religious festivals were called Ludi and honoured various gods. The oldest
Roman festival was the Ludi Romani honouring the god Jupiter. In essence, the
Roman festival mingled diverse activities in an atmosphere partly religious,
partly secular, even carnivalesque:
The activities (other than the ceremonies and sacrifices) varied from
year to year, but all involved tests of skills, frequently with prizes for
the most skilful or popular performers […] The Romans seemingly placed
their theatrical performances in much the same category as sports and
other forms of diversion and skill (Brockett, 1988, p.84).
This becomes increasingly evident over time, especially in the bloodthirsty
excesses of entertainment during Imperial Rome.
313 The state festivals were run by magistrates who were provided with finances, but they often added their own capital, as a well-received festival reflected honourably on the magistrates (Brockett, 1988, p.85), thus reinforcing the political potential of the festival. However, admission to these events was free and was open to all classes, thus these festivals also worked on a civic level: state culture was open to all citizens, an issue later embraced in the Eighteenth
Century, as German writer Goethe attests, albeit with a shifted focus:
The Roman Carnival […] is not a festival given for the people, but one the people give themselves. The state makes very few preparations for it and contributes next to nothing. For the time of the carnival, the difference between the social orders seems to be abolished, everyone accosts everyone else, and the insolence and licence of the feast is balanced only by a universal good humour
(Docker, 1994 p. 175, discussing Goethe’s experience of the carnival in Rome in
January 1788).
As with Ancient Greece, other festivals were held in Imperial Rome on special occasions, such as major victories in war, important funerals, or when a private individual wished to gain favour politically. The Victory Festivals in Rome, re- named “Triumphal Entries”, became especially important and increasingly spectacular, further consolidating the propagandist role of this event.
One of Rome’s most well known festival events, prefiguring the Carnival of the
Middle Ages, was Saturnalia, which celebrated the halcyon times of the god
Saturn’s return to Earth: it was “…a winter festival during which masters served their slaves, in celebration of the reign of Saturn […which] commemorates a time in which an undivided human collectivity enjoyed the riches of the earth without exploitation or struggle” (Bristol, 1985, p.89). The sense of order being inverted, already examined in Dionysian festivals, gathers momentum at this point, reaching its full potential during carnival life centuries later.
314
The Romans’ love of spectacle is apparent in events such as the gladiatorial contests, which by 105 B.C., had become part of official state festivals, and grew to be enormous, albeit grisly undertakings. At one such event, in 109 A.D, five thousand pairs of contestants were believed to have appeared at one festival following a military victory.
The tone of these spectacles became increasingly bloodthirsty: when the
Colosseum opened in 80 A.D., in the vicinity of 900 animals were slaughtered during the celebrations, which ran over 100 days. The most extreme of these excesses occurred during Imperial Rome, a period extending from approximately 23 B.C. through to the early Sixth Century, at which time festival and spectacle were inexorably linked: these violent events were employed as a license to kill Christians in a propagandist demonstration posing as public entertainment. The disturbing potential of festival, first witnessed in the rituals of the Dionysian Maenads, becomes public at this time, almost institutionalised.
The naumachiae, or staged sea battles of Imperial Rome defy parallel, even by contemporary scales of extravagance. The first of these, held in 46 B.C. in honour of Julius Caesar, was staged on a lake dug specifically for the occasion, featuring a battle involving 2000 marines and 6000 oarsmen. It was so impressive an undertaking that this nautical motif was to become a feature of
Renaissance official festivals. Thus, the scale on which Imperial Rome openly celebrated itself, directly via the festival, was staggering. But this was official state culture, geared only towards the reinforcement of the power of Rome.
Unlike Greek culture, there was little space for a dissident voice. Increasingly, here the festival becomes a deliberate tool of the Empire, enforcing its omnipotence. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that in the Twentieth Century,
315 the Third Reich, which employed so many tropes of Imperial Rome, was to adopt this interpretation of festival as well, as is articulated in A.16.
After 400 A.D., some of the excesses of the Roman festival had virtually caused the events to implode under the weight of their own ostentation; these spectacles gradually abated and state festivals ceased to be given in honour of pagan gods, as Christianity as a new world order steadily gained control. But by that time, the Roman population considered theatre as one of its fundamental rights, and thus the festival had forged the importance of this kind of cultural experience in the heart of Roman life. However, after the Lombard invasion of
Rome in 568 A.D., state recognition and support of theatrical performances ceased.
It can be seen that the Romans found ways to employ the festival and spectacle with unprecedented scale, and, more ominously, with far-reaching propagandist potential. This is a pattern that is to be augmented during the
Renaissance and beyond, as Monarchies and later Republics utilise the form with extraordinary results. However, prior to discussing that political impulse, the Middle Ages proffered key contributions in terms of the development and reworking of the festival, most significantly in the guise of carnival.
A.5 The Middle Ages
The European Medieval world presented a culture in which the Catholic Church had usurped the function of the Roman Emperors, becoming the singular voice of authority from which all things emanated. Culture was shaped directly as a means of exalting God, via strict codes of expression deemed appropriate by the Church.
316 By the early Middle Ages (500-900 A.D.), the popular Roman festivals and by now centuries old pagan rites, especially those pertaining to fertility, had become strongly entrenched traditions within the population of most European communities. The Church made slow work of annihilating such festivals, for many of the people were only nominally Christian, having being forcibly converted or merely enrolled as such when landowners became so. Not surprisingly, then, many pagan rites were refocussed by the Church into
Christian ceremonies. The Church realised that by outlawing the festivals and
forcing them underground, the potential for dissent would be ripe. In a decisive act of cultural planning then, the Church essentially usurped these rites, reworking them as Christian. In 601, the current Pope Gregory the
Great, ordered pagan sites not to be destroyed but transformed into churches, as were many of the feast days, such as the Midwinter Solstice. Thus, during the early Middle Ages, remnants of the past had of course survived, such as
Teutonic minstrelsy and pagan festivals, but had been re-oriented by the
Church, to support the sense of absolute power.
Yet during this period, village-based festivals remained in operation throughout
Western Europe. Itinerant entertainers often came to these celebrations and took their place among other events, thus providing the secular with a voice.
All other cultural expression was firmly directed towards the glory of God, but these storytellers, acrobats, singers and musicians kept a vibrant folk tradition alive that resonated historically, at times being actively engaged through the model of the festival, at other points being deliberately suppressed, outlawed from any formal or official expression of culture.
Christian festivals can be viewed as crucial to the development of theatre, as the Church soon came to realise the importance of acting out good behaviour as a means of controlling an illiterate population. The power of this dramatic tool was so seductive that it could no longer be contained within the physical
317 perimeters of the Church building. By the late Middle Ages (1300 A.D. – 1500
A.D.) religious plays moved outside of the Church and into the public arena.
This shift engendered greater elaboration and collaboration, both in production values, and also in the length of the works. Events extended over days, and drew on the resources and involvement of the entire community. Processional staging became popular, which foreshadowed the carnival, in which the public arena and the village inhabitant become stage and actor respectively: “Carnival may be seen as a huge play in which the main streets and squares become stages, the city becomes a theatre without walls, and the inhabitants, the actors and spectators, observing the scene from their balconies” (Burke, 1994, p.182). This sense of community, and of the blurring of the real and the imagined, in which the actual streetscape is theatricalised into an imaginary location, and the heightened sense of play involved, can be seen as crucial hallmarks of the festival experience, arguably as important in contemporary festival events as in those of the medieval world.4
The increasing involvement of the community was reinforced via the Feast of
Corpus Christi, most popular between 1200 A.D. and 1400 A.D. It comprised a procession throughout the town or village, in which all ranks of society were actively involved (Brockett, 1985, p.97). The feast ultimately developed into a considerable dramatic work, The Play of Corpus Christi, which became immensely popular in Britain. “Similar festivities took place throughout Europe, and thus the stage was set for a new form of theatrical presentation: a festival drama, the celebration of man’s salvation” (Harwood, 1984, p.84). The festival itself focussed on the body and blood of Christ metamorphosing into the bread and wine for Communion, which the population understood as “the union of the human and divine in the person of Christ and the promise of redemption
4 This issue of play is examined in Chapter Four.
318 through his sacrifice” (Brockett, 1988, p.96). Thus the Church, too, found the propagandist potential of the festival highly advantageous.
A.6 The Feast of Fools
As already foregrounded, the development of comedy in the Western tradition had its nascence during festivals presenting the works of Classical Greek playwrights, but it was during a particular festival event of the Middle Ages, that the subversive potential of comedy as a form of public expression, was truly cemented. Plays focussing on the life of Christ, and early morality tales, initially took place within the church building itself, and although performances within the church were undoubtedly solemn in nature, an element of buffoonery appears to have taken root around particular plays associated with Christmas.
This sense of comedy was also becoming apparent in other events:
Civil and social ceremonies and rituals took on a comic aspect as clowns
and fools, constant participants in these festivals, mimicked serious
rituals such as the tribute rendered to the victors at tournaments, the
transfer of feudal rights, or the initiation of a knight. Minor occasions
were also marked by comic protocol, as for instance the election of a
king and queen to preside at a banquet ‘for laughter’s sake’ (Bakhtin,
1984, p.5).
However, specifically within the Church, certain feast days surrounding
Christmas were given over to the minor clergy, the most notable example of which is the Feast of Fools. This was a festival solely under the auspices of the subdeacons, and its appeal lay in the inversion of status that allowed the lesser clergy to ridicule their superiors and the routines of church life, a model echoing the Roman Saturnalia. At times the participants sang out of tune, wore strange costumes and masks, and used puddings, sausages and old shoes as
319 censers. This feast was presided over by a “bishop fool”, who assumed ecclesiastical authority for the duration of the festival. This event lasted for
400 years, until it was ultimately suppressed in the Sixteenth Century, at which point it was at last considered too subversive. Such an event, as with those discussed by Bakhtin above, underlines the potency of the festival to function as an idealisation of the world as the oppressed would wish it to be: free, unrestricted, empowered, joyous. Other figures at this time also reinforced the notion of liberation, such as the Lord of Misrule, the Boy
Bishop, and the subsequent tradition of clowns and pantomimic and cross- dressing characters, continue this topsy-turvy tradition. It is hardly surprising that such celebrations came to be seen by the authorities, whether religious or secular, as threatening and destabilising at points throughout history, and it could be considered surprising that the Church tolerated them for so long.
In Rabelais and His World Bakhtin suggests, however, that as the Middle Ages proceeded, activities like the “feast of fools became only semi-legal, and by the end of the medieval period were banned completely from the churches, although continuing to exist in the streets and taverns, where they were absorbed into the merriment and amusement of carnival” (1984, p.173).
This spirit of inversion, and arguably subversion, came to embody a particular festival form of the carnival that was to significantly fuse the popular nature of festival with its liberating and revolutionary potential.
A.7 Festival as revolution?
Although the specific origin of the carnival has not been uncovered, it grew to be a site of deep political and social significance, as a means of popular expression and liberation, both socially and physically, as the public domain became the site for celebration, rather than solely official spaces. Over time,
320 throughout Christmas and carnival season, the festivities spilled onto the streets, with costumed and masked revellers who both celebrated and
lampooned the social structures and figures of their culture:
The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure
and order of ordinary, non-carnival life, are suspended making the
carnival the place for working out a new mode of interrelationship
between individuals, counterposed to the all powerful socio-hierarchical
relationships of non-carnival life (Bakhtin, 1984, pp. 112 –13).
The mask is a particularly significant device in carnival life. Its ability to disguise the wearer fostered a sense of liberation, along with the temporary social equity afforded in anonymity, and because of these elements disguise offered an even greater sense of the hyper-reality already apparent in the very act of carnival-making. These three elements embody the true power of carnival. The mask became a key tool of personal liberation in such events, as behind the safety and freedom of disguise, behaviour was difficult for authorities to police, and perpetrators even more difficult to recognise.
However, this liberation of behaviour via disguise was not only enjoyed by the rowdy masses; it was just as pertinent for the wealthy and, to an extent, the mask symbolises a kind of ‘democratic’ anarchy in which the power of the few over the many is momentarily dissolved:
The number of people in fancy dress begins to increase. Young men disguised as women of the lower classes in low necked dresses are usually the first to appear. They embrace the men, they take intimate liberties with the women, as being of their own sex, and indulge in any behaviour which their mood, wit or impertinence suggests (Goethe at the Carnival in Rome, quoted in Docker, 1994, p.168).
Bakhtin captures the transformatory power of the mask when he states:
321
The mask is connected with the joy of change and reincarnation, with
gay relativity and with the merry negation of uniformity and similarity
[…] It is based on a peculiar interrelation of reality and image,
characteristic of the most ancient rituals and spectacles (1984, pp. 39-
40).
The power of the mask was therefore considerable, viewed ostensibly by authorities as a cover for criminal behaviour, but undoubtedly their concern was also fuelled by the blurring of conventional societal boundaries and of the sense of liberation afforded to the wearer. Thus, the festivities were suppressed in Fourteenth and Fifteenth century England. The power of disguise and the freedom it gave the wearer to overturn accepted models of behaviour strictly enforced by Church and subsequently, State, was undoubtedly understood by the authorities - “…the expressive features of Carnival, which include masquerades that take the form of travesty and misrepresentation, stylized conflict and agonistic misrule, and utopian imagery of unlimited material abundance and social peace” (Bristol, 1985, pp.52-53). Docker believes:
Masking was extremely important in carnival, in part to partake of a
world upside-down, in part to loosen any fixed daily identity, to enjoy
identity as fluid and open, changing and changeable, as becoming not
static being. The mask, descending from ancient cult and ritual is,
Bakhtin argues, of the essence of carnival’s grotesque humour,
intimately related to comic gestures, grimaces, caricatures, eccentric
postures, parodies (1994, p.179).
Closely akin to the power of disguise via the mask is the importance of the grotesque during Carnival, which functioned similarly to the mask in its
322 unleashing of heightened levels of freedom, and defying social norms of conventional good taste:
The power of the vulgar […] was too dynamic to be totally repressed,
and so it was institutionalized at the margin. The Carnival became its
celebration. Only in controlled display could what was considered the
“grotesque” be acknowledged, could youth be served, foolishness
indulged […] the Church recognized [the Freaks’] allure as both a
drawing card and an admonition, and displayed them on feast days
(Twitchell, 1992, p.57).
Furthermore, the celebration of the grotesque as it existed in the Medieval
(and also Renaissance) world is, as argued by Bakhtin, powerful in its opposition
to those ideals aspired to by both the medieval and later Renaissance aesthetic
of beauty, smoothness, perfection and completeness (Docker, 1994, p.201).
The carnival thus provided a context in which sizeable sections of the
population could behave almost anarchically, breaking down conventional
divisions of class, gender and taste. Unlike the formal celebrations presided over by the Church, and as is to become evident during the Renaissance in
Monarchical celebrations, carnival created a site in which all social and political distinctions were temporarily abandoned:
In contrast to the spectacles of authority, Carnival also eliminates the
social boundary or proscenium that separates performer from onlooker.
Its participatory masquerades permit people to ‘put on’ new social roles,
to borrow the clothing and the identity of someone else, and to adopt
the language and the manners of a different social status. The festive
liberty of physical involvement in the street pageantry of Carnival
323 transforms and contradicts the ‘truth already established’ by official
ideology (Bristol, 1985, p.65).
This blurring of distinction between performer and spectator is a powerful motif of the potency of the festival, and particularly in its carnivalesque guise, forms a key aspect of this thesis, as will be seen in subsequent chapters. The blurring provides a sense of ownership, freedom and social empowerment for those arms of society never afforded such power. Whilst the Western contemporary world presents an essentially more egalitarian order, it will be shown that this sense of audience authorship also has powerful ramifications in contemporary festival constructs.
This sense of rebellion, existing both inside and outside the confines of social space is, this research contests, one of the enduring hallmarks of festival, and the reason why the carnival is still celebrated, via events like the Mardi Gras in
Rio and New Orleans, and the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney. Bakhtin maintains:
Carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and
from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical
rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of
time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal (1984, p. 10).
These qualities are still inherent in contemporary renderings of the form, as will be discussed throughout this study.
However, there is a strong argument presenting a dichotomous view of carnival, exemplified by the character Orpheus from the 1959 film Black Orpheus when he laments, “The happiness of the poor is the great illusion of carnival”. It could be seen that the event, far from being a tool of liberation or ‘democracy’,
324 is instead a further means by which the wielders of power enforce their will on their unwitting subjects. Critic Terry Eagleton argues that if carnival is only
celebrated because the hierarchy deems it allowable, its revolutionary
potential is thus highly dubious:
Carnival, after all, is a licensed affair in every sense, a permissible
rupture of hegemony, a contained popular blow-off as disturbing and
relatively ineffectual as a revolutionary work of art. As Shakespeare’s
Olivia remarks, “there is no slander in an allowed fool” (in Stallybrass
and White, 1986, p.13).
It could indeed be argued that carnival for the medieval world was a cultural safety valve, a means of keeping an illiterate and desperately poor population at bay: a cultural “happy pill” to provide temporary relief from the constant disease of poverty. Bristol suggests that the social function of festivity is “the reinforcement of social order […] those who are oppressed by social discipline are allowed to release their accumulated resentment at regular intervals so that they may then be reincorporated within the repressive regime” (Bristol,
1985, p.27). However, there have been historical moments where the pill did not suppress the ailments sufficiently: in 1580, in Romans, south of Grenoble, on the Isere River, the annual Carnival became a site for uprising. Rebels from
Romans, as well as others from neighbouring villages, formulated a plot to murder local wealthy landowners and merchants. The landowners uncovered the scheme and massacred the ringleaders and many participants: “Both sides had used the Carnival of the previous year to symbolically act out and even to rehearse the bloody encounters of the climactic days and nights of February
1580” (Bristol, 1985, p.50). Furthermore, three hundred years later, carnival,
at least in one geographical location, continually posed the threat of political
and social instability:
325 A.8 Carnival in the West Indies
In the West Indies, carnival repeatedly verged on uprising; in fact, the history of carnival in this region crystallises the tension between festival employed for control as opposed to the festival resulting in misrule. As West Indian culture was a diaspora of slave culture from Africa, coupled with European and
American influences, the colonisers imported the rituals and practices of their parent countries, and forced these onto the entire population. For their own part, the slaves and their descendants forged new cultural forms that were a mélange of traditional African tradition, mixed with elements of European culture that had been hybridised. Voodoo is a potent example of this: a blend of African tribal rites and elements of French colonial Catholicism. It was viewed by the authorities as a highly subversive religion, unable to be accessed by the colonials, and thus dangerously volatile.
Carnival became that window of time that allowed slaves and subsequently their freed descendants, a form of self-expression on their own terms, which in realisation, often involved the lampooning and caricaturing of the colonials. As with the medieval carnival, elements included mask wearing, subversive songs, street parades, stick dances, and drumming, which in particular was perceived as highly threatening to white settlers.5 Such elements posed the same kind of threat for the Colonials as they had for the Church during the Middle Ages: the potential of the event to boil over into anarchic behaviour unable to be contained by the hierarchy. In 1833, for example:
Slaves began to question openly both their working conditions and social
position. This is reflected in Carnival […the quote goes on to supply
evidence from a newspaper report at the time, which suggests] the
5 The pounding rhythms of drums invoked ‘uncivilised’ Africa to the Colonials, as well as violent disorder, and the mark of the devil.
326 custom of extending Bacchanal diversions for the space of a month or
two [...] has of late become a great nuisance […] as the most criminal and
indecent events occur during the extended Carnival, which the local
Magistrates do well in endeavouring to suppress (Cowley, 1996, p.25).
The ‘smell’ of fear evident in this story is further intensified nearly fifty years later in a report by the Colonial Office in London regarding the future of carnival in Trinidad in 1881, which had become increasingly disturbing for the
Colonials:
[Some] urge that the Carnival should be stopped altogether, on the
ground that in itself it is a senseless and irrational movement, and
affords a pretext for the indulgence of unbridled licentiousness on the
part of the worst of the population. But however objectionable some of
the features of the Carnival are, I believe it is looked forward to as the
only holiday of the year by a large number of the working population of
the town, who derive amusements from it and I think to stop it
altogether would be a measure which would justly be regarded as harsh
and might lead to serious dissatisfaction on the part of the working
classes (in Cowley, 1996, pp.2-3).
It would seem that the Colonial Office was more afraid of what would happen if
the event were stopped, a parallel to the Church’s position during the early
Middle Ages. At the very least, keeping the event public meant that the
discord was able to be witnessed and was therefore, a knowable antagonism.
Were such events to be outlawed, forcing them underground, such activity
would potentially gain further power, unable to be measured or controlled by the rulers.
327 Yet, as with the medieval carnival, it was not only the slaves and their descendants who enjoyed the relative freedom that carnival afforded from the social and cultural constraints of colonialism: just as it had functioned for the increasingly powerful merchant classes of the late Middle Ages, the mask, provided the space for ‘anonymous misrule’: “[S]ymbolic inversion by the plantocracy was only one feature of the Carnival season. In parallel with New
Orleans, where duelling was also common, there were numerous masqued balls and other entertainments” (Cowley, 1996, p.21). Carnival is therefore not merely an inversion of the poor and the advantaged; within classes themselves elements are subverted: women are granted social freedom that only comes from being ‘anonymous’ behind a mask, and the variation of levels between the wealthy could be momentarily dismissed. Thus, the social and political power of the carnival to afford a degree of freedom for those groups in society who were marginalised, disenfranchised, if not altogether despised, can be witnessed through these historic examples.
A.9 Dual entity of the festival
The festivals discussed thus far have largely focused on the dual potential of the cultural form, highlighting both its ability to provide a safety valve for cultures in which the majority of the population were suppressed and highly controlled, and yet demonstrating the revolutionary potential of this safety net. There is indeed evidence to suggest carnival can be ‘revolutionary’, even creating a “’second life for the people’ characterized by a spirit of social equality and cooperative allocation of material wealth” (Bristol, 1985, p.41), as has been evinced in the West Indian tradition. This kind of celebration is in direct opposition to “official feasts of the Middle Ages, whether ecclesiastic, feudal, or sponsored by the state, did not lead the people out of the existing world order and created no second life. On the contrary, they sanctioned the existing pattern of things and reinforced it” (Bakhtin, 1984, p.9). Such official
328 celebration is to be gloriously reinforced during the Renaissance, as will be examined shortly.
Thus, festival, and in particular the Carnival, operates dichotomously: either as controller, or liberator. Perhaps the best way to view the power of Carnival is as described by Stallybrass and White as “Janus-faced […] The carnival spirit
[…] could therefore be a vehicle for social protest and the method for disciplining that protest” (1986, p.13). And herein lies the power of carnival;
that it functions in two opposing ways simultaneously. The very term itself
shifts in meaning: “on the one hand carnival was a specific calendrical ritual […]
On the other hand carnival also refers to a mobile set of symbolic practices,
images and discourses which were employed throughout social revolts and
conflicts before the nineteenth century” (Stallybrass and White, 1986, p.15).
The role of the festival and the carnival shifted significantly however, by the
Nineteenth Century in Europe, by which time, Stallybrass and White argue, the
function of the carnival had fractured, whereby its oppositional potential had
been diminished by contemporary psychology. “Carnivalesque goes through a
series of destructive transformations in Romanticism, which opposed the
Enlightenment for the self-importance of its classicism, cold narrow
rationalism, didactic and utilitarian spirit, and optimism” (Docker, 1994, p.181).
The diminishment of the liberating potential of the Carnival in particular is
highlighted in this comparison of Rennaissance and late 18th and early 19th
Century romantic notions of grotesquerie:
In Renaissance grotesque, festive madness makes people look at the world with
different eyes, not dimmed by the supposedly normal, by commonplace ideas
and judgements. In Romantic grotesque, madness acquires a sombre, tragic
aspect of individual isolation. In Renaissance grotesque, terror appears as
329 comic monsters, defeated by laughter. In Romantic grotesque, terror becomes central to an ordinary world seen as dubious, hostile, and meaningless: the world is alien to humanity, and if reconciliation does occur, it takes place in a lyric, mystic sphere. Romantic grotesque was interested in the mask of carnival, but now it becomes that which hides, conceals, deceives; behind the mask is nothingness. Where Renaissance grotesque occurs in ambivalent images of winter-spring, night-morning, light-darkness, Romantic grotesque is nocturnal, sinister, ghostly, ghastly (Docker, 1994, p.182).
Thus, the liberation of the carnivalesque for Medieval and early Renaissance participants, its celebration of the odd and the disenfranchised has metamorphosed into a spirit of dark Nihilism by the time of Romanticism. Given the social ferocity of the climate of the post-Industrial Revolution, and the accompanying political shifts of the rise of nation-states, whereby religious connections to festivals weakened, such a change is hardly surprising. However, this is not to suggest that the festival as a cultural tool had lost potency. As is addressed in A.16, it is a form that has metamorphosed into a powerful global form, with governments willing to contribute millions of dollars for festival events. It is perhaps because the festival’s oppositional potential has been so seemingly diminished, to the extent that festivals, especially large-scale models, operate from within the domain of political control, as will be explored later in this chapter, that they are so readily embraced by political forces, as they were during the Renaissance. Thus, this contemporary deployment of festival for political reinforcement has a long and ostentatious history, as an analysis of Renaissance events will attest, in their functioning as a means of reinforcing the power structures and individuals of a given culture.
330 A.10 Festival as propaganda
Over the course of the late Middle Ages, the power of the Church became weakened by internal conflicts and the eventual onslaught of the Reformation.
The result was that the totalitarian power of Catholicism was severely diminished, and with it therefore, the potency of established traditions of religious drama. When Elizabeth I came to rule Tudor England in 1558, she banned religious plays altogether, so as to prevent further religious instability, which had divided her country. However, as the Church had usurped pagan
Roman rites, so too, it may be argued, the wielders of power during the
Renaissance, those kings and queens of Europe, now themselves usurped
ecclesiastical models for their own glorification, rather than for the
glorification of God. At its most extreme, in Protestant countries, where the
excesses of Catholic liturgical spectacle were banished during the Reformation,
along with the ancient medieval Saints’ days, State-promoted festivals replaced
the Catholic rituals, and arguably with even greater excess than had been
demonstrated by the Catholics. These events were reworked into the
celebration of the ruler’s birthday, or other days deemed important to the
Monarch’s rule: “The fifth of November, the day of the Gunpowder Plot, was
deliberately elevated to the rank of a State festival by an Act of Parliament to
recall to everyone’s mind for ever the miraculous escape of James I and his
family from the wicked papists” (Strong, 1973, p.22).
Thus the very community-oriented nature of religious festival, with the
population honouring a particular deity, came to be replaced with a new kind of
artistic rendering in Renaissance Europe, directly descended, however, from
the spectacles of Rome. But the spectacle was a highly selective one, a blinding
symbol of the greatness of those in power, a model which reached its zenith
through sixteenth and seventeenth Century Europe, and which it may be
argued, was to be well redeployed in the 20th Century as well. These
331 Renaissance events symbolised the concentration of power in the hands of monarchs who saw themselves as ruling through Divine Right. Performances were far more than mere spectacle or entertainment: they were expressions of an entire political system in which the court considered its position secure.
These events were initially celebrated within the court itself, but over the course of time spilt into the public arena, so that all subjects could join in the opulent festivals of excess that highlighted the majesty of their monarchs:
By the third decade of the 17th century absolutist rulers are not only
hymned as embodying the virtues of gods and heroes, they are actually
celebrated as surpassing them. In England and France exponents of
absolutist principles represent the monarch also as God (Strong, 1973,
p.52).
However, there was little sense here of the community ‘taking to the streets’, as with carnival. These Renaissance renderings were deliberate forms of cultural exhibitionism, flaunting the power and wealth of the monarchy. In this kind of celebration, the distinction between ‘high’ and popular culture, and between actor and spectator, is sharply demarcated, in direct contrast to the democratic nature of carnival.
These festival events functioned as variations on the model of the court fete, unfurled through the Renaissance across Europe, most spectacularly in Italy,
England and France, each employing different names and stylistic preferences particular to the respective culture, but were surprisingly similar in theme and realisation.
332 A.11 Intermezzi
During the 16th Century, the intermezzi (meaning interlude) became the crucial form of court entertainment in Italy. This form developed from the mascherata of carnival time, and from the entertainments held at court on
special occasions. In essence, the intermezzi was a glittering political tool employing the entire spectacle available to theatre at that time; scenery, lights, costumes, music and dances. These spectacles were slight on plot and character development, and instead relied on allegorical tales of past kings and queens to flatter the particular monarch in power. But whilst it can be seen that the intermezzi were thin on substance, the grandeur of its spectacle and the surrounding celebratory ambience was in itself significant. One scenic designer of particular importance was Bernardo Buontalenti, who had a profound effect on the future development of theatre design: he “constructed elaborate stage machinery which was capable of creating magical effects. His drawings and engravings for the intermezzi of 1589 were to influence the
course of theatrical design” (Harwood, 1985, p.131). Furthermore, many of the
elaborate elements of the intermezzi “were eventually absorbed into opera, a new form that originated in the 1590s” (Brockett, 1988, p.141).
A.12 The Masque
The court of England developed the Masque, a theatre spectacle that was similar to the intermezzi in that it employed an allegorical story to honour a
particular person or occasion through a fanciful comparison with mythological
characters or situations. “The masque took décor as its central feature [to the
point that] Samuel Daniel, himself a writer of masques, accepted rather lamely
[in his own words] that the ‘pompe and splendor of the sight takes up all the
intention without regard [to] what is spoken’” (Harwood, 1984, pp.135-36). This
form was increasingly popular under the reign of James I, who lavished 4000
pounds on a single production in 1618. His successor, Charles I was also
333 enamoured of it, and in 1634 funded a lavish masque as a propagandist tool to demonstrate the importance of loyalty to the Crown, following savage critique of his leadership. It was entitled The Triumph of Love, and cost 21,000 pounds to produce: “The masque is for the monarch and about the monarch. The more directly so is the reign of Charles I as the King himself danced the leading part in these annual spectacles of state” (Strong, 1973, p.222). This was a potent and highly elaborate form of direct propaganda, openly exalting the status of the monarchy, despite growing political and public disquiet:
The acting out by courtiers in dramatic form, in tournament, ballet and
masque, of the Prince as the deliverer is one of the leitmotifs of the
Renaissance court fete, investing crowned and anointed heads with
apparently supernatural powers to banish magic and defeat forces of
evil by the inherent strength of their royal virtues (Strong, 1973, p.110).
A.13 Ballet de cour
In France, monarchical ostentation was crystallised in Royal Entries and court festivals, a specific form of which was the ballet de cour. As with the intermezzi and the Masque, this was a highly elaborate spectacle, often set against the luxurious backdrops of Chenonceau and Versailles. Furthermore, in the late 1640s, as ballet became fashionable again, a particular style became especially prominent during the reign of Louis XIV. Called ballets d’entrees, these were similar to the ballet de cour in that they were allegorical stories, with choreography based on popular dances of the day. The form reached its peak during Louis’ reign, especially between 1651 and 1669, when the King himself appeared in a number of productions. One characteristic work, The
Ballet of the Night (1653), was divided into 43 “entries”, featuring a bucolic cast of hunters, shepherds, bandits, gypsies, astrologers, the four elements, and Venus, each related to a different phase of the night. Finally the Sun,
334 danced of course by Louis, appeared, to dispel the darkness. This piece of transparent flattery was one of many to evoke the image of him as the Sun
King, around which everything revolved, a symbol promoted assiduously throughout his reign.
