Bent Words
Yesterday evening, I attended the Bent Festival. It was much like going to a party I wasn't invited to, the guests were strangers--they were mostly middle aged men, some with mohawks, some with glasses and studious airs--and the chain of events unrolled with nerve racking abruptness. It began in the dark, the surrounding horizon of concrete walls silently cast off its yellow glow. Then the sound of an electric circuit, a concentrate of burning textured sound waves, rang out in the grey darkness. On stage, the performer, a man with sunglasses, was playing with what appeared to be a microwave. On top of it, soldier-like rows of metal prongs, and in between a pair of these, a thin, wavering stub of white current.
The concert's content was noise, or at least noise as defined in my high school music classes. It wasn't easy on the ears, long bands of electrical slashes, at small intervals peppered with decipherable beats and melodies. Following performances featured a girl in elvin attire and a cowboy who has lost his way in time. The former threw out sounds of babies crying cut with electrical grumbling. The cowboy lit a small furnace and the audience watched, curious, as a single wheel of a model locomotive began turning.
I left the cowboy and his locomotive to explore the premises. To the right of the stage, a flock of cardboard boxes hung silently from the ceiling. Further away, microphones had fallen into huge jars that smelled like candy. (see pictures below)
