New Forms Festival still on the cutting edge after 18 years
Founded in 2000, the non-profit New Forms Media Society has a mission to bring various creative communities together to explore the range and potential of digital media. Each year, the group presents the multi-day and multi-venue New Forms Festival. The event has become a forum for presenting cutting edge artists, especially those who work in electronic music.
Over nearly two decades, New Forms has been able to build a global brand that has enabled it to feature musical artists of international stature like Actress and Girl Talk, and contribute to the recognition of Vancouver artists like Humans or Manitoba transplant Mcenroe. The festival also features visual artists alongside the sounds, and has premiered exhibitions by many cutting edge stars of the avant-garde.
Executive director Malcolm Levy took time to chat about how the festival has stayed fresh and what some of this year’s highlights will be.
Q How has New Forms Festival developed over its 18 years?
A Any organization has its stages, and you start with the founders, staff, artists and the community. Then at some point, if it’s working, the shift comes to really be about the community’s
wants and desires. We took one year off to present International Symposium on Electronic Art in 2015, where we hosted the largest FUSE event ever at the Vancouver Art Gallery with 5,000 people, but hundreds were still asking with concern, ‘What about New Forms?’ We sold out 2016, and that seems to be where we are now.
Q You have a proven audience with pretty wide demographics, what brings them together under the same banner?
A New Forms represents to a large degree the digital shift that happened where forward-thinking music and art is something that isn’t defined by age, but by quality and the culture around it. We addressed something that people really wanted, and took it very seriously in terms of curation. This group wants to challenge ourselves every year to put on the best, and some sort of feedback loop has developed around that which keeps it going. The society board is amazing.
Q You frequently feature progenitors of the avant-garde as well as putting together collaborations between performers who come from analog disciplines with electronic artists don’t you?
A Absolutely. People like 82-year-old German experimental ambient and electronic musician Hans-Joachim Roedelius, who is here this year (Sept. 29), are innovators who have had such an incredible influence on where we are today. The history is as important as the future, and all of the curators would agree that it’s all part of the same thing. Having a world premiere of legendary Chicago free jazz drummer Hamid Drake — one of the best of the last 50 years — in an improvised duet with experimental electronic composer Hieroglyphic Being (Sept. 28), who has been greatly influenced by free jazz, is incredible. I have to credit Scott Woodworth for bringing that together. It’s also something our audience wants, as jazz has a long relationship with what we do.
Q Are New Forms audiences quite willing to take you up on things that could be considered challenging?
A People willing to experience something new, challenging and wanting to immerse themselves in specific installations or technology need an outlet, and we are honoured to have had them
Q Montreal has historically been the electronic heart of the country and is known internationally for that, is Vancouver well on its way to establishing its own distinct presence, too?
A If you look at the labels like Mood Hut, Pacific Rhythm, 1080 P and Genero locally — and other labels that have moved, such as Acting Press in Berlin — you are looking at artists doing incredibly well and on equivalent levels with those from anywhere else in the country. It’s becoming a very well known fact and on the radar everywhere that Vancouver has a healthy and creative electronic scene.
Note: Levy founded the Hybridity Music label in 2012, which has released albums from artists ranging from Humans to Brasstronaut).