day 2 was the first ‘real’ day for me. from a performer/artist point of view. i got amongst it. but i still got to check out a few things happening at the festival.
I spent a large chunk of the day performing, or catching up on little tasks. I popped in to check out the China Club Arts Hub – a fluid series of spaces, with open, workshops areas, a great kitchen that serves crepes (including their specialty – the date crepe, with apple). I went to see Matt Rochford’s alarm clock extravaganza – a series of clock radio alarms, mostly set to the same time (give or take the random one or two), which were set to explode at midday on Saturday.
I did get to see an amazing performance – my personal highlight of the festival thus far: Ensemble Offspring, Pimmon and a performance of the Stockhausen piece: Kontakte. Pimmon is an electronic artist and academic who produced some beautiful soundscapes while offspring ensemble make improvised syncopated works. their collaboration was a perfect mixture between the two methods – a great reverb/electro distortion and collage.
The work of Karlheinz Stockhausen is a recent discovery for me, but what a discovery! And this performance was a combination of acoustic instruments, performed by Bernadette Balkus and Claire Edwardes and electronic parts by the fantastic sound engineer, Bob Scott.
As well as a great performance, the amazing aspect was the fact that the two principal performers on stage were both women. Stockhausen is the kinda guy that all the boys love and it’s not often that you see the ladies up there. Well, I was pretty excited anyway.
I did have plans to see Suzanne Grae and the Katies – great band from Melbourne that i keep on missing, but the line-up was mental and they finished before i could get there. sad face.