The 8th Festival of Pacific Arts and the Biennale d'Art Contemporain, Noumea-Pacifique 2000
As the November issue of New Caledonia's political broadsheet, Le Chien bleu, went to print it reported that The 8th Festival of Pacific Arts was disorganised and that the organisers had been 'besieged' by complaints. On my first day at the festival I heard rumours that the Palau delegation was sleeping on the floor, that there was little food for the performers and that some members of the Aotearoa/New Zealand Delegation were unable to perform due to a mysterious case of food poisoning. Le Chien Bleu expressed concern that this would reflect poorly on New Caledonia, and midway through the second week it seemed that absolutely everybody was talking about 'le scandale'.
Ultimately, the logistical difficulties of managing an ambitious festival such as this in a small country without the arts infrastructures to which we are accustomed , did not reflect poorly on New Caledonia. While the organisers, who seemed ill prepared for their own success, earnestly attempted to solve the problems, the Festival took on a life of its own. The local peoples had opened their arms and their hearts to the thousands of visitors who had invaded their country and, as a result, from a visitor's point of view New Caledonia looked very good indeed.
The Festival of Pacific Arts is a four yearly event which affords the Indigenous peoples of Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia and Australia an opportunity to meet, exchange ideas and importantly, to learn about each other's diverse cultures. For the year 2000 the Festival was subtitled 'Words of Yesterday, Words of Today, Words of Tomorrow', in an attempt to focus on the maintenance, development and reinterpretation of cultures which without exception continue to suffer... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline