The Art of Music, Mud and Mass Madness!

The brief: make art for 17,500 people in a seething muddy forest, brimming with unabated frivolity and crankin live music.

In the contemplative aftermath of the weekends Splendour In The Grass, this brief holds a myriad of challenges that are at once inspiring and humbling.

So the question is: how is one to approach this challenge?

The act of answering that particular question has lead me to consider the primal workings of my practice and how I fundamentally approach work. Although this is an ongoing journey that will continue to evolve until death, my current thinking on this subject revolves first and foremost around the experience of the spectator / audience.

So how does this apply to making work for Splendour In The Grass?

Well – my thinking at the moment is that effective art in the context of the festival needs to exist and evolve in the hands of the 17,500 festival goers. It cannot be separated from the punters and held up as ‘Art’ with a capital ‘A’ – but rather needs be thrown into the hands of the festival peeps, to be manipulated and re-appropriated, destroyed and re-created. The work needs to be owned by the festival goers in a way that it can evolve magically in their hands in ways that it would be impossible to predict.

And so what does all this crap mean? How is this going to be enacted? Well luckily we have another 1.5 weeks to discover…

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