Brace yourselves for the annual JUE takeover. This year, beyond attempting to meet our own high bar and drawing a bunch of fresh faces across the capitals in to a microcosm of creative activity, the festival is refocusing, clearly defining where it sits in a China where despite various setbacks, the creative communities have truly flourished.
JUE has witnessed seven years of transformation, and so necessarily a certain amount of refiguring has had to take place. Back in 2009 the creative communities were few and far between, stratified and uncommunicative. According to the founders’ statement, JUE was created in order to try and connect these communities and promote music and art that wasn’t getting attention from the Chinese media, where coverage has a nasty habit of going to the highest bidder. By bundling together exhibitions, installations, recitations and performances, this collective believed it would be stronger, and able to stand for something more far-reaching and profound. It was meant to be something the communities could all own and be proud of.
After an incredible 6 years which have seen the festival grow from a handful of events over a few days in 2009 to 135 events over 2½ weeks in 2014 (and you can judge for yourselves via the annual glut of photos and press coverage the festival has been blessed with up until now), the organizers have decided that JUE in 2015 needs a stronger emphasis on in-house curation. The festival period will be much shorter this time around, and the programming more manageable, with arts events focusing explicitly on music.
The full line-up is now out and we’re looking forward to seeing what goes down.
Keep on top of what’s going on via the official website:
[JUE is run by sister company Split Works – we’ll do our best to keep things over at the Radar ticking by smoothly during the festival period.]