It’s one of the few festivals that has retained its small-time community feel. It’s almost guaranteed to be free of drunk, southern-cross-tattooed festival fuckwits. It’s definitely guaranteed to be 100% carbon-neutral and sustainable.
And now Peats Ridge Festival, nested in its usual lush valley an hour north of Sydney, has announced this year’s arts and culture bill.
The usual cast members are present, including the Derivan fluorescent tunnel. The focus on interactive, bold on-site installations remains too.
Music Feeds picks are the slate of green art projects, live spoken word smack-down Caravan Slam, and the new guerrilla projections program. Punk Monk Propaganda, who you may remember from such indie gigs as Wormwood, are turning the projector over to the audience by inviting people to bring along videos of themselves and their friends leading up to and during the festival, and incorporating the results into a glorious collective projection project.
Native Resolution will be taking to the grassy lanes of Peats Ridge in a golf cart wired for light. Mobile projections will illuminate structures and objects. Any surface could get a temporary paint job of animated light.
The Caravan Poetry Slam will bring together around 20 local poets, a panel of judges, and a room full of what they hope to be “open hearts instead of roses, open minds instead of rotten tomatoes.” It’s open to everyone to participate in.
Solas is an interactive exhibition of light and sonic sculptures powered by a solar panel, a wind turbine and a bike hooked up to the installation’s generator. It will be built throughout the festival. As daylight fades, the sculptures illuminate the space, providing festival revelers with a local interactive, green-powered light & sound encounter.
And of course, the NYE masquerade ball of glitter-fuelled revelry makes a return to the festival’s program.
Peats Ridge 2011
Sustainable Arts and Music Festival
Glenworth Valley
29th December – 1st January
