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A recent article in Melbourne's Age speculated on how long the present plethora of summertime rock festivals could survive. This year, there's been Big Day Out, Summersault, Byron Bay and of course Brisbane's own Livid Festival, now entering into its tenth year. But can Livid be lumped so easily into the pot of big-naming, big-claiming rock festivals, or does it offer, as its promoters argue, something more?
Livid, which began on a university campus in 1987, is defined in media releases as a celebration of the ‘underbelly' of youth culture. It is, as the claim goes, 'not just a rock concert' but an opportunity for other art forms, particularly performance and visual arts, to be exposed to an audience the size of which is beyond artists' wildest dreams.
The 1995 Livid Festival 'alternative to the alternative' line-up included (amongst others) Sidetrack Performance Group, Fractal Theatre, Craig Walsh and Jeremy Hynes, Contact Youth Theatre, George Pinn, Kino Ruin and Elise Goodrich. With a mixture of installation, performance and sound-and- light pieces, these artists attempted to find a place for their work in the midst of a crowd of 16,000-plus punters.
What struck me most in watching what, on the whole, was the failure of this attempt, was the question 'why bother?'. In the age of Cats and Les Miserables, has Livid become just another spectacle attempting to outdo itself year after year by dint of size and numbers, and its multi-arts emphasis a mere gimmick? If Livid is 'actively exploring and constructing our cultural production', how are the art forms other than music accorded a place in this endeavour?
The problem lies, for me, in the unresolved status of... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline