It seems like ever since White Night left Melbourne, the powers that be have been trying to find an adequate replacement.
Now, many people – including myself – would argue that there’s really no replacement for 24 hours of arts and culture that allows you to wonder aimlessly through the city at 3am with a few hundred thousand new mates, walk through a purple raincloud to the strains of Prince, or high-five an illuminated robot on your way to a drum circle in the wee hours of the morning.
But Now or Never has paved the way for exactly the kind of “very Melbourne” festival that we’ve been looking for, ever since the great White Night flight to regional Victoria.
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The fact that it opens each year with a rave at the criminally underused Royal Exhibition Building, with delightfully questionable behaviour on the dancefloor culminating in an 11 pm bedtime, is quintessentially Melbourne.
From delightful abandon at a World Heritage building, through to the creative sophistication seen in internationally renowned art projects from the likes of United Visual Artists and Studio Lemercier, Now or Never showed the depth and breadth of its tagline – Art, Ideas, Sound, Technology. Simple, but effective.
From the haunting and at times overwhelming trance of Silent Symphony at the Town Hall to the fascinating Constellations projection on the Yarra, it was fitting that the festival had somewhat celestial overtones – there was something mystical in the programming that was hard to put a finger on.
From one star to another, we also saw Roxanne Gay deliver her Opinions to a hungrily willing audience, as she traversed wide-ranging subjects from Kamala Harris’ chances at winning (Gay says it’s looking good) to covert racism in Australia (including Gay’s own disappointing experiences with border security), and the terrifying experience of being a vocal black feminist in today’s world (yes, Gay owns a gun.)
Similarly fascinating were the lunchbox talks, delivered in the cavernous foyer of 161 Collins. In particular, Peter Thiedeke’s insight into the future of technology and art, off the back of his ongoing multimedia installation, TWIFSY (The world is fine, save yourself), was an inspiring and wide-ranging discussion about world-building, connectivity, and why the world you design is the world you live in.
Yes, it was very Melbourne, in the best way – which is somewhat ironic, considering many of the headliners weren’t Melburnians. But at the intersection of free public art and stellar programming is that ethereal being we’ve been hard up to capture post-pandemic: the truly inspiring art festival. Bring on a third year, I say.
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