At Freezefest Festival

On Friday we left Austria and drove with Supra+ to the Czech Republic where we had been invited by the Lunchmeat crew to take part in the Freezefest Festival. This big alternative arts festival, now in its fourth year, takes place in the abandoned former military area of Milovice. It covers an enormous area with aircraft runways, hangars and all kinds of other military buildings in an advanced state of decay. On Saturday morning we arrived at the site, found a parking space for the van and spent the day wandering about in the sunshine, looking at the various stages and installations and exploring the empty buildings. (To get a larger image which shows much better the full impact of the stark contrast between the abandoned buildings and the temporary festival structures, click on the collage below).Some of the buildings that were in a better state of repair had been converted into performance spaces – in the photo you can see the ‘free stage’ where anyone could turn up and perform, but there was also a cinema in a nearby underground bunker and many different kinds of stalls and open air bars for food and drink.Lots of graffiti artists were at work, busily adding to the tags, images and large scale murals from the previous years’ festivals but I think my favourite was this rather faded image that I found on a stairway of one of the more remote buildings that we explored…. For their set Supra+ decided to play not on Lunchmeat’s ‘Freak Stage’ itself, but in front of the projection screens which they had set up on a bank next to the stage. This meant that the band would be in front of, and also could be included in my Tagtool drawing. Of course, all of their equipment had to be set up in the afternoon before it got too dark.Once it was really dark Dima set up the Tagtool and projectors so that I could do a bit of test drawing.By the time that Supra+ started to play a large and enthusiastic crowd had gathered. As well as setting up the video camera, Dima took a lot of close ups of the band.Supra+ line up: left to right, Max Bogner, Jan Linke, David ObenausI gave my little camera to our friend Sam to take some photos of my drawing. He took lots – so here is a selection!The white spot you can see at the top of this sequence of photos is the moon – but despite this the performance area was very, very dark – ideal conditions for Tagtooling!It was a long set, with the audience shouting for more at the end – which was great! The band played (and I also drew!) continuously for more than an hour. Dima made a recording of all of the performance and is now editing the video. He plans to upload it to Vimeo in sections – so I will be able to have some video for my next posting.