Yard Life Festival

Musically speaking, the Sixties got it all. It was 1964 and the times, they were a-changing. By the end of the decade you had the Beatles and the Stones, myriads of rock subgenres and all were sublimated in the king and queen of the rock fairs: Woodstock. The Sixties were music with an inspiring, passionate and revolutionary soul.

It is 2012 and the ultimate festival fairy is indie pop, the granddaughter of the Sixties belles Beatles, Beach Boys and Velvet Underground: inspiring, passionate and revolutionary music. Back then the enemy  was the War, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the ‘Wars’ for the Civil Rights; today’s war is against money as a moral dictator. The battle ground is still the same: open sky, open space, open mind, fighting with guitar riffs, sweat and mud.

Hackney Downs Studios during Once Upon a Winterland, also organised by Yard Life

The Twenty-first Century rebellion is called no profit. Imagine a music festival where musicians perform for the sake of it and all the money goes to charity. Tickets for the event are invitations sent after a suggested £10 donation to Multiple Sclerosis Research. And if this weren’t yet substantial proof of a passionate soul, imagine that the festival is environmentally friendly and besides the show the public can get directly involved in art and fashion projects. Oh, and the headliner is the Dark Prince of English music Pete Doherty. Ladies and gentlemen, ex hippies and vintage addicts, here is Yard Life Festival.

Yard Life Festival will take place on April 28 at Hackney Downs Studios, a once-wrecked-now-inspirational building that fits with the concept of fresh, unpolished and underground. It is the Final Major Project of Jen Lloyd, student of Fashion, Design and Styling Promotion at Middlesex University. “This is not about money”, she explains, “This is about music, to support live music, for people genuinely interested in music, not for people who go to festivals because it’s cool to be there”.

Babeshadow. How predictable would it be to put a picture of Pete Doherty? We all know how he looks like!

The musicians are mainly Londoners, mainly independent and from either an acoustic/folk/indie background or DJs. They were carefully selected, first of all because Jen liked them, and also because “they had to believe in what this is all about, they really wanted to help”. Since November these new bands have been playing gigs at the Lauriston (Hackney) and at the Lock Tavern (Camden)  under the label ‘Yard Life loves’, in order to “get people familiar with the names, to give them a taste of what the festival will be like”. On stage with Pete Doherty there will be Babeshadow, a duo on a stairway to Heaven after a successful tour in Italy, Gaoler’s Daughter, Hatcham Social, Storm Cat, iC1S, the Recusants and the Savage Nomads. In the DJ arena the main attraction is probably Rory Philips, together with Alex Egan, Lemmy Ashton and the Filthy Dukes, last year’s DJ highlight at Glastonbury.  And this is not even the WHOLE line-up!

Arts are at home at Yard Life like ducks in a pond. Initiatives include Judy’s Affordable Vintage Fair, Stitched Up, Vintage Tea Party, the Powder Room, the Beauty Parlour and the Wow Project. “The idea is people come along and get themselves a new outfit”, they immerse themselves into the festival spirit of open minded creativity and they interact with the environment, instead of merely being spectators. One of the most entertaining and creative activities is the make, do and mend experience of Stitched Up, another University Project born with the aim of “making something undesirable, desirable again”. Singer has sponsored the project donating ten sewing machines, which will be used to teach people how to transform old unwanted garments into stylish outfits… have you ever seen a dress made from a waterproof poncho?

The Sixties’ allure breaths in what seems to be the art form of the new century: interactive art. People can lend their minds and drawing or writing skills to accomplish tasks assigned by Jojo Townsend, the creator of this experimental project. “It is about celebrating the individual in a group. More than that, it is about overcoming boundaries of loss and how this translates into the unease of marking a plain white sheet of paper”. Previous tasks ranged from rice art to writing a message to someone you cannot deliver it to, but the new challenges are still surrounded by the fascination of surprise. The result will be a Floydian wall of reflections captured through paper and ink.

