Justin Pearce
THE boy whose designer tackies went up in flames=20 decided things had gone a bit too far. He’d come along=20 to an honest techno rave, was minding his own business=20 at 120 beats per minute, when this flaming tennis ball=20 came rolling across the floor, reducing R500 worth of=20 footwear to a charred mess.
Complaints to the pyromaniacs didn’t get him very far.=20 “It’s all part of the chance you take,” one of them=20 remarked coolly.
The pyromaniacs had other tricks besides rolling=20 burning objects around a crowded dance-floor. Dressed=20 in day-glo industrial overalls, they swallowed fuel and=20 spat tongues of fire metres long into the room, poured=20 pools of fuel on to the ground and watched them burn,=20 climbed half-way to the ceiling and allowed burning=20 sheets of paper to flap serenely to the floor.
This was the kind of cultural intervention you wouldn’t=20 find on the festival programme — not even on the=20 Fringe. These days, much of the Fringe has become=20 mainstream, distinguished from the main festival only=20 by the fact that the Fringe events are self-funded. And=20 so events have emerged that you might call beyond the=20 Fringe: happenings that you won’t find on the official=20 programme and which you can’t book for at the box=20
Many of these events took place in and around the old=20 power station, overlooking Grahamstown on a hilltop=20 three kilometres out of town. The nightly Evolve rave=20 party was indeed advertised on the Fringe programme,=20 but you could never be quite sure what you were going=20 to find there. The R15 entry fee would certainly=20 guarantee you the chance to thrash around with wild=20 abandon with fractals and protoplasmic globules=20 projected on to the cathedral-like walls of the power=20 station. When this got too much, you could crash out on=20 a mat in the video room and watch cult movies, or more=20 abstract blobs later on.
For sustenance there were some mean waffles and syrup.=20 A more predictable energy source was smart drinks,=20 those concoctions which have done for fruit juice what=20 Magnums did for ice cream.
When the fire-eaters had successfully broken up the=20 party, they retired home to a campsite next door to the=20 power station, where post-industrial metal sculptures=20 glowed gently. This was the real purpose of the=20 pyromaniacs’ presence in Grahamstown: transforming the=20 debris from the abandoned generators and from the=20 adjacent car graveyard into art.
But it was the new age Free Earth Movement encampment=20 which attracted the most attention: from the police,=20 who drove their Sierras up the hill despite the camp=20 organiser’s insistence that they had been approved by=20 the local police grootbase; from one breed of festival- goer who spoke sniffily of unwashed hippies; and from=20 another breed of festino who shambled along to join in=20 the fun.=20
There were those who believed in the benefits of=20 crystals and good karma, but for most the Free Earth=20 ideology became secondary to the opportunity for yet=20 another party. Midnight under the full moon saw a lone=20 Rasta dancing in front of a stage recently vacated by a=20 grunge band, smart drinks on sale at a tent in the=20 corner, hippies, more Rastas and crowds of=20 unclassifiables sitting happily goofed around bonfires.=20
With crystal pendants being hawked as fashion items, it=20 was hard to spot the genuine new-agers — and frankly,=20 no one cared.
* Last week these pages reported that the Grahamstown=20 Wimpy workers went on strike over R120-a-day wages.=20 Their wages are in fact R120 a week — which is clearly=20 a much better reason for striking.