A.14 Royal entries
The Royal Entry, “when a ruler made his solemn entry into and took possession of a city or town” (Strong, 1973, p.23), was the apotheosis of Renaissance cultural expression. In Italy, as the intermezzi became more elaborate, it came
to be part of these larger examples of blatant propaganda, held outside in the
public arena, rendered in a manner reminiscent of the functions of the
Triumphal Entries of Rome: these came to be deployed for weddings of
monarchs, birthdays, visiting dignitaries, and so forth. The common people’s
role in these events was as spectators, worshippers, with little or no input into
the staging of the event, and even less into its creation. Here, the public
functioned essentially as spectators, only participating in terms of cheering and
waving, and for some, no doubt, cursing under their breath. The history of the
Renaissance is littered with examples of these: in 1589, for example, to honour
the marriage of Grand Duke Ferdinand I, an entire month was devoted to
masquerades, animal hunts, a naumachia on the Arno River, and comedies with intermezzi. The scale grew increasingly grandiose, reinforcing the majesty of monarchy. “During the sixteenth century […] the solemn entry became part of the cult of the monarch as hero” (Strong, 1973, p.36).
These reworkings of the Triumphal Entries became known as Royal Entries in
England, and in Italy as triumphi, and both featured elaborate processions with pageant wagons, costumed classical or allegorical figures and choreographical patterns used to celebrate a special occasion. In France, Catherine De Medici embraced this form with particular enthusiasm: the Royal Entry was employed
335 to demonstrate to its own populace and to visiting dignitaries, France’s power and to encourage alliances or reconciliations. The festivals she arranged commenced at Chenonceau in 1563 and Fontainbleu in 1564, and were followed by a two- year ceremonial progress of the court through the various provinces of France, where every major town mounted a Royal Entry. They were deliberate symbols of power, wealth and enlightenment. Roy Strong suggests,
“By means of myth and allegory, festival found a means to exalt the glory in the wearer of the Crown” (1973, p.21). He later suggests that “[w]e can see them in retrospect for what they were: extravagant assertions of a mirage of power”
(Strong, 1973, p.247). Bristol supports Strong’s notion regarding the delicate measure of power the monarchy actually enjoyed, here focussing on the British:
The Tudor kings and queens used the royal entry partly as a political
technique to confirm their questionable legitimacy. Behind this
pragmatic use of public spectacle is the undoubtedly sincere belief, not
only that degree and precedence are essential to social well-being, but
also that the display of rank and difference in a magnificent style is a
necessary link between ideals and their here-and-now implementation
(Bristol, 1985, p.61).
A.15 The demise of the glittering spectacle
The tenuous monarchical hold on power demonstrated via the glittering festival forms of the Renaissance could not be sustained. The subsequent revolutions and civil wars across Europe had savage social repercussions, including significant shifts in cultural expression. Soyinka articulates that “[a]s communities outgrow certain patterns of producing what they require to sustain themselves or of transforming what exists around them, the structures which sustain the arts are affected in parallel ways, affecting in turn the very forms of the arts” (in Huxley and Witts, 2002, p.377). The heady ostentation
336 of the state festival as it had existed had little place in an increasingly unstable world, which is perhaps fitting, given that:
In the case of a Catherine de Medici or a Charles I, the importance of
court spectacle as a demonstration of regal ‘magnificence’ was such that
their greatest artistic creations came during a time when the Crown was
not only bankrupt but heavily in debt. This gives some measure of the
significance attached to the court fete during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries (Strong, 1973, p.73).
Charles I retained the masque as a desperate guise of power and stability, during his reign from 1625 – 1649. Even beyond this, during the Restoration, from 1660, Charles II aimed to recreate the glories of the past onstage, and throughout France’s revolution, Napoleon created lasting monuments to himself, most notably the Arc de Triomphe, completed in 1835, a permanent reinvocation of triumphal entries of past kings and conquerors.
However, after 1815, arguably even more repressive regimes wielded power throughout Europe, ushering in an era of great economic hardship, as the
Napoleonic wars had severely depleted Europe’s resources. Europe was no longer a site that afforded the excesses of indulgent monarchs, at least not for the main part. Yet this is not the demise of the glittering arts spectacle, as will shortly be attested.
Conversely, the increasing power of secularisation weakened the intensity of
Church-based festivals, and yet it could be argued that they did not vanish, but were instead maintained in a more localised, community-oriented manner, rather than existing as formalities of the Church. The maintenance of the acknowledgment of saints’ feastdays, for example, continued the religious connection to festival, while local fairs continued the sense of the community
337 celebration of identity. And it can be seen that the subversive, topsy-turvy power of the carnival, still apparent in particular renderings of the actual form, also heavily influenced popular Nineteenth Century forms such as pantomime, farce, vaudeville, minstrel shows and burlesque. Thus, the popular forms of cultural expression took on elements of the carnivalesque. The more exalted models of festival expression exhibited during the Renaissance, the embracing of excellence and magnificence, were re-directed into what has become the modern arts festival.
A.16 The emergence of the arts festival
Nineteenth century cultural life thus brought an enormous shift in the concept of festival, and the more exalted high arts version so prevalent in the
Renaissance world, was metamorphosed in the nineteenth century into a form that is culturally significant contemporarily. This repositioning can largely be attributed to the vision of German director, Franz Dingelstedt. Germany’s cultural situation was somewhat different from that of its European neighbours at this time; in contrast to most of Europe, resident theatre companies in Germany were not in crisis during the mid-1800s. By 1850 both state and municipal German governments took it for granted that they should support the theatre. Funds were injected into non-mainstream theatre, rather than the situation which existed in greater Europe at this time, in which private commercial theatres were creating works for mass entertainment, giving rise to the development of the hugely popular melodramatic form, where elements of the carnivalesque resided. Dingelstedt, a director known for his historically accurate and lavishly decored productions, was interested in the quality of theatrical product, rather than its mere popularity, as his productions in Munich and Weimar attest. In 1851 he staged Sophocles’
Antigone with the assistance of noted scholars, artists and musicians. The pinnacle of his work occurred in Munich in 1854 with a festival, mounted in
338 conjunction with the Munich Industrial Exposition, during which notable actors presented works by Goethe and Schiller, amongst others. The venture was such a success that Dingelstedt’s model was adopted from then on throughout
Europe.
Thus, the festival was in a sense reunited with its original civic function, as it had functioned in Athens: employed to celebrate and glorify a city, rather than specifically an individual or regime. The concept of the modern arts festival had been born, and has come to be a well-entrenched feature of contemporary mainstream culture, as will be shortly examined.
However, this is not to suggest that the propagandist potential of the festival had diminished. Twentieth century newsreels attest to the power of the spectacle as employed by a range of dictators and regimes: Hitler’s Nuremburg rallies are clear reinvocations of the Triumphal Entries of the past, and May
Day parades, especially of Communist regimes, bear out that the politically dogmatic potential of this kind of event has not disappeared.
The arts festival as an entity emerged as a key cultural tool during the twentieth century. The key renderings of the arts festival form, whilst created under different circumstances than those forms addresses thus far, nonetheless retain certain key characteristics of them. Issues of excellence, so often a cornerstone of contemporary festivals, can be seen to have strong connections to the Renaissance privileging of the finest theatrical devices and practitioners of the time, the emphasis on quality and best practice.
The development of the Fringe, conversely, echoes the sense of ‘misrule’ and licentiousness of the carnival. And as is discussed in Chapter Six, the development of the Community Arts festival draws strongly on those models of community involvement stemming back to medieval pageants.
339 An exploration of a variety of key festivals in modern times demonstrates the links with the historical forms discussed thus far. Tony Gould, former Director of QPAC suggests, “The most effective arts festivals are in smaller cities because the population is small enough to get behind them” (Gould, festivals discussion, 1 October 2004). This is certainly apt for the festivals to be discussed here, each of which contributes significantly to the shaping of the contemporary arts festival.
A.17 Bayreuth
The Bayreuth Festival had its nascence with the building of composer Richard
Wagner’s festspielhaus, which opened in 1876. This revolutionary design was intended to be ‘classless’, containing none of the traditional box seats, or gallery, as in other opera houses of the time, but instead was designed so that all seats had an equal view of the action. Furthermore, the orchestra was hidden via the device of the pit, so that nothing would interfere with the illusion of the scene on stage. However, while the space itself signalled a sense of equality, the aspirations of the festival itself focused singly on the sublime performances of Wagner’s music. The Festival was not geared towards a general public, but instead catered for Wagner aficionados, committed to hearing his music performed at its best. Even after the Second World War
(when Wagner’s operas were performed for the first time at Bayreuth with simple scenic apparatus, much like that advocated by Appia, instead of the historic realism that had been employed since Wagner’s time) the quality of musicianship was what was of crucial importance. The Bayreuth Festival was revived in 1951, under the direction of Wieland Wagner, which he continued until his death in 1966.
The festival underwent significant shifts in the 1970s, with the Wagner family relinquishing much of its control over the festival and archival materials when
340 the Richard Wagner Foundation was formed. In 1976 the 100-year anniversary of the Ring Cycle was celebrated amidst similar degrees of celebration and controversy, largely due to the controversial staging of the operas by French director Patrice Chereu. For the 2005 Festival, Peter Schneider, who directed
The Flying Dutchman for the festival in 1982, returns to conduct Lohengrin,
and thus a key team of Wagner experts work to retain the levels of excellence
so valued by this festival.
A.18 Edinburgh
Excellence has also been a hallmark of the Edinburgh Festival, since its inception in 1947. Thus both these festivals aim to exalt arts making and the sense of grandeur incorporated therein strongly connects this kind of festival experience to the Renaissance tradition. This event provides perhaps the most significant model in terms of the contemporary arts festival of the latter
Twentieth Century. Funding for Edinburgh is drawn from a blend of earned income and the investment of public funds. Significantly, the Edinburgh
Festival also gave rise to the concept of the festival fringe, yet did so really via default: when eight theatre companies arrived unexpectedly to perform at the initial festival, they had to perform in small and non-designated spaces on the geographical fringe of the festival venues, due to lack of proper theatre space. The term was derived from a journalist who in 1948 described the additional productions as being “the fringe of official festival drama”, meaning that certain works were presented in spaces that were not designated performance spaces, but the term quickly became also associated with a rougher, less formal kind of performance work. The concept of the fringe has been hugely successful, so much so that by 1980 some 300 British and international fringe groups participated. Unwittingly, the arts festival, via the fringe component, came to connect with the more carnivalesque motifs of festival, as the fringe provides an alternative, often satirical, lampooning or
341 vulgar program. This plurality of functions contained within the one festival, mainstream and off-beat, high art and ribald art, has come to be a solid model for contemporary festival-making, especially in Australia, where it was consolidated via the Adelaide Festival which is explored in Chapter Seven. This festival model thus embodies the Janus-faced nature of festival: to reinforce and to subvert. It is a model adopted by other festivals, such as Adelaide and
Avignon. Current literature about Edinburgh states:
The founders of the festival believed that the Festival programmes
should be of the highest possible artistic standard presented by the
best artists in the world, that the Festival should enliven and enrich the
cultural life of Europe, Britain and Scotland, and that it should provide a
period of the flowering of the human spirit (www.eif.co.uk).
The invoking of the spirit of the Renaissance spirit is palpable.
A.19 Avignon
The Avignon Festival aimed to create another dimension to the construct: the space for alternate and avant-garde work. This theatre-focused event commenced in France in 1947, and grew within the French post-war practice of funding festivals, on both a local and national level. Avignon is perhaps the most significant of these, along with the festival at Aix-en-Province, initially funded in 1948. For the first seventeen years, until 1963, the Avignon festival reflected the work of Jean Vilar, whose aim was to attract a young audience via a different kind of theatre experience: “The festival spearheaded a rebirth of
French theatre” (www.festival-avignon.com).
By the mid-1960s the event had become something of a young people’s enclave:
“every summer […] a cultural ritual, a sort of ‘communion’ takes place”
342 (www.festival-avignon.com). Here the very origins of festival are reinvoked: the sense of seasonality, of the festival linked to the natural world, and of re- joining a particular community of participants, celebrating their commonality.
The event had become so successful that by the 1960s it had launched more than fifty ‘prototype’ festivals of this nature, being held annually.
During the 1970s Avignon became a major showcase for provincial theatres, new plays and experimental productions: works such as Wilson’s Einstein on the
Beach, Mnouchkine’s Mephisto, Brook’s La Conference des Oiseaux and Vitez’s
Les Molières were staged at the festival, and can be seen to have spearheaded
a trend for this kind of almost mystical festival experience: in 1971, for
example, Peter Brook assumed direction of the International Centre for
Theatre Research, based in Paris and including participants from around the
globe. During the summer, the group gave its first performance, Orghast in
Iran at the Persepolis Festival, which the Shah of Persia heavily subsidized.
Brook then presented his epic works at festivals around the world, as has
directors such as Greenaway and Mnouchkine, whose company presented
Caravansereil at the 2005 Melbourne International Festival of Arts.
During some seasons at Avignon there were as many as sixty performances per day. At this time the Fringe also developed, to assist in profiling the work of local companies. The festival here invokes the sense of assisting in the professionalisation of theatre, creating a space for local companies to present work. This element can be seen to have strong connections to the guilds of the medieval festival, which employed their special skills as key components of the celebrations. Avignon subsequently became a venue for young theatre companies in France nationally. Since the 1980s, the festival has included more dance and music, whereas initially it was perceived purely as a theatre festival, and whilst it has encouraged the work of international companies, the French experience “remains the focal point of the Avignon Festival, with productions
343 that would be difficult to present in other spaces” (www.festival-avignon.com).
Audiences are currently of about 120,000. Thus, it has grown to become a significant cultural institution, and in its insistence on a privileging of the
French experience, can be seen to draw connections with the propagandist festival model, though not in a manner necessarily carrying the disturbing implications of the word.
A.20 The American festival
In the United States and Canada, the festival became a significant post-war cultural feature, the most popular model of which is the summer festival. At
Stratford, Ontario, a Shakespearian festival was initiated in 1953, in which
Tyrone Guthrie employed an open stage, so that the division between producer and consumer is diminished, an idea that is to be employed in both a literal and metaphoric sense in the boutique festival rendering, as evinced in Chapter Five.
The success of this model has reverberated throughout the United States: an
American Shakespeare Festival was created at Stratford, Connecticut in 1955 and thereafter annually offered a fifteen week season of plays. The New York
Shakespeare Festival was established in 1954 by Joseph Papp, and since 1957 has presented productions with free admission in Central Park. Other annual
Shakespeare festivals have been held annually in Oregon and San Diego. These festivals sit in an interesting space – it is as though they are attempting to make the highbrow popular, often doing so by the employment of well-known actors in lead roles. In so doing, however, the high arts festival functions as both more and less elitist; less because it is wanting to draw a wider audience pool, but more by the employment of famous actors, it provides even greater
“prestige” to the event.
344 A.21 The Australian festival
The Australian experience is analysed in Chapter Three, which focuses on the history of the Brisbane Festival, and in Chapter Six, which observes the
Adelaide Festival. Emphasis in these analyses is placed on the shifting models of both events: the Brisbane festival originated very much as a community, family-based event, and subsequently shifted towards its current positioning as a vessel for arts excellence. Adelaide has had a more complex history, commencing in a vein similar to Brisbane, and then metamorphosing into the apotheosis of high arts festival practice in Australia, a position that it held for
over thirty years. Recent invocations have questioned the validity of this kind
of positioning, and in consequence, the debate regarding the role of the arts
festival has been widely discussed nationally.
A further key Australian event is the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras,
which clearly draws on the carnival model of festival as subversion, the sense
of the marginalised taking over for a specific and designated period of time, in
a highly celebratory manner. The event is Australia’s largest annual outdoor
event, with over one million participants (www.mardigras.org.au). A four week
festival now accompanies the parade.
