NAKED CITY: VIVID MAKES US LIVID – THE GRUMPY GUIDE
It’s now five years since the Vivid Festival became a regular part of the Sydney events calendar and the State Government threw a bucket-load of cash towards the so-called celebration of “light, music and ideas”. Despite the regular injection of big overseas acts and high profile curators like Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson, some still see it as a “Seinfeld” festival – i.e. a festival about nothing!
That might seem a little cynical and party pooping, given that many Sydneysiders have embraced the event even though they are not entirely sure what it’s all about. There’s a healthy free component with exhibitions and the nightly projections illuminating the bridge, the Opera House and the surrounding buildings. The latter is a kind of modern day psychedelia, no acid required, but all a bit too orchestrated and computerised for those that remember the good old-style trippy light shows.
There’s no doubt that kids and tourists love to see the sails of the Opera House pulsating with a miasma of colour and the old Customs House building articulated like a mad computer game, but how about a bit of variation – even a bit of social conscience! Why not a nightly laser display along Cathedral Street in the Loo, spotlighting the numerous homeless men sleeping rough whilst the rest of the city parties and once again fails to provide them with any respite from the winter chills. The Bourke Street cycle path could be repainted luminous green so that it glows in the dark and they could even hang a giant sheet at Barangaroo, projecting an image of the hideous Dubai like tower that Jamie Packer is planning to build.
Music-wise Vivid presents a wide cross-section of modern and classic styles highlighted with the infusion of big name acts from overseas. Sadly we missed out on tickets to the Kraftwerk shows but we made up for the disappointment by renting a copy of Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph Of The Will and providing our own soundtrack with the help of a slightly beat up stylophone. Whilst Vivid features plenty of homegrown talent, it’s always the cultural cringe of attracting the highfalutin internationals that defines these kinds of festivals. Maybe as the Australian dollar continues to slide, the top-shelf imports will become less affordable and the organisers will be forced to look to your more bargain basement acts like a couple of also-rans from the Eurovision Song Contest, a Bulgarian AC/DC Tribute band and a reinvented Pussy Riot when they are finally freed from their Russian gulag.
Perhaps our biggest disappointment this year is the failure to reprise Laurie Anderson’s Concert For Dogs, undoubtedly one of the biggest hits of Vivid 2010. We are confident that, if asked, the guys from Kraftwerk (all being petlovers) would have come to the party and hosted a massive Nuremberg style rally for all manner of animals – dogs, cats, horses and a wide assortment of Australian fauna assembled in precise military-like phalanxes in the Domain. Throw in a million dollars worth of fireworks and a VIP seating area, and Sydney, let the celebration begin!
