This weekend Cape Town city will razzle to the sound of chainsaws, DJs and one- man bands
Erika Schutze
Staring at the blackened face, woollen hat and scruffy overalls of Luke Jane I’m reminded of a chimney sweep from a novel by Charles Dickens, only he’s slightly more menacing. And the Blue Temple Night Festival he’s organised with his partner Gareth Hall is clearly not for the fainthearted. Imagine a street festival with the tamer acts from the Jim Rose Circus accompanied by live industrial bands and a variety of art works.
It’s sweltering and noisy in the metalwork studio that Jane shares with Hall. A furnace glows in the background illuminating ghoulish metal sculptures, intricately framed mirrors and burglar bars in-the-making. It’s an ambience that’s a foretaste of the one-off street festival they’ve organised for March 11 on Bree Street, Cape Town. It aims to be an evening of pyromania, grinding music, art exhibits, multimedia shows and DJs, all rooted in punk’s DIY aesthetic.
“We’re setting a precedent by steering people away from the familiar and comfortable avenues explored by existing artists and musicians, pushing stuff that’s more avant-garde and brutally frank,” says Jane. The event has been organised in collaboration with Grant Griffiths of the ARTSuperMART gallery, outside which the performances will happen, transforming the place into an “art space”, rather than simply a gallery. The current exhibition of paintings by Inge du Plessis continues and slide shows by Graham Abbott will be projected outside the venue.
There’ll be drum’n’bass, trance and trip- hop DJs as well as a host of live bands mostly in the industrial, lo-fi vein. Former theatre producer, 50-year-old Riaan Burger, will be playing a home-made instrument consisting of a tiny guitar welded to a casio-type keyboard, with amplifiers suspended around him. “He’s like a one-man Floyd with a melancholy, blues feel,” explains Hall. Jane’s own band is an industrial outfit that differs from others in its orchestral song arrangements that avoid predictable formulae. But the highlight of the event will be Bingo the Grinder, who not only does chainsaw antics on metal strapped to his body but also makes sculptures before your eyes by angle- grinding shapes out of polystyrene.
All the artists will perform for free and apparently there’s been an overwhelming number of acts coming forward wanting to participate. So Jane and Hall plan to make this a regular event, occurring once every two months and culminating in a national roadshow where new acts will be picked up along the way.
They’re inspired by the Lollapalooza rock festival in the United States that was responsible for launching the careers of top acts like Nine Inch Nails and Ministry. But Lollapalooza declined into a mundane and commercialised rock festival, so one wonders how they’ll avoid this. “We’re fans of Perry Farrel – the initiator of Lollapalooza and leader of the band Jane’s Addiction. Without him a lot of talent in the US would have gone unnoticed, and it was only when he sold the rights to the festival that things went down. Like him, we want to establish ourselves as a platform for promoting local performance art and music that isn’t supported at the regular rock festivals. As the name ‘temple’ implies, we’re aiming to create something that people worship and adore, what they should aspire to. The emphasis will always be on quality,” says Jane.
There’s been a growing trend in Cape Town of combining art and music in clubbing. The forthcoming Krutial Mass 2000 event by the Swank Arthouse Collective (on March 24, at Observatory’s Bijou cinema) will exhibit metal sculptures by Cape Town and Port Elizabeth artists while the DJs push the latest Nu-Skool breaks and electro-bass beats.
The upcoming Balearic event, titled Night Lite, to be held at The Jam on March 17, will feature a site-specific installation by artists Lisa Brice and Julia Clark, four-deck mixing, the band Moodphase5 and visuals by Sightori.
It’s heartening to see that, unlike clubbing of yesteryear, there’s something else to do besides nursing a beer when the dance floor gets too sweaty.