A.22 Contemporary connections with festival traditions
This historical analysis has demonstrated that the festival is a cultural tool, possessive of the ability to act as propaganda and to reinforce the value
systems that the wielders wish to enforce. Dichotomously, it possesses the
ability to undermine those systems, lampoon them, and satirise them. Festival
can function, as the carnival has demonstrated, as a means of liberation, or of control. In the 1800s the festival becomes a means of arts exaltation, its subversive potential largely lost to popular theatre forms. The community- oriented elements re-locate into fairs and feast-day celebrations.
345
The second half of the twentieth century provides a number of new models, the fringe again reigniting the subversive nature of festival. Contemporary festivals ostensibly function as did those of ancient Greece: they are a means of civic pride and prestige. Contemporary forms are largely democratic, created in an environment of a market-based economy, attracting essentially middle class audiences. Rarely is programming interfered with by governments or obvious political agendas, even though programming is of course a reflection of socio-cultural impulses of the times in which it is developed. Arguably, though, such festivals work in a manner not dissimilar to the glittering models of the Renaissance: they are presided over by a power structure of governments and social elites, and even subliminally, privilege the agendas of these groups.
The contemporary festival can be viewed as a form that functions essentially in one of two guises: to encompass the best of what has been said and done, or to ameliorate a sense of community, or a combination of both.6 It can be argued that in the post-war period, the arts festival cements a city’s sense of cultural status, usually employing “high arts” to do so. The world, and most clearly
Australia, is awash with examples of such events.
The popular model has become the community arts model, created out of the development of Community Arts ideology in the late 1960s and early 1970s, which focuses on a specific community, often a group disenfranchised by mainstream festival culture. The festival in this context aims to celebrate that community’s uniqueness, its local history, its survival. The emphasis here is not on excellence as it is with the arts festival, but on the community’s direct involvement, and often functions as a means for that community to
6 These models are addressed in detail in Chapter Six.
346 articulate its plight in a public manner. Thus, the community festival can operate as a highly politicised form.
In terms of the contemporary location of the carnivalesque, Docker suggests:
…we can clearly see a diminution of carnival as a public festive event –
though carnival continues strongly in South America and more recently
has surfaced in Australia, in Sydney’s annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi
Gras. But I would argue that carnivalesque as a cultural mode still
strongly influences twentieth-century mass culture, in Hollywood film,
popular literary genres, television, music: a culture that in its
exuberance, range, excess, internationalism, and irrepressible vigour and
inventiveness perhaps represents another summit in the history of
popular culture, comparable to that of early modern Europe (1994,
p.185).
Chapter Seven explores elements of the carnivalesque in contemporary festival practice.
A.23 Conclusion
This analysis has focussed on the key historical periods in which the festival is foregrounded. It has been shown that in essence the festival has traditionally functioned as either a propagandist tool of the state or Church, or as a means of popular cultural expression: a celebration of the status quo, or a subversion of it. However, such a claim can be viewed as oversimplifying the many functions of the festival, as this analysis has described.
It can be seen that whilst social habits and conventions have shifted enormously across the span of history addressed herein, on certain levels,
347 contemporary forms of festival have strong connections to these traditional forms, while on other levels the festival’s role is strongly entrenched in contemporary patterns of cultural production. This dichotomy has particular significance to the key festival form addressed in this thesis, the boutique festival.
348 APPENDIX B - STAGE X 1999: PROGRAMMING
Agrippina: Handel’s opera was “pulped” into soap opera, in this collaborative
effort between the Biennial, Opera Queensland and the Queensland
Conservatorium of Music;
Blurred, by Stephen Davis and Judith McLean, was a multimedia work
performed by students from QUT’s Academy of the Arts Drama course, which
explores the phenomenon known as “schoolies” (This work was so successful
that it was made into a feature film in 2002). This was a joint project between
QPAC and QUT;
Blissed Out, Distraught and Intoxicated, by Vulcana Women’s Circus, employed
a variety of performance genres, to explore areas of disempowerment in
women’s lives;
Jimbo, Shanno, Cazza, Shazza and Yuan Yuan…..Go Dancing, was a major
collaborative dance project between QPAC and the Brisbane City Council.
Choreographer Kristen Bell coordinated a team of choreographers and teachers
to work with a large number of school students, and aimed to further define
dance as a central artform in young people’s lives;
Two Forums engaged young people in public discussion and debate on issues that
were perceived to impact upon them;
Holding Up the Sky was an exhibition of the work of fourteen young photographers, depicting Brisbane women. This was presented by the Brisbane
City Gallery, Griffith University, the Queensland College of Art and QPAC;
349 Artex, Youth Arts Queensland’s national symposium, explored contemporary youth arts and cultures;
First Film Competition, presented a series of short films made by thirty young
Queenslanders, focussing on the theme of reconciliation. This was an initiative of the Pacific Film and Television Commission and QPAC;
Five to Midnight: A seven-hour event held in the QPAC forecourt, involving popular bands and a range of arts based activities, with a key arts component,
Freakshow. In this event, the choice of bands was the event’s key selling point.
Programming ensured that the bands embodied a balance of styles, and that there was variety in the choice of headlining bands and emerging local acts.
350 APPENDIX C - STAGE X 2001: PROGRAMMING
Going into Shadows was a contemporary opera that involved over 150 students from the Guildhall School in London and the Queensland Conservatorium. The opera was about love and terrorism;
Eat Your Young by Arena Theatre Company, observed the social ramifications of a family raised in care in the 1970s;
Hydra, a dance piece by innovative dance company Chunky Move, exploring the power of water;
Part 3: The Suitcase, a new play by local company The Real TV Project, was inspired by the Suitcase murder in Brisbane;
Agony in the Garden and Model Wears Death consisted of two short performances by young Brisbane artists Kamal Krishna and Leah Mercer, fusing dance, religion and sexuality;
Make a Break Dance Party, was a hip hop oriented dance party, sponsored by
the Brisbane City Council, featuring live performances, DJs, competitions and
prizes;
Scrapbook, a magazine-inspired publication featuring specifically commissioned work of young Queensland writers;
“T” the Exhibition focussed on the customisation trend popular at the time, young designers and artists each customised a Stage X t-shirt, to create an exhibition of unique pieces of wearable art. The pieces were displayed in the shopfront windows of Brisbane’s most cutting-edge boutiques;
351
XL-D was a showcase of dance and drama work from high school students from
14 Brisbane schools, facilitated by the Queensland Association for Drama in
Education, and Ausdance (Media release, 14 August, 2001);
Travelling Circuits brought together the works of Brisbane’s three leading youth arts companies and their works;
Journey: land, sea, sky/ Malgar dar, solwata. This project was the result of a ten-week process with participants of Indigenous and Polynesian communities, led by the youth theatre company Contact;
Walking On, a documentary by youth arts company Catalyst, was produced with the Department of Families, and was written, filmed and edited by five young people in foster care;
Pulse, by youth theatre company Backbone, explored the connections and disconnections of relationships through physical and technical communication;
Five to Midnight was the same concept as for Stage X 1999, but with significant shifts: the Freakshow of 1999 became Shopping Mall, and the space was reconfigured so that it now comprised three central entertainment elements: the Bandstage, which featured five bands, Shopping Mall, which featured more than thirty artists and twenty installations and performances, linked by some kind of thematic critiquing of consumerism, and the Pocu Palace
Dance Space, which featured local DJs as well as dance and swing lessons. The design for this space featured recycled plastic products and inflatable plastic sculpture, providing further connections to the focus on consumerism.
352 APPENDIX D – AUDIENCE RECEPTION STUDIES, FIVE TO
MIDNIGHT STAGE X, 1999
Quantitative information:
176 people interviewed in total; 95 male, 81 female.
Age specification: 67 17 years and under
22 18-20 years
50 21-30 years
8 31-40 years
2 41 years and over
27 Did not disclose their age
Of people who specified a band as a key reason for their participation:
76 Powderfinger
36 Something for Kate
General findings:
Powderfinger appeared to be a huge drawcard across all age ranges.
There was quite a bit of a disparity in the way that the younger audience
members and the older audience members read the Freakshow. In general,
the younger audiences (school age) either found the Freakshow “weird” and
didn’t connect with it, or if they liked it, it seemed to be on the level of its
kookiness, and didn’t really connect to the pastiche/parodic quality of it.
The older audiences on the other hand, if criticising it, were more inclined
to refer to it as daggy or crappy, and suggest that more money be spent on
it, that it needed to be better resourced. But quite a few of them really
connected to it, and thought it was a great addition to the mainstage event.
353
Positive issues that were recurrent:
Value for money
Liked the idea of the Freakshow – original, complemented the bands
Loved the Rave Room/Do-Tank
Good choice of bands
Good atmosphere
Good for the city of Brisbane
Thea The Car was a big hit
Negative issues that were recurrent:
Alcohol cage tiresome
Lines too long, especially for alcohol
Need more toilets
Weirdness of Freakshow – didn’t understand it
Whole event needed to be bigger, in terms of more bands, more events,
more booths
A few comments were made about the disturbing nature of the Access Arts
booth
From the Focus Group’s Comments
The general sense from the group was that the Freakshow was a good idea but that more money needed to be spent on it, and that they felt that some of the acts weren’t as clever/sophisticated as they needed to be.
They also felt in general that there needed to be an apparent theme to tie the whole event together.
354 Audience Reception Studies transcripts for “5 to Midnight” 17 July 1999
SUBJECT 1
2 Females, both aged 17 years, from Yepoon State High School
Went into the Access Arts booth, found it rather scary, didn’t really understand it
Got free tickets to the entire Festival, and free train tickets to Brisbane
Found the event overall “really great”
Liked all the “arty stuff”
SUBJECT 2
Female, 18 years, has done a bar course
Found out about the event from “Rave” mag
Here for Powderfinger, and thought they’d be on the mainstage earlier
“I was expecting more”
SUBJECT 3
2 Females, both aged 16 years
Here since 6pm
Found the Freakshow stuff “really weird”
But loved the car
Here for Powderfinger
Liked the Do-Tank, the dancing the “Fat People” (some kind of in-joke between friends, I think)
Here just to say they’ve seen Powderfinger
But thought the Blind man was “funny”
SUBJECT 4
Male, 17 years, still at school
Found out about the event through friends and the radio
355 “It’s up to my expectations”
Hasn’t really noticed the music yet
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
Has seen a lot of people stoned
Suggests there could be more security
SUBJECT 5
Female, age unspecified, Male, 21 years
Been here since 6pm
“It’s pretty cool, like a mini Big Day Out”
Waiting for the “good” bands, such as Gotta Cola, Something for Kate,
Powderfinger
“Pretty weird, but good though”
Will be here next year if there’s some good bands
SUBJECT 6
Female, 16 years, from Shailer Park High School
Heard about the event through friends
Here for Something for Kate
“$25 is good”
“Heaps of good bands”
Regarding the Freakshow: good, something different, don’t see it at many festivals
Enjoyed dancing in the Do-Tank
Suggests that they could get more bands and make it bigger
SUBJECT 7
Female, age unspecified, Male, aged 16 years, working for Coles
“Pretty good”
Would like more bands and bigger bands
356 It has been a good night
Freakshow “silly, but in a good way”
SUBJECT 8
Male, age unspecified, dancer in the Do-Tank
Loved the Freakshow
Loved the Do-Tank
Has been more fun than he thought
Loves the violin player
Found some of the acts “funny because they acknowledge their dodginess”
Definitely value for money
“It’s a festival, not just Powderfinger”
SUBJECT 9
Male, 19 years, landscaper, going to uni next year
“It’s an all age thing”
“It’s a good concept”
Doesn’t like having to drink in a cage
Stalls are okay but a bit strange
Came to see Powderfinger
Found out about event from “Rave” mag
SUBJECT 10
2 Females, aged 21 and 22 years, Male, 20 years
Had just arrived
Seen a few installations
Think it’s pretty good
Like the interactive quality of the acts
Pretty good atmosphere
357 SUBJECT 11
Female, 15 years, 2 Males, aged 15 and 12 years
Here for Powderfinger
“Bit weird”
“Dumb, stupid”
“Wouldn’t expect this at a concert”
SUBJECT 12
Female, 27 years, Male, 23 years
Went to have a few rums and came back again
Here for Something for Kate and Powderfinger
SUBJECT 13
Large group of Females, all aged between 15 and 16 years, all from Somerville
House School
“Really good”
Here since 5.30pm
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
Saw billboards advertising event
Like the DJ and dance party
“This is really good, they should do it more often”
“It needs more guys”
SUBJECT 14
Male, 19 years
“Very good, very impressive”
Loves the general atmosphere
Likes the Do-Tank
“It surpassed my expectations”
358 “Having this event and being in the middle of the city and overlooking the river and the city – it’s very surreal, very unusual”
It’s value for money
SUBJECT 15
Female, 39 years
“I’m really happy with it. It’s an interesting diversity and collection of events and visual images and aural stuff”
SUBJECT 16
Female, 15 years, male, 16 years, both from Chisolm Catholic College
Found out about event from JJJ
Thought it was really good
Loved Something for Kate – “need to play longer sets”
“Freakshow is a good outlet for something different”
“Some of it’s different, interesting”
SUBJECT 17
2 Females, 16 and 17 years
Felt that the advertising was misleading – advertised to start at 5, but it really started at 6
Here for Powderfinger, but loved Something for Kate – “The guy’s a babe”
Liked the “trippy tent thing”
Good value for money
Great positioning of venue
SUBJECT 18
2 Males, 16 and 17 years, 16 year old at school, 17 year old an apprentice mechanic
Here for Powderfinger
359 Freakshow was good to see, created a good atmosphere
“Liked the Do-Tank”
“It’s fun, it’s great – have another one”
“More than just a concert, more like a festival”
SUBJECT 19
Male, 20 years
Came for the bands, especially Powderfinger
“It’s pretty good”
“Pretty similar to the 97 event”
SUBJECT 20
2 Males, 21 and 24 years, Female, 24 years
Found out about event from Billboard mag and radio
Mainly here to watch the bands
Didn’t know there was stuff other than the bands
“It’s pretty interesting”
“Love the swans”
SUBJECT 21
3 Females, 14 years, 15 years and 15 years
Here since 5pm
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
Freakshow stuff is “excellent”, “different”
Would come back next time
It’s value for money
SUBJECT 22
Female, 24 years
360 “It’s great to get a variety of things in the one forum. Just seeing so many things that aren’t mainstream is really good”
Here is an opportunity to catch up with her family rather than specifically here for Stage X
Found out about event from JJJ
Loved the car
Thrown by the bottled dolls – found this disturbing
SUBJECT 23
Female, 16 years
Here with her sister, whom she’s lost!
Here since 5.15pm
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
Didn’t know about the other stuff but loved the Do-Tank
“I like all the bits of art to look at”
“It’s different and it really grabs you, you really have to stop and look”
Came to the 97 event, but finds this one better
It’s excellent value for money
SUBJECT 24
Female, 18 years
“I really like the installations, they’re really good especially the guy with the
TV on the front – it brings about the question of being able to see through most things in our lives – the notion of transparency in our lives”
Came for the bands
Found out about the event through the Internet
“It’s really good for Brisbane – there’s a lot of people here”
361 SUBJECT 25
2 Females, 16 years and 17 years, 16 year old at school, 17 year old working full-time
Found out about event through local rave mags
They just met at the event
“I like all the art stuff”
“Good to have a look at along the way”
Was dragged into the “doll thing” (Access Arts booth) – “it was different”
Liked the bands – here for Gotta Cola
“I like the avalanches”
SUBJECT 26
Group of 2 Females and 1 Male – ages unspecified
Here for Powderfinger and for the Rave Dance
Think it is “excellent”
SUBJECT 27
Group of 3 males aged 15, 16, 17 from California
They like the Rave – “It was awesome”, like the scenery, liked the Freakshow
“all the craziness”, liked the Sex Show, the Robot in particular
They were just in town and so came along
- joined by 2 girls
(But boys still taking) liked the different music styles
Liked the Patio Party
“Everything is awesome”
SUBJECT 28
2 older females (aged approximately in late 30s/early 40s?) – mothers of kids attending
One found the sound quality not very good on the mainstage
362 The other said the way the alcohol is organised worked
She hadn’t seen any drunk people but the alcohol cage was very crowded
They liked the variety of ages, thought that worked really well
Between them, the women had 4 young kids there under 18 years
SUBJECT 29
2 males, students at UQ; one aged 23, the other age unspecified
They hadn’t seen much yet (ie. had only just got there)
In terms of the bands, they were only interested in seeing Powderfinger
Thought the Freakshow in general was fantastic
They were here with friends and siblings
SUBJECT 30
Man, aged 22, an electrician, woman, 22, uni student – (this interview was shot in the photo booth)
They found the Freakshow a bit weird
“We’re not really technos” (ie. so therefore not really “in” to the Do-Tank)
They liked the bands
SUBJECT 31
3 females from Brisbane and the Coast – all uni students
“So far it’s been pretty good”
They came in, the drink line was too long so they went to the Plough Inn
They found that there were lots of people from this event at the Plough Inn
They had a great time in the Do-Tank
Here for Powderfinger
SUBJECT 32
Male, 18 years – here with a group of friends – all from Macgregor, he’s currently employed
363 “It’s not too bad”
Finds it a bit quiet – thought there’d be more people
“Too hard to get pissed here so went over to the Casino to sink piss there”
Had come back for Powderfinger
SUBJECT 33
Male and females, in late 20s
They were meeting more friends here
A friend bought tickets for them
“It’s brilliant!”
“Wasn’t sure what it was ‘til I got here”
Line in the bar is pretty terrible
Liked the Do-Tank
SUBJECT 34
3 young females
They’ve liked what they’ve seen thus far
May have been a bit drunk?
“Got trodden on”
“It’d be better if it wasn’t so rough”
SUBJECT 35
2 females, approximately late teens/early 20s
Here to see Powderfinger
Can’t remember how they found out about the event
“Needs a better bar system”
“The toilet line up was really bad”
“It’s good, it’s excellent!”
364 SUBJECT 36
2 females, both employed; one works part-time and studies part-time, the other is a receptionist for “Time Off”
Both from Brisbane
Weren’t impressed with the Cocktail (presumably the Patio) Party
But liked the Freakshow in general
SUBJECT 37
Male, aged 20 years
Here for Powderfinger
Freakshow was “pretty fucked”
He was very drunk
SUBJECT 38
Male, approximately early 20s
Felt there were “a lot of fuckwits” here for the bands
He was rather thrown by a bad experience with a group of audience members right at the front when the band Gotta Cola were performing
Joined by a female, approximately early 20s
They found out about it through either “Rave” or “Time Off” – couldn’t remember exactly which one
Think it’s missing something – “maybe rides?” more interactive entertainment
Thought that the Freakshow needed a theme
There weren’t enough choice of booths
Thought the Freakshow didn’t make much sense
SUBJECT 39
2 females, approximately in 30s, 1 male, approximately in his 20s
All were really annoyed about the alcohol situation, that you couldn’t take alcohol out of the designated area
365 Here for Powderfinger
SUBJECT 40
2 males, both aged 17 years
Thought event was “pretty good”
Liked the “two different parts” of it
Would come back again, especially with as good a line up of bands
Freakshow is “okay – needs a few more things”
But the other stuff (presumably the Do-Tank and Rave Dance) is unexpected, and has added to it
SUBJECT 41
Female, aged 19 years, employed in a bridal shop
“Really good”
Danced for a while but got turned off the DJ music, not danceable music
Really excited about Powderfinger
Liked some of the stuff in the Freakshow – “liked the arty stuff”
SUBJECT 42
2 males, late teens/early 20s; one a labourer from Ferny Grove
Here with a few mates
Sat in the car (Thea), drunk a lot
Liked the Freakshow
Liked the “freaky stuff”
SUBJECT 43
2 males, 2 females, all aged 15 years
Found out about the event through the “Brisbane News”
Enjoying it
Here for Powderfinger and because it was cheap
366
SUBJECT 44
2 males, both aged 25 years; one a fashion design student, the other just back from the UK
Got free tickets
Had just arrived at the event
“It’s a new thing to Brisbane. Pretty cool”
But doesn’t compare to Livid – needs more bands, bigger venue, more street acts, but:
“It’s getting there”
SUBJECT 45
2 females; one aged 28 years, the other aged 19 years
Got here by bus
Here for Powderfinger
Surprised by the Freakshow but liked it
Could be more gates for entry and more toilets
Got free tickets
Compares pretty well to Livid
Both got sore feet!
SUBJECT 46
2 males, both aged 15 years, from John Paul College
“Good”
“Fun”
Like all the bands
Freakshow a bit “weird” – couldn’t connect to it
367 SUBJECT 47
4 males, three aged 21 years, the other aged 22 years, one of whom is a TAFE students, one of whom has done a security course, all in bands
All got free tickets – felt they wouldn’t have paid for it
They’re all into the punk scene so they find it “a bit dreary, but it’s okay”
Interviewed as they’re just about to leave
Liked the Freakshow stuff
Thought the bands attracted a really young crowd
Didn’t know anything about the event
Would come back if their kind of bands were performing
“Should’ve been more of a mixture of bands” (presumably including Punk)
“Need more toilets!”
These guys didn’t think of themselves as young people
SUBJECT 48
3 males, ages unspecified, hard to approximate ages
Think there should be more bands, more toilets, more access to alcohol
But the bands have “been great”
Just here for the bands and the beer
SUBJECT 49
2 males and 1 female, ages unspecified, but all approximately late teens/early
20s
“Go Powderfinger!”
Like the beer
Going to the Plough Inn
All pretty drunk
SUBJECT 50
2 females, aged 17 years and 18 years
368 Here for the music
Really happy with the event
Both “into art”, so they like it
Still having a good time without alcohol
SUBJECT 51
Male, aged 26 years, friend of a band member
Found the crowd young but thought that was a good thing
Likes most of the bands
Likes the car (Thea)
Likes the “extra bits”
SUBJECT 52
Females, aged 18 years, from Townsville
Liked the “light room” (strobe Room) in the Freakshow
This is the first festival she has ever attended
SUBJECT 53
2 males, aged 21 years and 23 years
Here for the bands
Heard about the event on JJJ
Didn’t really connect with the Freakshow but their mate did, he especially liked the Strobe Room
They didn’t get to the Do-Tank but their friends did
SUBJECT 54
Female and male, both aged 25 years
Came with the male’s younger sister
Like some of the early bands – “great fun”
Found the Freakshow interesting but didn’t really “get into it”
369
SUBJECT 55
Female aged 21 years and male aged 19 years, from Kangaroo Point, both employed
Thought the Do-Tank was a bit disappointing, wanted more live stuff, live dance
“Very different”
Hadn’t been to see the bands
Would’ve liked more live stuff and found the event held at too early a time for the older audience members
Liked the Freakshow – good ideas
The brochure was too “good quality” – “all the money is going into the brochure
– the best gigs are the ones with flyers and when you hear about it”
Don’t know what the target audience is
The girl felt that the event was aimed at a younger audience than for her
“Very commercial and very young”
Not quite sure what group it’s targeted for
SUBJECT 56
3 males, all aged 15 years, from Oxley, Jamboree Heights and Toorak
Here for the bands
Had a good night – would come back
“It was worth the money”
Spend the night crowd surfing
Freakshow was “crappy!” – “I wanted to see a one-eyed man!”
All got very muddy feet
SUBJECT 57
Female, age unspecified, but approximately 16-17 years?
Here for Powderfinger
Didn’t like the “weird machines walking about”
370 Not keen on participating in acts
SUBJECT 58
2 Females, age unspecified, but approximately early 20s?
“It’s been really good . . . I haven’t been here for very long”
One is a girlfriend of a band member
“The stuff in the middle (Freakshow) looks really interesting”
Both pleased they came – girlfriend got a free ticket, the other paid and is here to see Powderfinger
SUBJECT 59
2 Females, 21 years and 22 years, both employed
“For the money, it’s really good”
Waiting for Powderfinger
Didn’t know there was this event in 97
SUBJECT 60
2 Males, both 16 years, both at school
“It’s been pretty good so far”
Here for Powderfinger, but also for Lavish
Didn’t come to 97 event
Worth the money
SUBJECT 61
Male, 20 years, optometry student, QUT
Liked the “wackiness”
“It’s cool”
Here for the bands, and especially Powderfinger, and Lavish
Only paid $20 for paying in advance
Thought the Freakshow was good
371
SUBJECT 62
Older Male and Female, ages unspecified, but approximately late 50s/early
60s?
Male: “I hope it’s going to get better!”
Didn’t like the music
Thought the Freakshow was “entertaining. It’s always nice to come down here.
We like the whole area”
Female: “I think it’s great. I love the atmosphere. It’s really terrific. We’re having hot dogs and BBQ sausages and soft drinks, things we never have normally. It’s the right place to have them. It’s good . . . It’s great to see everybody having such a good time. It’s super”
SUBJECT 63
Female, 22 years, student and works part time
“I like some of the installation stuff and I think they’ve put in a lot of work”
“It’s very interesting”
Came with friends
Not here for any particular band
SUBJECT 64
5 Males, ages unspecified, but all grade 12 students – only 2 made comments
Been here since event started
“Pretty weird”
“Full on – different to normal shit. Like your poetry party going on over there.
It’s gonna get so weird one day that everyone’s gonna like – it’s gonna end up that everyone’s weird embracing this alternative culture and then a breakaway group will form a normal cult . . . This is pretty good at the moment”
Here for Something for Kate and Powderfinger, and “for the chicks”
372
SUBJECT 65
3 Females, 19 years, UQ student, 19 years, works, 19 years QUT student, 1
Male, 23 years, QUT student
“It’s been pretty interesting”
“It’s different”
Here for Powderfinger and Lavish
“It could be cheaper. We’re only students”
SUBJECT 66
Female, 19 years, business student, QUT
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
“I paid more (than $25) I did it the dodgy way”
Too many queues
SUBJECT 67
Male, 21 years, final year engineering student; Female, 20 years, drama ed student, QUT
Female: “There are things that look like they’re ready to go and do something exciting, but they’re not. Kinda nothing’s happening” – for example the
“Industrial Area”, the “waste hazardous area and the boxing ring”
“Have more live shows and go like in tag team”
Male: “A good line up of bands”
Female: “A bit expensive for students” – male disagrees
Female: “But for everything I guess it’s okay . . . a good atmosphere”
SUBJECT 68
2 Females, 18 years, back at school, 17 years, at school
Liked the techno room
373 Came for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
Saw the event advertised in the paper
SUBJECT 69
2 Females, 18 years and 21 years, both students at Griffith
“We had to wait in line about 1 hour (to get in)”
“That band six . . .? Was really shit”
“Every time we walk past something there’s a big line up”
So far, not worth the money, but Something for Kate and Powderfinger should be good
“The music’s alright but it’s not that great so far”
SUBJECT 70
2 Females, both 16 years, both in Grade 12
Been here since 5.30pm
Here for the first band, Wiseacre
“It’s alright – haven’t liked the other bands”
Liked the car
Found the body parts and dolls in bottles really “freaky stuff”
Worth the money to see Wiseacre
“We missed the start of our favourite band ‘coz we couldn’t get in”
Liked the Fantasy Room – “didn’t know whether to laugh or cry”
SUBJECT 71
2 Females, ages unspecified, both at school
Here for Powderfinger
Freakshow “pretty weird, strange”
General atmosphere “pretty ordinary”
“Probably will be worth the money when Powderfinger comes on”
374 SUBJECT 72
4 Males, ages unspecified, but all in their 20s, professionals
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
Didn’t really connect with the other stuff
Bit early to say if it’s worth the money
Bar line up is too long
“Other than that, everything’s okay”
SUBJECT 73
Female, age unspecified and difficult to approximate
Night is “interesting, artistic”
Looking forward to seeing Powderfinger
Freakshow: “It’s interesting the bits I could figure out. Like that’d be really cool if I knew what it was!”
“It’s worth having stuff like that before the bands”
If she paid for the ticket, she’d find it value for money
Food is pretty awful
SUBJECT 74
2 Females, both 16 years, at Burnside State High School
Here since 5pm
Heard ads for it and knew about Stage X and the festival
Here predominantly for Powderfinger
Freakshow: “It’s amazing. It’s great. I think it’s one of the best set-ups having something to do other than just looking at the bands”
“It’s a bargain for $20 to see not only the bands, but all these other performers doing all these interesting things that I never would’ve thought of.
They’re so creative”
Weren’t here for the 97 event
375 SUBJECT 75
4 Males, ages unspecified, but all Grade 12
Here for Wiseacre: “Best band here so far”
Don’t like Gotta Cola
Looking forward to the “piss” “crowd surfing” “females”
Like some of the Freakshow stuff
“$20 is so cheap”
“Fucking security guards”
SUBJECT 76
2 Females, 16 years, 2 Males, 16 years, all from the Sunshine Coast
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
“It’s been a bit more interesting than most festivals we’ve been to ‘coz they’ve got a lot of these sideshows – they’re really good”
“The food prices suck – bit expensive”
Good value for $25
SUBJECT 77
Female, 18 years, employed
“It’s really busy. I just expected bands. But the street theatre and all that sort of stuff is really good. And I like the dance pavilion, it’s really cool . . . it gives you something to watch. It’s really interesting”
Here for Powderfinger
“It’s definitely worth the $22”
SUBJECT 78
2 Males, 16 years, apprentice painter, 16 years, Grade 11, Dakabin State High
School
“It’s pretty good. I wasn’t sure what it’d be like”
376 “I wasn’t sure about all these stalls. I thought it’s be a bit of a concert.
Works out a bit better than I thought, probably . . .”
Freakshow is “pretty good”
Liked the Access Arts stall
Both think it’s worth the $25 and would come back
SUBJECT 79
Female, 27 years, works for Yellow Pages Direct; Male, 27, Trainee Station
Master
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
Female: “Freakshow is “freaky”. The guy playing the violin going up on the tower was really weird. But I think this goes well with the band”
Male: “I suppose I’m getting a bit older so it’s a bit different. Good to see something different”
SUBJECT 80
Male, 22 years, student
Freakshow is “awesome” “funky” “I love the Rave Room”
Liked Gotta Cola
“I thought it’d be really crap, but it’s good”
SUBJECT 81
2 Females, 16 years, at school; 23 years, an accountant
23 year old: “The grunge room is really good. I’d love to go and watch but there’s nowhere to put our bags. Next time, have bag lockers”
Here for Powderfinger and Something for Kate
“It’s been alright so far”
Freakshow is “pretty weird” – “goes with the music”
16 year old: “Everyone seems pretty relaxed and fitting in well with everyone else. It’s really good”
377
SUBJECT 82
Female, 24 years
“It’s different. It’s not like the norm music festival that we go to like Livid or
Big Day Out”
“It’s more abstract – things going on”
“I’d heard different things about it”
Here for Powderfinger
SUBJECT 83
Female, 49 years, employed at Queensland Art Gallery
“It’s great. I’ve got international students and I’ve brought them in for the night. They’re from 20s to 15”
SUBJECT 84
Male, 24 years, musician; female, 24 years, receptionist
Female: “I thought it was quite interesting. I’d never seen anything like it”
Female didn’t like some of the performance art but did like some of the street performers
Some of it “I just don’t understand. What’s the point?”
