ACFM Trip 36: Festivals

Novara Media

Society & Culture, Philosophy, News, Politics

4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2023

⏱️ 129 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Festivals. The perfect embodiment of the ACFM aesthetic, and even social politics… or are they? As the season comes to a close, Nadia, Jem and Keir ask themselves what festivals are really about. Is it music? Camping? The breakdown of everyday hierachies? Or is it just 20,000 people standing in a field?

With help from Bakhtin’s concept of the “carnivalesque” and Bataille’s “excess”, the gang discuss hippies and punks, counterculture and commerce, and the role of Glastonbury in the national imagination. Music under discussion comes from Banco De Gaia, Hawkwind, The Magic Mushroom Band and more patchouli-scented wanderers.

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Music: David Bowie – ‘Memory of a Free Festival’ / Pulp – ‘Sorted For E’s and Wizz’ / Seize The Day – ‘With My Hammer I Break The Chains’ / Hawkwind – ‘Silver Machine’ / The Magic Mushroom Band – ‘Revolution’ / Ozric Tentacles – ‘Dissolution (The Clouds Disperse)’ / Culture Shock – ‘Stonehenge’ / Autechre – ‘Flutter’ / Banco De Gaia – Excerpt from Deep Live

TV: Festivals Britannia (BBC)

Books & articles: Mikhail Bakhtin – Rabelais and His World / Jeremy Gilbert & Ewan Pearson – Discographies: Dance Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound / Georges Bataille – The Accursed Share / Frederic Jameson – Archaeologies of the Future / Penny Rimbaud / The Last of the Hippies

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to ACFM, the home of the weird left.
0:24.2	My name is Kea Milben and I'm joined by my very dear friends, Nadia Eidl.
0:30.2	Hello.
0:31.2	And Jeremy Gilbert.
0:32.2	Hello.
0:33.2	And this episode, this trip, we're discussing the seasonal topic of festivals.
0:40.2	So, why are we talking about festivals more than just because it's the summer?
0:45.2	Well, I think it's partly because it's the summer.
0:48.2	I mean, we're partly talking about festivals because it's the summer, but also because
0:52.2	this is one of the first summers. I mean, maybe, you know, 2022 a little bit, but there's the return of the festivals in terms of people being able to go to them after the pandemic, etc.
1:04.2	But also, there's all these really interesting things about UK festivals, like where they sit in the imaginary and how they function and also the kind of people that they make us.
1:13.2	So, those are some of the very sort of little reasons why I'm interested in festivals.
1:18.2	We'll get into some of the big questions later.
1:20.2	Notorious festival, hey, to Jeremy Gilbert, what have you got to say for yourself?
1:25.2	Well, it's always a fascinating topic because clearly, like on paper, the festival, the music festival ought to be the cultural form, which like expresses the ACFM aesthetic and even its social politics the most perfectly.
1:41.2	But as I have commented on the show before, I have severe doubts about the whole sort of format of the modern music festival.
1:49.2	As to whether it really can deliver what it purports to, and that at least is an interesting topic to explore.
1:56.2	And also, there is something unique about the status of music festivals, really just because of the unique status of Glastonbury in the British cultural imaginary, I think, which is interesting to think about.
2:09.2	I mean, other countries have festivals and other countries have all kinds of festivals.
2:13.2	And there are festivals that are not music festivals, but nowhere else has something quite like Glastonbury, like the plays the role that it does in our national imaginary for better or worse.
2:25.2	So, that is an interesting topic in itself to explore, I think, when we get around to it.
2:30.2	I mean, also, we did a couple of months ago recorded an episode about the Great Outdoors, very good episode it was too.
	...

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