During the final hours of my stay in Montreal last weekend, I was invited to sit in on a new symposium immediately preceding MUTEK to discuss various issues surrounding the development and production of modern day festivals, both electronic and otherwise. Produced under the aegis of the International Cities of Advanced Sound (ICAS), a network of more than 30 major music and arts festivals around the world, MUTEK_Lab offered panels, keynotes, and workshops on topics such as "The Rise of Creative Cities" and "Defining the Creative Economy."
The panel I saw, "Festivals as Creative Practice," offered both practical insight and tempered idealism amidst the stark new reality of the global economy. MUTEK's Patti Schmidt said that she insists on referring to the festival as a "narrative experience" and ticket buyers as "festival-goers," emphasizing the interactivity between musician and audience that has become part-and-parcel of the modern-day festival. Peter Burton, of Montreal's Suoni Per Il Popolo festival (which starts next week) spoke about the need for alternative revenue sources outside of public funding and corporate sponsorship. (Suoni has both Casa del Popolo and La Sala Rossa to help amortize costs.) Amalie Roberts, from Manchester's Future Everything Festival, spoke of the need to cast as wide a net as possible, going beyond electronic music to include art, literature, and new music from folks like Steve Reich. And Stuart Brown, who produces live events for the British Film Institute, sounded a when he spoke of the "special energy" that surrounds festivals. "At festivals, people collaborate, do business, fall in love. Whenever I go to a festival now, I always have a bunch of meetings scheduled in advance, but its the people you bump into when you're all fucked up at 3 in the morning that you end up hatching some crazy plan with that usually ends up working out." Freelance writer Andy Battaglia, who helps produce the NYC edition of Unsound, moderated.
On my way out, I managed to introduce myself to all five of them: all were incredibly warm and courteous, even going so far as to invite me to their own festivals and continue the conversation after MUTEK. Times might be tough for festivals these days, but there's no doubt that the spirit of collaboration is stronger than ever. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?