But works well with the bands
Here for Powderfinger
Male: “There’s a lot of young ‘uns. School aged kids”
SUBJECT 85
2 Females, 18 years, employed in food shop, 16 years, Grade 12, Male, 16 years,
Grade 11
“It’s good, heaps of people”
Freakshow “good idea, interesting”
Worth the money
378 “It’s pretty good”
379 PILOT GROUPS “THEATRE TALKS”
The group includes: Nerida [A], BJ [B], Natasha (who arrives later) [C],
Sarah [D], Joel [E], Bill [F]
E: For a youth thing, I was expecting the bands to be more multimedia.
D: A lot of people said it was very lowkey, casual.
E: . . . It needed a theme to tie it all together. By the end of the night a
lot of people looked really bored.
F: A lot of the younger kids were moshin’ in the mud – getting right into
it, shirts ripped, getting really drunk for the first time.
D: A lot of people were really disgruntled about having to drink in a cage.
B: What did you think of the Do-Tank? I actually thought there’d by
more to do.
D: I loved the fashion stuff – heaps of people came to watch this . . . and
what did you think of the sideshow alley stuff?
F: Good concept but done too cheaply.
A: The later ones towards the back, I walked past and thought “What am
I supposed to do here? – like the boxing ring.
F: A few people were interested in the car . . . the thing that really
caught my eye was the robot.
A: It was frustrating to have just missed something and not know when it
was on again.
F: A lot of people were raving about the fortune teller.
E: The patio party was really fun.
F: Yes, like you were talking before, you weren’t sure how to interact
with it.
A: ‘B’ and I didn’t get a chance to look at that stuff until after 10 and it
was pretty trashed by then.
B: Loved the ice swans.
380
F: Everyone was happily drunk.
A: We had a lot of people say they thought the Freakshow and Do-Tank
worked really well in combination with the concert.
E: I don’t think it served any function.
D: A lot of people hadn’t expected it and didn’t know how to interact with
it . . . I thought (for the Freakshow) that yeah the budget was really
low and you could see that but I thought the diversity was really good.
E: We stood in so many queues.
B: I really liked the people walking around in costume.
D: I didn’t see them.
B: Yeah, people on stilts, silver capes . . . it helped loosen things up and
gave it a festival air at the beginning.
A: This was earlier on in the night.
B: They should’ve kept it going.
A: Sometimes it was hard to tell who was part of it and who wasn’t.
B: I think in the advertising they should’ve also said “we’ve got the bands
and this festival kid of aisle thing” so people will be more willing to get
into it.
F: Who set up the Freakshow and who’s in it?
E: The Stage X committee.
D: A couple of people in a young band said the music they chose was quite
commercial and along with trying to satisfy the quirky side as well, and
thought it’s just a money spinner, they’re trying to get the best of
both and tap into the youth arts stuff and it hasn’t worked. And we
were trying to explain to them about who organised it and they said
“Don’t they want young people are aren’t famous?”
E: Maybe they couldn’t used some really young local bands, but then it can
become a high school thing.
A: It depends how they do it.
D: We found some people, once we’d turn the camera off would say what
381 they really thought. They didn’t want to say it on tape.
A: We asked if people thought it was worth the $25 and some said when
Powderfinger gets on it will be.
I stop the tape as ‘C’ enters and then we re-commence:
E: On Do-Tank they’d saved the best DJ until last and when Powderfinger
came on, everyone ditches the DJ and goes to hear Powderfinger.
B: They should’ve judged that a bit better.
E: Yeah, you think the techno people would’ve stayed.
D: Yeah, I was surprised they all left.
B: They didn’t really say there’d be a techno thing there.
E: The games in the Do-Tank – no-one really got anything for that.
C: Some of the younger kids really enjoyed it.
F: They needed more machines.
B: They needed to put in things like the air hockey table . . . really cheesy
things.
C: But they have those in all the Time Zones . . . Was the them really
cheesy?
D: I don’t know, it wasn’t clear.
C: I didn’t really get off on any of that (Freakshow) except for Luke’s
magic show. It was very funny, really good.
E: Mud arm wrestling had its moments. It was really cheap, but they
were having a good time and that was fun.
D: I asked a lot of people if they’d seen this sort of thing before, and a
lot of them said “No, never” – but they were really enjoying it.
C: When I first walked in and saw that big red light on this operating
table I thought this is fantastic theatre for people who don’t usually
experience it, but then I felt like the whole Freakshow let that down –
it wasn’t as good as its first visual impact.
382
F: As you walked in, the way they set it up, you were confronted by
everything and it was a nice impact, but after that and you walked
back, there was nothing to bring you back.
E: The Spy Lounge – I walked in and I was fully assaulted by loud blarey
noise and strobe. And there was a camera there – it was too much of
an assault.
F: I basically looked in and said “There’s no way I’m going in!”
C: Is that an age thing, though?
F: No, it’s a strobe thing.
C: ‘Coz I walked in and went “okay” but the young kids thought that was
great, that was the best thing.
F: There was no warning regarding the strobe light.
C: But it was pretty obvious there was a strobe.
A: . . . At 11 o’clock at night you end up with dirty feet (in the Access
Arts booth)
B: Maybe we’re too old for this sort of stuff.
C: It seemed like everyone under 18 was having a ball, and everyone over
18 was having a rotten time – the older crowd tend to be the ravers . .
. so maybe they should’ve had the bar next to the rave tent.
D: . . . Maybe if they’d had rides as well, something to keep it full and
bombard.
C: No-one was there for the theatre – if it’s a QPAT event shouldn’t it be
something about theatre? Shouldn’t there be more substance to the
theatrical elements? Even like what I was saying before – having video
screens for the bands.
A: When they were talking about Freakshow, I was expecting a lot more
bizarre performance art.
C: But that’s maybe because you’re a theatre student, it’s not that
bizarre, but a lot of other people found it really freaky.
383 D: A lot of people when you ask them what are you experiencing they’d
say “I can’t put it into words”.
C: Maybe a few dodgy ones and funny ones . . . like Luke’s but when they
were dodgy and didn’t mean to be . . . like the old guy with the beard . .
. no-one was listening . . . it’s not the “snap” kind of thing this age is
used to, it was for more sit down listen to what he’s on about – this
was a snap crowd.
. . . the thing that there was the biggest queue for was the photograph
tent and the strobe tent. I loved the “Desire” installation.
E: I said I hope there’s a performance here ‘coz otherwise it’s dull – I
was expecting a Freak.
C: Yeah, I was expecting a one-eyed woman!
F: Like we were saying before ‘coz with some people you didn’t know if
they were actors or real people.
C: With the cocktail lounge, what were you supposed to do with that?
F: ‘E’ really got in there to experience stuff, and that gave me as much
enjoyment as anything.
C: So they did try to involve you?
E: Yeah, but one of the actors was really drunk and that shocked me.
C: But as an actor, ‘E’, that’s very much easier for you to jump in, they
needed to draw other people in.
A: I looked at the actors and they gave the impression they didn’t want
you to come in.
C: Yes, it was all a bit arrogant . . . how the guy with the cobra – he was
completely naked except for his cobra – he was just vogueing – it
might’ve been good if it were a real snake . . . it was kind of arrogant
again, self indulgent (he performed on the boxing ring).
F: What was written on that sign on the boxing ring?
Group Blue Narcissus
C: Well, there you go, that’s why he was self indulgent.
384
D: With the other people, they didn’t know how to approach it and so
they went to what they were comfortable with.
E: I kept searching for something but I couldn’t find it.
F: I’m just really glad it was like that.
C: I found the older people were really negative and the younger people
were really impressed and perhaps the whole festival needed to focus
on the younger end of the age group ‘coz the 15 year olds thought
“This is so wild” ‘coz they can’t get into raves and this was a fantastic
experience but for the older group who can get into pubs and clubs,
there wasn’t that much for them.
F: Yeah, you’re after that next level of high and it wasn’t provided.
C: It kind of tried to and maybe that was the mistake ‘coz you either
have to provide it or forget it.
B: I found interviewing people really hard.
C: So did I
At this point the conversation turned to the nuts and bolts of interviewing, at which point I interacted with the group.
385 THEATRE TALKS
Session 2 with same group as in session one
Session held three weeks later
Ref: Nerida [A], BJ [B], Natasha [C], Sarah [D], Joel [E], Bill [F]
E: I was surprised how boring Powderfinger were. [Others agree].
F: Is that ‘coz you’re too old to appreciate them ‘coz they draw quite a
young crowd?
D: Really young!
C: All the young people I spoke to thought they were great.
B: It seemed like they’d gone to the bands and told them “We’ve got this
thing on” without telling them too much about it. When I look back at
it it seemed all the teenyboppers loved it.
F: But when you’re that age, all of that is pretty exciting.
A: Especially when you don’t see it that often.
E: I was expecting some kind of mingle between the Freakshow and the
bands.
D: Maybe they could do like “5 to Midnight” then “Midnight to 5”, like
two different groups, ‘coz there were two distinct age groups
happening.
C: That would be great, “5 to Midnight” then “Midnight to 5”.
B: What would you do for the “Midnight to 5”?
C: Just cater for the older age group.
E: Contact the Roxy.
C: The older crowd really liked the Do-Tank – you could make this bigger
and go later.
D: And they should’ve put more money into the theatre side ‘coz that
worked well. People were interested and if it had been a bit more . . .
F: Quality!
386
D: Yeah, developed, they would’ve gone to it.
C: That’s where the difference was, wasn’t it, between Stage X and any
other concert – was the Freakshow, that was the BIG difference and
yet it kind of didn’t happen there. It was like they needed to audition
the people or something – they had some really dodgy shows there.
B: But the bits that were good were really good, like the violin – the lad
with the violin was great.
C: There was some great stuff, the visuals were really good.
B: They just need to bring that out and if it’s dodgy, cut it – it’s not
worth having something if it’s dodgy.
A: Also, the Freakshow was also kind of packing itself down by 11 o’clock.
E: Yeah, it was gone.
D: And it did draw some people – that element and they were really
fascinated that that was there ‘coz you don’t get that at Livid or Big
Day Out, or you know TYP and they can interact with it.
B: It was obviously something that young people responded to and they
can then talk about it. It provided a vocabulary to talk about it – sort
of what happened at Stage X.
A: Even if they thought it was just “weird” it wasn’t like it was a joke.
But the older crowd just saw it as “odd”.
C: The older crowd saw it as a bad Livid. They didn’t view it as
something different, whereas if the Freakshow had been more
intense, or had more money spent on it or been of better quality, they
would’ve viewed it as something different, something separate.
There then ensues a discussion of what “Big Day Out” is
D: I wasn’t sure what you were going to get.
C: That will come.
D: I don’t think they should rest on the big name bands, I think they
should develop the theatre/artistic element, that’s what makes it
different.
387 C: But everyone came for Powderfinger; no-one came for the Freakshow.
B: But it’s something that will develop a lot more, and the Freakshow will
become another element that people go to see.
F: Where was it advertised?
Group JJJ.
E: Rave mags.
D: It was a slick advertising campaign.
A: Does it get promoted through schools?
E: All the schools got free tickets.
D: There needs to be a closer network of that. It does have to be
infiltrated through all the people who might be seeing it.
F: Considering how many people could’ve been there from an area the
size of Brisbane.
D: There were a lot of free tickets.
C: One girl we interviewed said the ad campaign was too slick, it didn’t
have that grungy Livid feel, it had too slick a feel.
E: It had a QTC feel.
C: That loses its grooviness.
A: There were no young people in the Freakshow. Why didn’t they use
school students and drama teachers to come up with something?
C: Interactive theatre would’ve been really good – like we said last time
some of the stuff was really self indulgent.
D: And so many of the young kids loved it, like they didn’t care that they
weren’t sure what it was about, it was just lights and pics and they
could take it or leave it and that was so good that they could just run
around . . . But it sort of fell flat, the Freakshow, it needed more
something.
F: I hate stuff made out of garbage bags.
C: I kind of like that if you do it well, you don’t have to spend lots of
money.
388
F: It’s not to do with lots of money, it’s if, as you said, it’s done well.
B: I think the buzz out of it is that they saw the possibilities of drama.
C: Do you think they would’ve recognised the Freakshow as theatre?
B: I don’t know but I think they would’ve recognised it as another
artistic genre.
C: I loved all those coloured bottles. We all agree it was kinda great the
Freakshow, but give it more money.
D: And push it more – keep going full ball, in your face.
F: About the care, were we supposed to go inside?
C: I think we were – I loved that car.
389 APPENDIX E – AUDIENCE RECEPTION STUDIES, FIVE TO
MIDNIGHT STAGE X, 2001
Qualitative information
218 people interviewed in total; 100 male, 118 female.
Age specification: 52 17 years and under
54 18-20 years
75 21-30 years
10 31-40 years
3 41 years
24 Did not disclose their age
Of people who specified a band as a key reason for their participation:
21 The John Butler Trio
14 Sonic Animation
10 Resin Dogs
6 28 Days
5 Spiderbait
Of people who cited their residency:
97 Brisbane
13 Sunshine Coast
8 International
8 Interstate
3 South Coast
Regionally: 7 Ipswich
2 Bli Bli
1 Toowoomba
390
1 Bundaberg
1 Hervey Bay
The majority of participants found out about the event from the Street
press, posters (most notably in train stations) or word of mouth.
Positive issues that were recurrent:
- The sense of location was noted by a lot of people, the sense of being
next to the river, and also in the city – this really impressed many
participants;
- The diversity of ages was seen as a really enjoyable situation by a
number of people
- The effectiveness of the “set up” was a common remark;
- The overall atmosphere/vibe/feel/edge was seen as really positive;
- The line up of bands was really popular;
- A number of people commented on the enjoyable sense of intimacy
inherent to “Five to Midnight” in comparison to other similar events like
Big Day Out and Livid;
- Several noted that it was value for money.
And in terms of the Shopping Mall:
- There were many comments about the mirror ball, and how much
participants loved it;
- The No Kissing Booth was also very popular (although people referred to
it as the “Kissing Booth”)
- Comments regarding the enjoyment of the inclusion of this “art work”
was almost unanimously positive, even if many found it “weird” and
“didn’t understand it”. For a number of people, it was an unexpected
bonus.
391 Negative issues that were recurrent:
- The security procedure with the drinks was annoying for a number of
participants;
- Toilets!;
- Several people thought there could have been more artwork and
Shopping Mall stuff;
- Lack of water really annoying;
- Sound quality considered inferior by some.
392
Audience Reception Studies transcripts for “5 to Midnight”, 6 December
2001
SUBJECT 1
2 UQ university students, 1 Male, 1 Female, approximately early 20s; male studying engineering and business, female studying law and computer science
Found out about event via posters around town and uni; didn’t come in ’99, had never heard of it before
“Pretty good so far.” Here for the bands, especially the John Butler Trio
SUBJECT 2
2 males, school students at Mt Maria College, Grade 12?
Heard about event via the street press. This is their first time; they think it’s okay. They find the Shopping Mall “weird but good”. Like the booths
SUBJECT 3
Male and female from Holland. First time in Australia. Both seem to be late
20s/early 30s. They were just walking past and thought they’d come in.
“It’s pretty great, very different from Holland, lots of beer and smoking marijuana”
“What does it mean?”