What adds some golden dust to music, art and style is thoughtfulness, and Yard Life got that right too. Jen followed the supreme inspiration of Glastonbury and other English music feasts in promoting environmental consciousness, and asked for help to Chris Hardy from no profit organisation UpCycle, which deserved one blog post on its own last week. It is refreshing to see people like Jen and Chris who care about people’s feelings and thoughts instead of merely providing ephemeral pleasures… all of this without the motivation of money!

After unfolding the petals of this rare flower which is Yard Life Festival, we can see at the core those values inspiring the great music of the Sixties: getting involved, promoting awareness, sharing positive and creative emotions. Or, in John Lennon’s words, “if someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's his problem. Love and peace are eternal.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO GET AN INVITATION GO TO  www.yardlifefestival.co.uk

Pictures 1 and 5 by Amy McCarthy. Picture 2 by Idol Magazine. Picture 3 by Yard Life. Picture 4 by Stitched Up

Creation from Destruction, Green Karma and 150 Cranes

 “They were all dressed in black and white, like Shiva and Kali. Their aspect was feral, earth connected but also divine, and their house was made entirely of waste material.” This is the portrait of a sadhu and his wife who live near the Ganga River in the region of Uttarakhand in Northern India, inspirational figures within a labyrinthine journey towards awareness. The interlocutor within the narration of this story is Chris Hardy, 26 years of clever creativity and smiling resistance against the status quo, founder of no profit organisation UpCycle.

UpCycle was (re)born a year ago and it works to make sure that music festivals rock without trashing the environment. This is done by the Eco-Rangers, who organise sorted waste collection and set up the ExChange point, where you can switch your rubbish with objects made of upcycled materials. Those little treasures can be anything: leftover clothing made jazzy, broken accessories fixed, pop Tetra Pack purse (like the one Chris has in his bag), alternative works of art. The aim of UpCycle is raising people awareness through collaboration, instead of merely doing the dirty job for them. The value of the ExChange is more ideal than artistic, “it is not only a useful way to reuse plastic cups, we want to impact on people’s mind, to break down people concept of waste, value, beauty”.

All of this has been privately concretised by the sadhu and his wife. Chris’trip to India was a surreal epiphany. After graduating in Theology and Philosophy of Religion at Bristol University in 2008 he left for India to start a yoga course and eventually ended up trekking up the Himalayas with two sadhus.  Yoga is at the core of UpCycle, e.g. karma yoga (action yoga): the concept is doing something to benefit others instead of merely satisfying our selfishness… refreshing, isn’t it? That’s why UpCycle is no profit: “If you just want to be the creative part of the project you don’t worry about making money and it’s also nice not to have that as a motivation”. All these reflections come behind a little gesture as the ExChange, a ring pulls necklace, “all of this can be embodied in this tiny piece of rubbish”.



The ExChange Shrine



Back to England, Chris started a project called Vampire Fish, active in European festivals. Soon green thoughts merged with the artistic project, because “there was so much hedonism and fun and trashing the environment at the same time”. He remembers coming home after a festival with a bag full of trash and emptying it into his parents’ garden, like a child showing his first Lego castle. Where everybody saw smelly and dirty pieces of glass, Chris saw the potential of creation from destruction, the ultimate rebellion in a world of mutually consuming self-indulgence.

The (upcycled) rubbish realm grew and prospered among British festivals like Glastonbury, the Secret Garden Party, Shambala, the Cloud and Cuckoo Land, the Cock and Bull Festival and the Sunrise Off-Grid. “Festivals are breaks between your normal reality, they break down your prejudices, people become freer. Job, sex, skin colour, sexuality, country, money don’t matter anymore”. Fun promotes learning, creativity promotes awareness. The barriers to reach social responsibility towards the environment are mentally, and they are based on the concepts of non-stop distraction and organised lying that Aldous Huxley explained better than I could ever do.



