The final festival weekend of Illuminate Adelaide, beset by both severe weather warnings and a global tech outage, managed to stick the landing through uncertainty and wet winds with a heavy hitting program of performance.
While the acts for Unsound are the big focus, the musical portion begins with the serenity of Joep Beving’s solo show at Her Majesty’s Theatre, a restrained, delicate performance of Hermetism.
A solitary Beving on the upright piano is accompanied by Boris Acket’s hovering sculptural pieces. It’s entrancing, the illuminated artwork subtle in its marriage of light and sound as dynamic pieces slip and dance above like the lights of interstellar travellers through cosmic darkness, shimmering in response to Beving’s emotive, yet pared back, musical storytelling.
Illuminate Adelaide 2024
- Three full weekends from 04 – 21 July
- 150 local, national and international artists
- More information here
Explore Melbourne’s latest arts and stage news, features, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
The poignance of solitude and gentleness is a far cry from the visceral hit of the Unsound program. Varied, somewhat disjointed, it opens with a provocation: MODELS, by Lee Gamble reinterpreted in dance by Candela Capitán, performed both live at Dom Polski Centre and livestreamed via her smartphone in selfie mode, looping in and critiquing an audience already inclined to stare at their phones during shows.
At once isolated and connected, present and alienated as we move between our social presence and social media. Then we’re thrust straight into the confronting sustained noise of Marco Fusinato and the roughness of his gritty video projections.
The discomfort of discord is quickly replaced by intrigue with the textural ambience of Jim O’Rourke and Eiko Ishibashi and their soft wyrd soundscapes, before slipping neatly into the stately and statuesque centrepiece that is Norwegian solo saxophonist Bendik Giske, swaying to the breathy hums and distorted growls of his instrument, a commanding, captivating presence in a slick black gown.
Conclude with the smash-and-grab-your-attention Friday finale of 33EMYBW and Joey Holder, a hallucination of electronic, almost arcane and ritualistic aural patterns entwined with rapid visuals of the occult, Satanic, esoteric and naturalist illustration.
An exceptional Saturday
The tone of Saturday is even more idiosyncratic, from the hauntingly beautiful opening by Yirinda (Samuel Pankhurst and Butchulla songman and language custodian, Fred Leone) to Berlin-based Ale Hop (Alejandra Cárdenas Pacheco) and Laura Robles presenting Agua Dulce, their high-energy percussion-focused set led by the sound of the Peruvian cajón, with cascading, hypnotic layers of primal beats, electronic waves, pulsating bass lines and intoxicating crescendoes – just fucking sexy, really.
The Caretaker’s only Australian performance offers an introspective retrospective, projecting desolate spaces filled with the dissolving ghosts of pop culture and parties, a controlled chaos of soundscapes and images degrading, blending, slipping, as he sits on a domestic throne of the living room armchair downing a bottle of Jameson, with loud interstitial footage of his own past performances.
Then the multisensory smash of Japan’s ∈Y∋ with C.O.L.O., a set of intense, rapid-fire samples and light-screen flashes hitting us like a panic attack in the club before we throw back to 90s with the inimitable Kim Gordon who just absolutely fucking fills a room – her presence, the grunge rock cadence of her recital with the encompassing heavy, fuzzy distortion pressing into the corners of your senses. Lynchian-style visual projections are the background to aggressively seductive, deeply feminine provocation, heavy beats, discord, screech of chunky guitar beneath her hoarse, whispery-edged moan.
The full-force intoxicating drug of the music program feels a world apart from much of the whimsical, family-friendly festival elements of Illuminate Adelaide – different nights happening side by side.
The free City Lights installations transform public spaces into interactive landscapes, one centrepiece being the AI animated projections of the Renaissance artworks forming part of the Art Gallery of South Australia’s new exhibition, Rethinking the Renaissance, opening as the festival ends, an elegant link, where French artist INOOK gives these austere expressions life and the voices of iconic pop songs. Another headliner, Shohei Fujimoto’s intangible #form in Bonython Hall, creates illusory architecture from structured laser light.
EDEN and Fire Gardens
The schism is a reminder that parts of this festival are not, in fact, made for me. EDEN was not made for me – and we must sometimes encounter experiences that are for the joy of others.
Created by Berlin-based flora&faunavisions design studio, it’s a 360 degree touch-screen story of growing things in a fantastical ecosystem. I dispassionately watched flowers move under my fingers, but the room was filled with laughing children bouncing after bright bubbles and pushing the wind about with their hands. EDEN is theirs.
This year’s installation in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Fire Gardens by Compagnie Carabosse similarly suited a different crowd – families, lovers, strolling a labyrinth of small fires, made for lingering and warming, not provocation and energetic stimulation.
Unsound Club
But for those seeking electricity, we have Unsound Club, the festival finisher, smoke machines, flashing LED screens and dancing with hours of DJs in Light Square. The most honourable of mentions for Lee Gamble, commanding the decks in the small hours as the very final festival piece, ending Unsound as it began, offering a perfect antidote to sleep, pure like a shot of adrenaline, like smashing Red Bulls and mystery substances on a dance floor, in a sequential, artful, potentially perfect techno club set pulling us towards morning light.
Compared to last year, the connection between the various parts of Illuminate felt looser, more scattered starbursts in the constellation rather than a sustained burn. Enchanting, but different, with bright moments finding you like the wandering lights above Beving, and holding you in captivity for intense fragments of illumination.
Find more information on Illuminate Adelaide here.