“It’s good without alcohol”
SUBJECT 4
Male and female from Melbourne, both at uni, approximately late teens/early
20s; male studying psychology, female studying architecture
Found out about event by walking past. They weren’t planning to stay in
Brisbane, they were going to Noosa but decided to stay because of “Five to
Midnight”
“It’s awesome; came to see John Butler”
393 “Haven’t had a chance to look around”
“Good. It’s not too crowded”
SUBJECT 5
Female and male, both approximately mid 20s; female sells paper, male is an engine builder. Saw the ad in “Time Off” and “Rave”. Haven’t been previously
“John Butler is very good”
“My first big concert. I’ve lost my concert virginity” [male says he came because he liked the bands]
Haven’t had a chance to look around yet. They weren’t expecting the art works, but feels it “adds to the culture”
“The Art in the containers is pretty good”
They like the idea that it’s developing the youth of Brisbane and their art
SUBJECT 6
2 female friends, both approx. early 20s, both photographers
Came because friends of their are exhibiting in the Shopping Mall
“The Shopping Mall is good. I’m surprised it’s worked so well, and so many people have stopped to look; I thought that people would just walk past, and I’m amazed that everyone has been so interactive with all the pieces”
“Good not to have just bands, good to have somewhere if you want somewhere else to hang out in the crowd”
They think it’s a good concept that works. This is their first time
“Good to have this [event] here. Good to have the routine cultural place just behind us. It was interval before and they were out on the balcony watching this”
SUBJECT 7
Female and male, both in their 30s; female studying, male is a waterproofing buildings manager
394
Found out about event via JJJ. This is their first time. They are here for the
John Butler Trio; they missed the group at Livid
Liked the Shopping Mall, especially the big mirror ball
Thought it was all about expression
Sometimes they found it hard to hear because of the stuff going on at the same time on two stages simultaneously
“Good to see everyone from young to old”
SUBJECT 8
2 males, early 20s; one a marine biologist, the other a graphic designer
A mate got them tickets. This is their first time
Here for John Butler, but liked Spiderbait
Didn’t spend much time at the Shopping Mall
Here for the music
“Put Spiderbait on earlier”
Found security procedure with drinks annoying
SUBJECT 9
Male and female, approx. late 30s/early 40s, from the Sunshine Coast
Here for Spiderbait, John Butler and 28 Days
The Shopping Mall is “not our cup of tea”
This is their first time
“I reckon it’s really good, close to everything”
“It’s good there’s not so many people as Livid”
SUBJECT 10
Female, approx. late teens, drama student at UQ, also works at QPAT. Her
first time
Here for the bands and fun and “the concept of getting this”
Loves the massive Mirror ball
395 Here for Sonic Animation
“It rocks, cool for young people. Don’t have it in November. Good to have it compact”
Likes the idea of different sections and areas
SUBJECT 11
3 Males, early to mid 20s, all tradesmen
Found out about even via the street press
Once has been before and liked it, and thought that this year’s event had a better set up, “nice and open”
Here for 28 Days and Sonic Animation
Not far to travel
“Just as good as Livid, just smaller, cheaper”
“It’s great. I love it”
Need more toilets
The Shopping Mall is “bizarre, but something to look at”
“Good sound”
Didn’t expect this many people
Good value for money
SUBJECT 12
2 females, 1 male, late teens, from Brisbane and Sunshine Coast, studying
Spanish and Business; Business; and IT and Business
Found out from Time Off and poster
Came to last event and liked it
Not so much stuff this year; would’ve liked more of it
Shopping Mall “Ok. Alright” Prefer the Shopping Mall stuff not so close because it clashes with the mainstage
Should promote it more to an underage audience, “It’s a real buzz”
396
SUBJECT 13
2 females, early 20s, students; one working part-time at Myer, both have children
Found out from “Planet X”
Here for bands, especially 28 Days
Shopping Mall is “cool, different, stuff you don’t see anywhere else. I like the
Kissing Booth and the big Mirror ball”
Alcohol too far away from bands
Need more toilets near the alcohol
SUBJECT 14
2 Females, 1 Male, from Brisbane Yaamba and the Sunshine Coast, late 20s; female working at Qld Museum, other female studying at Griffith, male a truck driver
Found out via Rave mags
Male was here in 1999 but hadn’t heard much about this event on the radio. He liked the bands in 1999
Here for John Butler Trio
’99 was better because male was really into those bands, but this time all of them only like John Butler and Resin Dogs
Haven’t looked at the Shopping Mall yet, but like the concept of the Shopping
Mall area because you can “chill out a bit”
Better when it’s on a Saturday because it’s hard when you’re working on Fridays
“It’s a good small outdoor event”
“The set up is unbelievable, it’s fantastic, next to the river, yahoos and beer drinkers in one section, and chill out in the other”
“Good to get young people out – they don’t get much opportunity to see bands and to mix with older groups”
“It’s nice to see young people having a good time”
397 SUBJECT 15
3 females, from Canterbury College, Grade 12
Heard about event via Stage X material
Here for Spiderbait and the John Butler Trio
Liked the Shopping Mall, especially the Mirror ball, David’s booth and the free money
Liked the set up
Bad sound quality
SUBJECT 16
2 males, 1 female, all working; a musician, an apprentice and a customer service manager
Here for the female’s 19th birthday
Heard about event in Rave
Here for Sonic Animation
The Shopping Mall “Good to just go for a walk up and down”
“I find up the front where the bands are a bit scary”
“Have more water vending machines, more water”
“Have more artwork”
“Have Fourex in the beer tent, not just VB”
SUBJECT 17
Female, mid 20s, works at ZZZ, and artsworker for Five to Midnight
Good to see government money going into what kids really want
Great event for kids to come to, especially different age groups
“I love it here in the heart of the city – we are part of the city and we have a right to do it in the city. I love the Disco ball and the dance tent”
Not as many people here as in 1999
“I like the dance classes put on here – it’s a bit like Woodford in this way”
“This should happen every year, rather than every second year”
398
“I dig the anti-consumerist bit”
“I love doing it”
SUBJECT 18
4 males, 3 in late 30s/early 40s and a 13 year old from Brisbane State High – the son of one of the older male; one a publican, one a roadie
Here to see Resin Dogs
“Bizarre stands, wild”
Great that it’s outdoors, on the river, lots of space
“I like the mix of people and events, the bar looks good”
A really good flow
“The critical thing is that it’s in the city and that’s great”
“Pretty good”
SUBJECT 19
Female from Brisbane, mid 20s, artists’ model
“It feels like it’s gonna be good”
SUBJECT 20
Female, 18 years
Found out via the Stage X poster
Likes the arty stuff – “a bonus. I wasn’t expecting it. It makes you think”
SUBJECT 21
1 female, 3 males, all aged 17 years from Brisbane
Found out through friends
“It’s a pretty good set up”
“It’s good being parallel to the river”
399 SUBJECT 22
Male, aged 17 years from Brisbane
Found out through postcards
Went to 1999 event
Night is just getting started
Finds Shopping Mall “pretty good”
“Good set up”
SUBJECT 23
5 females from Caboolture State High, Grade 12
Came in 1999 and saw Powderfinger
Wanted to come here drunk, but didn’t
The Shopping Mall is “pretty good”
SUBJECT 24
2 females from Brisbane, mid 20s
Found out via friends and flyers
“It’s good except for the toilets”
Love the bean bags
SUBJECT 25
2 females; one a designer for Five to Midnight
“All the bean bags have been nicked!”
Feel that this year is the best “It’s a better set up”
“It’s not advertised as an arts festival and so you come in and there’s all this stuff”
“It’s great most of the artists are young Brisbane people and it’s hard for them to get their work out there”
400
SUBJECT 26
2 females from Brisbane
Found out through a festival
Just been breakdancing
Love the bean bags and the free thongs
Love the Disco ball
“This is the best festival. It’s brilliant”
“I love the set up”
“This is awesome – we played Twister for 1½ hours and breakdancing”
“It’s so cheap, it’s good value”
“I’m glad 28 Days came”
SUBJECT 27
3 males, all aged 18 years, studying at university; engineering, science and arts
Found out through “Time Off”
“It’s getting better”
“The stage space is long and skinny”
Not enough toilets
The Shopping Mall – loved the Mirror ball
“We saw swing dance lessons”
Liked the thongs
Off to see the John Butler Trio
SUBJECT 28
2 males, aged 19
Found out through “Rave”
Finding it “good so far, we’re waiting for the bands”
The Shopping Mall is a “bit weird, but I like it”
“I like the vending machine, it’s cool”
401 SUBJECT 29
2 males, 1 female, all late teens; one male studying drama at USQ
“Pretty good, it’s different to 2 years ago, there wasn’t as much spectacle stuff”
“There’s a lot of cool art work”
SUBJECT 30
Female, early 20s, QUT student and working on Five to Midnight
Created one of the installations
Came in 1997 and 1999
“Cool set up”
“I like the surreal Shopping Mall”
“This time it’s more user friendly. It applies to different types of audiences”
SUBJECT 31
Female, Subject 30’s mother!, 40s, works as a music producer
“This is great and will encourage the arts scene in Brisbane. I’m impressed with what I see. Everyone should be proud. It’s exciting, everything’s happening”
SUBJECT 32
1 male, 3 females, 15 and 16 years from Brisbane
Found out through posters
“I got some paint”
In the Shopping Mall “we played with the work”
“I got a big letter”
SUBJECT 33
Male and female, both in their 20s, from Brisbane; female is a secretary
Found out through the newspaper and posters
402
First time – usually go to Livid, Arena and Big Day Out
“We’ve checked out the fairies dancing, the No Kissing Booth and the Mirror ball”
“I wasn’t expecting it” [referring to the Shopping Mall]
“It’s cool how they’ve set it up with bean bags. It’s pretty funky”
“A good vibe here, lots of good bands”
SUBJECT 34
Male, aged 34 years from Brisbane
Found out through public notices and newspapers
“It’s good. I’ve seen a few of the bands before but not for a long time. It’s good”
On the Shopping Mall “It’s pretty good, got a good edge to it – something different to what you usually see. You can write stuff and stick it on the wall”
“It’s a small venue and you can see bands much easier [than Livid]. It’s a good venue. I like the grass”
SUBJECT 35
Male, 18 years from Brisbane, having a year off
Here for Resin Dogs
“Pretty good so far. I didn’t know it was on – a friend told me about it”
The Shopping Mall is “creative”
SUBJECT 36
2 males, aged 18 years from Ipswich
Found out via the newspaper
Came for Resin Dogs
Came in a group
Think it’s “good”
403 Think the Shopping Mall is “good, different, alright” – liked the washing woman
“Can you take the stuff?”
SUBJECT 37
2 females, both from Brisbane, aged 19 and 20 years, both working
Found out from a billboard
Came here by bus and taxi
Here for the John Butler Trio
The Shopping Mall: “I like it, especially the telephone booth”
SUBJECT 38
2 females, from Brisbane, aged 15 and 16 years
Found out from train advertising
Parents drove the girls to the venue
“Love the bands”
Went into the dance hall and DJ area
SUBJECT 39
Male, aged 7 years from Brisbane
Found out “Time Off”
Here with Mum and Dad and sister
Likes the John Butler Trio
SUBJECT 40
Female, employee of QPAC
Came last time
“It’s fantastic”
Likes it better this time because there’s “more dance bands and Sonic
Animation”
404
SUBJECT 41
Male, aged 20 from Ipswich, a waiter
Friend got free tickets
This is his first time
He likes the bands
SUBJECT 42
Female
Heard about it through a friend who works at QPAC
Haven’t been before
Having a good time
Likes John Butler Trio
Came in a group
Got a lift
“I think they’ve set it up really well. I like the set up with bean bags and the
Twister thing. They’ve done a really good job and I’m having a good night”
SUBJECT 43
Female and male, both 18 years; female an Education student at UQ and male is an administration officer with Queensland Health
Just here together
“We came two years ago”
“A lotta security – we got patted down as we came in”
The Shopping Mall is “interesting. The Christmas tree with bags on, the consumerist message, the big docket on the wall”
Want to check out the main acts
SUBJECT 44
2 females, aged 19 years, studying law and journalism
Found out via posters, and Rave and Scene magazines
405 Got spare tickets from a friend
Love Resin Dogs and 28 Days “Every band here is good”
SUBJECT 45
Female, aged 21 years, student from Brisbane
Found out from a billboard
“Excellent festival, groovy. The bands are excellent”
SUBJECT 46
2 females, both studying in Sydney, both international students; one from
Mozambique, aged 34, the other aged 26
Found out from a friend
Atmosphere “good, but the music is too noisy and I’m not familiar with it”
SUBJECT 47
2 females, late teens
First time here
Just the two of them here
Came by public transport
Here for Spiderbait
Here since 7pm
“A cool set up. I wanted to sit on Santa’s lap”
SUBJECT 48
2 males from Brisbane; one aged 14 years and the other 30 years
Found out through friends
Came on public transport
Here since the beginning
“It’s pretty good . . . I like the mosh pit. I’m looking forward to dancing. I like
Sonic Animation”
406
“It’s okay”
The Shopping Mall: “I like the Robots in the dance tent and Tubby”
SUBJECT 49
Male and female, both aged 15 years
“Mum and Dad know someone here”
“It’s pretty exciting; it’s worth the money”
The Shopping Mall: “It’s out there. I like Tubby. It’s pretty good”
SUBJECT 50
Male
His sister is playing here
He drove here
“I’m having a fantastic time! It’s great, it’s not too big”
“The only stimulant I have is caffeine and to be in there and dancing is great”
“The Mirror ball is incredible”
SUBJECT 51
2 females, 2 males, all in their mid-20s
1 female has been before, for the others this is their first time
Found out via train station poster
Been there for half an hour
“It’s a great night”
“There’s a really good vibe”
“Not as many ravers, it’s good”
“It’s not as hot [in terms of temperature] as Big Day Out”
“Where’s some water?”
“The Shopping Mall is fantastic, the whole lot, I love the way it’s set out”
407 SUBJECT 52
2 females, aged 17 and 23 years from Brisbane; one is working, the other is taking time off
Found out from newspaper and street magazines
Drove in
The atmosphere is “in general good. There’s not many dickheads here”
“Not much to do if you’re not into the main bands”
The Shopping Mall is “cool to look around. It’d be nice if there were more of it, like markets? Bigger?”
SUBJECT 53
3 females from Brisbane, aged 17 and 18 years
Found out from the poster near Central Station
They dressed up “special for the night”
Here with three other friends
Love Sonic Animation
The Shopping Mall is “pretty good, like the Mirror ball”
SUBJECT 54
2 males, 1 female, from Brisbane, aged 16 and 17 years
One male’s mother works at QPAC
Also heard about it from magazines
They just got here
“I love it because it’s my city”
The Shopping Mall is “pretty cool”. Like the Mirror ball
“Just here to hang out”
Wouldn’t have come if they had to pay
“It’s more visual than other places [ie. Big Day Out] and less exhausting”
408
SUBJECT 55
Female, 18 years from Brisbane
Read about this event
Went to 1999 event
Came on the train
Here because of the bands and the price
Came with another friend
“Run out of water? I think that’s illegal”
“I like the atmosphere and all the exhibits and the bands are really good – John
Butler and Sonic Animation”
The Shopping Mall is “good. I don’t know that I really understand it all but I like the photography one where you can draw all the photos”
SUBJECT 56
2 males, both 29 years from Brisbane
Tickets from friends in QPAT
Found out through JJJ and Rave
Hadn’t been to the last one
Got here on the train
Here since 7pm
Here for Spiderbait and will probably go to the Valley later on
“So far, so good”
“I like how they’ve themed it a bit to look at, and not just a gig”
The Shopping Mall: “The containers, they’re good to have a look. I didn’t understand some of them but that doesn’t really matter. I still liked it alright”
SUBJECT 57
Male, early 30s
Found out through friends and Rave, and signs
Here for first time
409 Came via taxi
Here for Sonic Animation
“I’m having a pretty good time so far”
“Fluffy dudes running around!”
