Beep Generation / Futurevisual / EVNTS / Exhibition / Conference / Participate
Director's Overview
Drew Hemment, Futuresonic's founder and festival director
April 2007
Futuresonic 2007 is a celebration of outsider culture linking 1967 and 2007. A coming together of pioneers and mavericks with a healthy disregard for boundaries. And a mix of 21st century 'happenings' and events which transform the city into a space of experimentation, freeing urban space, making it strange.
In 2006, Futuresonic's 10th anniversary year, the festival grew in scale. This year it has bloomed, with the strongest and boldest programme to date.
In the year Futuresonic returns to its first Manchester home, Contact, it has also spread and infiltrated throughout the city. The central exhibition of Futuresonic 2007 takes place in Manchester Arndale, Manchester's main central shopping centre, with an exhibition of major, world premier artworks, after which you will never look at a shopping centre the same again.
If you ever wondered what happened to the musical legacy of 1987, you can find it in Music For The Beep Generation. The facelessness of electronica has pitch shifted into today's diverse and vibrant live music scene. The colours have changed, but the spirit remains the same: outsider, uncompromising, visionary.
Twenty years on from the cultural revolution of 1987, Futuresonic has looked back to the creative foment of an earlier generation. 1967 was a seminal year, and early in that year a series of events - UFO Club, 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, Games For May - created a template which made events like Futuresonic possible. Like those early events, Futuresonic has been put together painstakingly by hand, artist-led, built by the love and the passion of the people involved. Futuresonic 2007 brings the seminal UFO Club back to life, not frozen in amber, but with the main players from the 1960's collaborating with the bright young things of today.
"I look forward to finding out what today's experimenters are producing at Futuresonic, mercilessly plundering the past and the present to produce the future."
Hoppy Hopkins, UFO Club Co-founder
At Futuresonic you can also see how 2007 is shaping up to be another seminal year. In 20 years people will look back and view open source culture as the defining moment of our age. Now is the time that the mantra of 'free and open source' is migrating from software into ever more spheres of life. This is a part of a bigger shift, one that is not just about technology, the internet etc, but is also related to those seismic transitions seen in 1967, or in 1977 with punk and DIY publishing. Nowhere is this more so than in Brazil, where a grass roots open source movement is sweeping across the country like wild fire and captivating the world's imagination. Futuresonic has invited the leading figures in this movement to Manchester, and is supporting an initiative to establish the first 'Ponto de Cultura' (cultural hotspot) outside Brazil in Manchester.
Since 2005 Futuresonic has had an 'open source' festival strand, EVNTS, which enables artist groups and event organisers to stage independent events within the festival. Since 2005 it has become more and more important to Futuresonic, growing into a community of people who each year return to give the festival an extra edge.
The Social Technologies Summit, the 'ideas strand' of Futuresonic, has become a stage for important international debates. This year sees the beginning of a partnership between Futuresonic and Imagination@Lancaster, a new interdisciplinary research institute at Lancaster University. The Use Your Imagination event will introduce artists to scientists and engineers, with the aim of new collaborative projects being born, that can later be presented at Futuresonic or other events around the world.
Futuresonic is a unique meeting point for different people and different worlds, a place where you can encounter people you would never otherwise meet. We believe that any festival can be judged by its haircuts. Where else other than Futuresonic can you find everything from fashion haircuts to geeky beards, and all shades, shapes and sizes in between.
Futuresonic is a place to play, and have fun. It is also a place to stop and think. Since 2006 Futuresonic has been involved in a pioneering collaboration with the Manchester Tyndall Centre, one of the world's leading climate change research centres, and Creative Concern. We don't pretend to be the cleanest festival in the world. The first step is to acknowledge we are carbon addicts. Then we can work together to try to do something about it.
This is a new year for us in many ways. A new creative, non-profit company, FutureEverything, has been set up to run the festival. Arts Council England has made us a Regularly Funded Organisation, with a three year commitment to support the festival. And the team behind the festival has matured and grown. My thanks to the best festival team in the world!