Cloud and Cuckoo Land 2011



Next summer UpCycle will paint the aforementioned festivals green, but the next thing in UpCycle’s to do list, written on recycled paper on a notebook sewn during a book-binding workshop, is Yard Life Festival on April 28, a non-profit, invite only event, organised by Jen Lloyd to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Research. Indie music, vintage fashion and interactive art mingle in the Hackney Downs Studios, where the king of the ball will be Pete Doherty. The event meets UpCycle’s credo of creativity and non-profit and the building itself is an example of upcycling, “using waste space for creative potential”.

Chris’ last enterprise consisted in helping Steph Witherell with her project Urban Interventionist in the shape of 150 origami cranes hanging on a tree in Brixton Windrush Square. Steph is also author of the blog Deconsumerism, a report on an ongoing experiment of life outside consumerism, and I know this post is already too long, but this really needs to be mentioned. Money is the deus ex machina of consumerism, and in order to reverse the mentality you need to be able to control the source, materially choosing ethical banking. The world sold its soul for a Campbell’s soup and after seventy years of passive nihilism it is now time to ‘make, do and mend’ our mind to reclaim our faculty of thought.



Pictures at theloveofit.co.uk/news/origami-bombing-hits-london


For further inspiration:

up-cycle.org.uk

yardlifefestival.co.uk

deconsumerism.blogspot.com

brakethecycle.org.uk

theloveofit.co.uk

Cradle to Cradle. Re-making the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart 

The Perennial Philosophy by Aldous Huxley


Pictures  1 and 2 by Chris Hardy, pictures 3 and 4 by Steph Witherell

Garage n°2 Spring/Summer 2012

Issue one featured a glamorously outré Warholian butterfly. Issue two doesn’t step back: “Harry the hare is expecting”, 240 pages on sexual taboos explored through the lens of art & artistic fashion.

The masthead is crowded with quality: Damien Hirst, Patrick Demarchelier, and the editor, Dasha Zuchova. The contents were created to make readers think, and in this sentence there are two concepts I love, which really explains why I read Garage: creativity and thought. Yayoi Kusama, the ultimate link between art & folly (at Tate modern until June 5), the sick flowers of Mat Collishaw (think at Les fleurs du mal), designers’ condoms in an authentic denim pocket (is sex art?, they all sleep in their cradle of wide matte paper, lulled by graphic bravura.

Daring, engaging, beautiful. Enjoy.

Mat Collishaw, The Venal Muse, Evergreen

"Garage absolutely advocates safe sex"

Yayoi Kusama and her obsessive polka dots world

Have a taste!

The I Think Project

These first three pictures hopefully start a longer project, with more ideal than artistic value. I will briefly explain the concept behind what might looks like yet another example of self-indulgence and narcissism.

“I think therefore I am” has been replaced by “I consume therefore I am” so long ago it has become a cliché. Yet we never really THINK about this, we lost our ability to think. This happened because we are too busy consuming and because we are obsessed by time of course. We spend our life being afraid of wasting our time, without ever understanding how to make our time precious, like a miner who sweats and struggles to separate rocks from diamonds but always throws away the diamonds. We evaluate everything in terms of money and time, ignoring the existence of the intrinsic and real value of objects, moments, even people.

I disagree with this lifestyle. I think and to express my thoughts I just need pencil, paper and a wall, a real one and a virtual one. The thoughts I want to share are not necessarily epiphanies or immediately comprehensible, but they are there. I hope they inspire people to think, at least about why they dislike them or disagree with them. Images make concepts prettier and sometimes more effective.

The inspiration for my project has been various and continuous. While tiding up my notes on a really inspiring conversation I had with Christopher Hardy, founder of Upcycle (details here soon), I found myself thinking about one of the first enlightening books I read, Hydrogen Jukebox  by Allen Ginsberg. The first Italian edition (printed in 1969 and reprinted in 2006) was forwarded by Fernanda Pivano, translator, journalist and writer extraordinaire. She wrote “il messaggio è: allargate l’area della coscienza” (the message is: enlarge the area of consciousness) and claiming back our faculty of thinking is the first step towards that.

This is the beginning of the I Think Project.