The Shopping Mall: “It was nice walking in through that”
SUBJECT 58
2 females, late teens, one performing at the event
Found out through friends and posters at the station
“Loved the No Kissing Booth because I needed a good massage and all I had to do was tell a good story and do a song and a dance”
“I didn’t realise you could steal a lot of things and then the money – that was their whole budget. On the whole it’s cool”
“People were stealing $5 and it was part of the show”
“I’m really excited about Twister in the middle there”
SUBJECT 59
2 females, 2 males, aged 19, 20, 21 and 25 years, all from Brisbane
Found out from one person’s father who is coming, also from friends and Rave
“So far it’s pretty flat but I’m expecting it to pick up”
The Shopping Mall: “Doesn’t have a point. We didn’t really look but just walked past them”
SUBJECT 60
3 females, ages 19, 21 and 24 years from Brisbane
Had artists passes
“It’s good, pretty impressed. This art in our faces, it’s fun. We’ve drawn art and then there was that man with the signs and pop gun”
“A wide variety of art”
“Maybe a bit more film and a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek”
410
SUBJECT 61
Male, aged 19 years from Brisbane
“It’s okay. I came by myself and my sister. If I had a few friends with me it’d be better”
“I like the different things about it like the bean bags and the booths”
“It’s just a little bit different”
The Shopping Mall: “It was pretty good. I didn’t try all of them, I tried a few like that Beef one”
SUBJECT 62
2 males, aged 16 years
Came in a group of five
Came on the train
Their first time
Here for Sonic Animation
“It’s not a big turn out, but it should get good tonight”
The Shopping Mall: “It’s good – I like the Mirror ball. I like the set up of the dance bit, that was pretty sick. People were going off there”
SUBJECT 63
Female and male, aged 15 and 16 from Redbank
Found out from sign at station – “It looked cool”
Their first time
Male came with his sister
Here for Resin Dogs
The Shopping Mall: “It’s pretty cool. [Overall] it’s pretty good, pretty funky”
“It’s good ‘coz there’s all ages – anyone can be here”
SUBJECT 64
411 Male and female, 31 and 20 years; female is a student, male is an actor and volunteer with JJJ
Found out from JJJ and “it’s all over the paper”
“I didn’t realise there was a 97 and 99 event”
“I’m used to these events, there’s some really good acts on tonight like John
Butler. Other than that it’s worthwhile ‘coz I can actually work at a station and freebies like this [backstage pass] to get in”
“I’m loving it. There’s heaps to see”
SUBJECT 65
Female and male, aged 24 and 26 from the Gold Coast
Drove here
“We saw Resin Dogs a few nights ago and heard about it [this event] there”
“It’s well set up. The bean bags are a nice touch – the grass, the palm trees, of course, there’ll never be enough to go around – a few extra things”
“Being on the river’s good”
“Maybe use tags on the arms ‘coz I couldn’t go out to meet someone”
“And equal talent in the DJ tent – it’s a little bit weak”
SUBJECT 66
Female, 20 years from Brisbane
Found out because her sister helped organise it and through the newspaper, and from previous years and on the radio
“My friend’s got a piece of artwork here and she told me to come along”
Came with friends
Here for the John Butler Trio and 28 Days
“I’m really liking the artwork – all those crates are pretty cool and just all the little things”
“I grabbed the thongs – it’s good to decorate to make it different. The food court area’s pretty cool. It’s not just the stage and people. And being in the
412
city is pretty cool. I would’ve liked to have seen more artwork. It’s not just music, it’s artwork; two things combined. We got here early so we could check it all out before the bands started”
SUBJECT 67
Male, late 20s, postgraduate and artsworker
Found out via friends performing here
First time attending but knew of previous events
“It’s been really good. I’ve especially enjoyed all the art installation. The chance to see the art installations and people in and around the place”
”It’s really good to see things”
Not here for any particular bands
SUBJECT 68
Male and female both from Brisbane and both working in sales
Found out via friends and Rave
Male been to 1999 event
“The food’s good”
Overall: “It’s pretty cool”
SUBJECT 69
5 males, aged between 15 and 17 years; 2 females aged 15 and 16 years
Here for Sonic Animation and Resin Dogs
“I liked the breakdancing and hot chicks!”
Liked the dance tent
The Shopping Mall: “Cool, pretty good”
SUBJECT 70
2 males, school students, 17 years
Got free tickets
413 Got here by bus
Here with another male friend
Here for the bands
SUBJECT 71
Male, 30 years from the Gold Coast, works in the health industry
Found out through friends
Drove here
“The lovely palm trees, they’re very nice and also the people with backstage passes reminds me of schoolies, very schoolies”
“I thought there’d be a lot more younger people here and there seem a lot older crowd”
SUBJECT 72
Female aged 19 years, and 2 males aged 19 and 20 from Brisbane
Found out from seeing a flyer in the gutter! And from friends
“It’s really cool”
“It’s fun”
The Shopping Mall: “It’s funky”
“In there the dolls don’t have any bodies – arms, legs, but no bodies”
“It’s a bit disturbing, someone had to collect all of those, that’s the problem”
SUBJECT 73
Male, aged 30, works for the airlines
Found out by getting ticket from a friend of a friend
“I wish when I was a lad that we had things like this. We had to make out own
BMX tracks”
414
SUBJECT 74
2 males from Bli Bli, early 20s; one working for a security screen company, the other undertaking an apprenticeship for a glassworks company
Here with one girlfriend
One goes to “this kind of thing” a lot
Here for Sonic Animation
“I like the divided venue”
“It caters for a lot of people. Lots of separate areas”
“At Livid they were noising out each other – some of the techno rooms. It was a bit of a pain”
“This has worked out alright”
“They need to play faster music in there. I can’t dance to this”
The Shopping Mall: “You get a flavour, a feeling. Saw the dancing girls and the
No Kissing shed”
SUBJECT 75
Female, early 30s from Brisbane, arts administrator
Found out through friend at QPAC
“It’s excellent. There’s some really good installations. I like how it’s set out – and it’s sort of a bit slick. It’s not like your usual sort of outdoor event like
Livid and Big Day Out where it’s a bit crusty. This is really nice in the forecourt so it’s a bit slick, a bit swanky. For me, too, being a bit older”
“I like Resin Dogs and I know one of the DJs”
SUBJECT 76
Female, 23 years from Bundaberg, public servant
Found out through a friend
Her first time
“It’s pretty good. A really good atmosphere. I really like all the extra things they’ve got here tonight. It’s just a good atmosphere, that they’ve got here –
415 although that stuff down there is a bit weird (ie. Shopping Mall) – I don’t know why that’s here. But it’s really good. I really enjoyed being in the Beer Garden, and it’s lovely, it really was – and the bands are really good and in the open air it’s not so hot and stuffy, like some concerts can be, so it’s really good”
SUBJECT 77
Female and male from Samford, ages undisclosed
Here for 28 Days
“It’s good”
The Shopping Mall: “Adds a bit of atmosphere”
SUBJECT 78
3 females, ages 15-16 years, from Beaudesert
Came to 1999 event
Just the three here together
Here for the John Butler Trio
Love the free stuff
“Love the Mirror ball and free money”
SUBJECT 79
Male, 26 years from Brisbane, undertaking PhD
Found out from street press
His first time
Got free tickets
“It’s really good, shame it’s a bit wet. I’ve not seen this sort of thing before”
SUBJECT 80
Female and male, both 50s, and another female 20s. Older couple are market researcher and engineer, young female is an artist. All from Brisbane
416
Older couple: “I like to come and see what people are doing and what they’re experimenting with. It’s interesting. Personally I can’t stand the noise level but it’s interesting. I’m glad I came”
“I’m not gonna last ‘til Midnight! It’s too loud and it’s unnecessary. The quality of the music needs to be higher”
Younger female: “I think it’s great in terms of interaction with the public and
younger people. One of the only places younger people can interact with art. I
think it’s great. It’s doing really well”
SUBJECT 81
2 females, aged 24 and 18, 1 male aged 17. Females are scuba instructors at
Hervey Bay, and student
Came with more friends
“I think it’s really good – cool”
“I like the scenery”
The Shopping Mall: “Okay, but too spun out for me. Good set up, the stall that
sells things”
SUBJECT 82
2 males, aged 24 and 25, 1 female aged 21, all from Brisbane
First time
“Good stuff – I like all the set ups”
“Fantastic”
“We go to all the festivals”
“Bring back the Warped Tour – punk music”
They like the live music
SUBJECT 83
2 males, aged 20 and 21 years from the United States, both students at UQ
Here for the John Butler Trio
417 “I think it’s pretty cool. I like all the artwork. I like the bands. But it’s a little bit weird”
“I don’t know all the bands, but I like them anyway”
SUBJECT 84
Male, aged 30 years
Came with friends
“I love it. I’ve been dying to come to a place like this – Southbank for a while.
I haven’t been here since Expo because it’s not been my scene”
The Shopping Mall: “I walked through them, very interesting. The Robot caught my eye the most. I love that it’s in Brisbane. It’s well lit, great facilities. I love it – hope Lord Mayor Jim allows a few more to happen”
SUBJECT 85
2 females, aged 21 years from Israel
“We wanted to hear Australian music”
The Shopping Mall: “We don’t know what it is – it’s strange but looked nice”
SUBJECT 86
2 females, aged 23 and 24 years, male aged 24 years, all from the Sunshine
Coast
Came with more friends
Their first time
Like all the bands
The Shopping Mall: “It’s good having it here, good having it on the water”
SUBJECT 87
2 males, aged 26 and 30 years from Brisbane
Found out from friends and Rave
“Got here a bit late, but it’s good”
418
The Shopping Mall: “Really good, like the Mirror ball. Love the vocal acts – I know them all”
SUBJECT 88
Male, 27 years, a plasterer
Found out from Rave
First time
Here with friend
Only been here an hour
“Pretty cool. I just saw Resin Dogs, that’s who I came for and so I’m happy”
SUBJECT 89
5 females, 20-21 years, all just finished at Newcastle University
Just were walking past and saw the event and decided to come in
“It’s a beautiful setting”
Like the John Butler Trio
“I like the mixture of everything”
“A bit annoying that you’ve got to get your alcohol in there – I can understand
why”
The Shopping Mall: “Weird, we don’t really understand, we like the Mirror ball,
but we don’t get the ‘Eat More Meat’”
SUBJECT 90
2 females, aged 25 years, from Brisbane; a musician and an events manager
Found out through a friend
One came in 1999, the other in 1997 . . . “It was great”
Drove in
“It’s really good to see this in Brisbane. The bar’s a bit mushy but that
happens everywhere”
Lack of water a problem
419 The Shopping Mall: “Different. Do they get paid to do it? It’s nice to see this sort of thing in Australia”
SUBJECT 91
Male, 30s, electrician, female, 30s, union worker
Found out through the newspaper
First time
Here for the bands and the good price
“The bar’s not working – too busy”
“It’s too small an area”
“I like the range in ages – from 9-10 up ‘til big kids”
The Shopping Mall: “Should have more of it!”
“That’s actually really good”
SUBJECT 92
3 females, 18 years from Brisbane
One of their fathers gave them the tickets – he got freebies because he donated the bean bags
“It’s great – we saw Sonic Animation. John Butler, that was really good”
“We enjoyed dancing [at the disco]”
The Shopping Mall: “Liked the Kissing Booth”
“The art forms are good; it makes it”
“Interesting having all different rooms around and stuff”
SUBJECT 93
2 males, 18 and 19 years; one working full-time
Found out through the street press and JJJ
Here for Resin Dogs
“Good overall impression”
The Shopping Mall: “Love the Disco ball”
420
SUBJECT 94
2 males, aged 35 and 22 years; a Community Arts worker and a Visual Artist
Both helped out and got free passes
“Wild and crazy so far; it looks great”
“It’s a bit loud for me ‘coz I’m a bit old!”
“Love the installations – variety, lots of variety, nothing too serious”
Not here for the bands
SUBJECT 95
Male, late teens, student
Found out from magazines and a friend
First time
Likes the set up and the line up of bands
Here for the bands, especially Sonic Animation
“There needs to be more water”
“Overall, it’s good”
The Shopping Mall: “Pretty interesting. There’s some pretty cool stuff in there”
SUBJECT 96
Female, 22 years, works at QPAC part-time and studies Drama and Education at uni.
Got free tickets and saw it advertised
Here with her boyfriend
Here for the John Butler Trio
Her friend is in the Think Tank
“It does have a good vibe and lots of nice people, lots of young people. It has a really good energy and it makes me excited about the other festivals that are happening”
421 The Shopping Mall: “I was really curious about the Kissing Tent. And some of them seem to be empty. I think I’ll go back and have a look”
SUBJECT 97
2 males, aged 29 and 21 years; a painter and sculptor, and a musician
Involved with the Techno Tent
Both involved with one of the installations
“I’ve come along to watch people enjoy it”
The Shopping Mall: “It’s good. I really like the big Disco ball”
SUBJECT 98
Female, 16 years from Ipswich
Found out because an organiser came to the school for advice [ie. a consultancy with the target audience] and then sent free tickets
Was meant to do some stuff for the Scrapbook but didn’t
First time
“It’s a nice blend. Bit of a mixed bag. The sound quality’s a bit dodgy. I like all the artists’ stuff. Should have more of this, it’s a good medium”
“I think a good thing about this festival is a lot of people are encouraged to talk to each other. It’s a lot more intimate – could be with the originality element. It’s a lot of variety and different areas, you’re more likely to fun into different people”
SUBJECT 99
Female, 25 years
Saw notice at uni calling for performers
“I think a lot of people have come to see the bands and everything is secondary to that. But everyone’s experiencing everything. It’s good to expose people to different art as well as the bands”
“I think it’s good – it’s something accessible”
422
“The stage is very slippery, so we kept slipping over”
SUBJECT 100
Female, 20 years from Brisbane
Found out through a friend
First time
“It’s okay, I’m a bit off it – I don’t reckon the vibe’s that good. I like the venue, I just think it’s a strange crowd”
The Shopping Mall: “I like that – it’s interesting. It’s a good idea, I like it, I just don’t think it’s that fabulous”
SUBJECT 101
Male and female, both mid-20s
Found out from work
“Looks pretty good so far. It’s quite creative – pretty impressed with the amount of effort. There’s a lot of work for a one night gig. There’s a lot of work gone into it. The extra signs”
“Great to see a lot of young people come out”
SUBJECT 102
Female and male, aged 21 years from Brisbane
Both work at QPAC
“Not a bad turn out. A nice crowd – nice and small, and all in a good mood”
The Shopping Mall: “I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve been into the bar, mainstage and the hot dog place”
“Yeah, it’s cool [the Shopping Mall]; it’s a good atmosphere”
SUBJECT 103
2 females, aged 20 and 15 years from Ipswich
Found out from the internet
423 Their first time
“It’s really good”
“You don’t wanna dance, but everyone around you is dancing so you just go for it. It’s a good set up”
The Shopping Mall: “Pretty good, pretty funny”
SUBJECT 104
2 females, aged 18 and 20 years; one unemployed, the other working part-time, both from Brisbane
Found out from a friend
Just the two of them here tonight
Here for the John Butler Trio and Sonic Animation
“Pretty good general vibe – laid back, funny, mellow, groovy”
“Lots of good acts”
“Totally different [to Livid, Big Day Out], all the acts here are local and it’s a much smaller crowd so it’s not as exciting but it’s still cool. Overall I’d have to say I prefer things like Big Day Out and Livid.”
“And there’s a price difference. It doesn’t go for as along as Big Day Out, but it’s still pretty good”
SUBJECT 105
2 males, aged unspecified, 1 female, 21 years; female is a pharmacy assistant
Found out from friends and newspaper
Here with 10 friends
Came on trains and taxi
They like Sonic Animation and the John Butler Trio
They like the dancing
“It’s good, good bands, good music, good people; it’s rocking”
“Lots more atmosphere here than Big Day Out”
“Awesome. What Brisbane needs”
424
The main attraction of the night: “The atmosphere”
SUBJECT 106
3 females, 1 male, all aged 16 years, all from St Peter’s School
Found out through friends
Came in a group of about 15
Came on the train
“It’s awesome, so good”
“Love the atmosphere”
“Everything’s really good”
The Shopping Mall: “Really different, really interesting. Love the Disco ball”
[218 people interviewed]
425
426
APPENDIX F – PUBLICATIONS (THAT HAVE COME OUT OF THIS
PHD)
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