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Antony Talks Curating Meltdown Festival

Lineup features the Cocteau Twins' Liz Fraser, Laurie Anderson, Marina Abramovic, CocoRosie, Diamanda Galás, and more

Photo by Mark Seliger

The annual Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in London is curated by a different artist every year; past curators have included David Bowie, Morrissey, Scott Walker, Nick Cave, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Elvis Costello, Ray Davies, Massive Attack, and Jarvis Cocker. This year, the honor goes to Antony Hegarty. His festival, which runs from August 1-12, represents a "constellation of artists" he greatly admires.

Antony's lineup features artists he's collaborated with before, like Charles Atlas (whose collaboration with Antony and the Johnsons, the film "Turning", will show at the festival), Marina Abramovic (who, at Antony's request, will give a rare lecture), Laurie Anderson, and CocoRosie.

It also includes artists he's actively championed and admired through the years, like the Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser, who will give her first full performance since 1998, the revolutionary Turkish singer Selda (who was featured in Antony's "5-10-15-20"), Marc Almond of Soft Cell, and Diamanda Galás. Check out the lineup below our interview with Antony.

Antony cites the artists in his Meltdown as part of a greater movement called "future feminism." Most of his conversation with us revolved around the idea that the artists represent something bigger-- they each offer uncompromising, bold visions that challenge complacency and societal roles. That artistic bravery manifests itself across genres, ranging from folk activist singer Buffy Sainte-Marie to glam punks the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.

After a few brief answers, Antony delivered a sort of manifesto about his festival, what the artists represent, and the state of music today. At the end, he admitted that most of his interview was clumsily worded. "But I'm an artist, you know," he said. "I'm allowed to be clumsy."

Pitchfork: It seems like a lot of these artists are people you admire or have worked with before.

Antony Hegarty: They are all different heroes of mine, and different people who create work that I think is super beautiful and helpful to me.

Pitchfork: Do you feel like this lineup defines your cross-section of influences?

AH: Yeah, I never really thought about it like that. Obviously it reflects the things that I love, I mean that has to be obvious. But more than that, what does it mean as a constellation of artists? That's what I'm interested in. When you put them in relationship to each other they create a kind of constellation, and that constellation has a kind of resonance of its own. I don't think it's a circle that people have really been cast before, this particular one.

I mean it's a lot of singers-- I'm really really preoccupied with singers and vocalists, and a lot of the people in the lineup are among the greatest singers in the world, like Diamanda Galás, Liz Fraser, Buffy Sainte-Marie-- some intensely beautiful singers. And it wasn't their prowess that moved me; I think it's a sense of courage. If there was one thing that defined a lot of the musicians in this lineup, it's a sense of courage. A willingness to put themselves out on a limb and express something. To be courageous in the way that they present their truth to the world. Even if it's controversial, even if it's forging a very new path between harmony or thought or melody or the ways to create a sound landscape. It's people that are fiercely individual in the way that they've approached being a musician in the world today and have taken different kinds of stands and have made strong statements.

Most of these artists do not create opaque work. Someone like Buffy Sainte-Marie is so inspiring to generations of artists in the same way that Nina Simone was inspiring, and Diamanda is the same way, and Selda is the same way, in that they claimed a sort of moral authority in their work, and they were willing to name poisons that they saw in society, or ills, and give voice to it in an ecstatic way that moves people.

Kembra Pfahler is like my leader, basically. She's such a seminal or feminal influence on so much of us in New York City. Just because she's so fierce, ferocious and her creativity is so pure, and her vision of the world is so unrelenting. And she's so unrelenting in her willingness to deliver a sense of truth. That has political ramifications.

Laurie Anderson is the same way: she's named and framed her sense of apocalyptic culture for 25 years. Ferociously named it. Joey Arias is so hardcore. He's a very hardcore queen. Marc Almond is also a super hardcore pioneer. There's David Tibet from Current 93 and Cyclobe. They are on the frontier of English, queer, hallucinogenic paganism. And they sort of sit on the spiritual frontier in terms of trying to articulate or embody in their work a vision that they have of the world that's very different from a typical patriarchal, sky god, Christian crap that even a lot of indie musicians in America are turning out. Christian chud. They're pretending they're alternative artists, but they are just confirming this patriarchal chud that we desperately need to rid ourselves of.

CocoRosie has been very controversial, especially in America, just because they take so many risks, and most guys in the boys club don't take even them. In Europe they're very embraced. Amongst artists, they are celebrated around the world, but there's obviously been a lot of people that can't take the frontier that they're pushing. To me, they are amongst the most important young artists in American today. I think it's intergenerational. There's a lot going on in the festival.


AH: It's not even just within art that they're uncompromising. I think for me, it's the next step that's interesting. Since the early 2000s, a lot of straight boys created bands that are about, like, nurturing this pastoral inner life-- these colorful psychedelic lives and nurturing their sensitivity as straight boys. And that's great and everything, but we need to start participating in the bigger picture because this whole ecology of our world is going to start collapsing in the next 50 years, and if there's going to be a validity to anything, in 50 years' time just like the way they were, people are going to be asking what the kids of today are thinking, what the artists of today were thinking. Were they just checking out? Were they just, like, hugging a couple of cuddly bears or feel-good pillows? What is the point of music at this point? Is it just a beer swill at Coachella? Is it a few sensitive guys getting up there having a circle jerk while all the girls and all the other people have to sit around and try and find their experience within their opaque song styling? We could be participating, and that's what I aspire to do, and so I wanted to create a vivid festival that had some teeth to it.

Pitchfork: What sort of performance will Marina Abramovic give?

AH: She's doing a lecture for women. It's something she's never done before. And it was actually something that I kind of challenged her to do it. She's never framed her work around her identity as a woman. She's always talked about art as being beyond gender, and yet her work is so complicated and multifaceted and has a lot of themes of passivity and endurance and bleeding and cruelty. So I asked her if she'd be comfortable doing a lecture just for women, and that's what we're doing for Meltdown, which is going to be really exciting. She seemed really stimulated by the idea of the challenge.

Pitchfork: And Elizabeth Fraser from the Cocteau Twins is going to perform.

AH: The fact that she's committed to doing two concerts is unprecedented in her career. She's actually presenting mostly all-new material, and that's going to be probably one of the centerpieces of the festival, Liz Fraser doing two nights. It's a really, really big deal.

Pitchfork: And you're not going to perform with your own band?

AH: I'm definitely going to be around because I'm going to want to watch everything. We're doing a premiere of a film that I've been working on for the last four years called "Turning". So my concert, per se, is a concert film, but also sort of an art project. And we're doing the film premiere of that at Meltdown. So that's the Antony and the Johnsons project. And then I'll probably just do a couple of songs with a couple of the artists that want me to come and sing with them. But I'm trying to keep that to a minimum.

Pitchfork: Because you just want to enjoy the festival?

AH: Yeah, I want to try to. I really want to watch everything. I really booked the things I most wanted to see.

Antony's Meltdown:

Elizabeth Fraser
Laurie Anderson
William Basinki: "Disintegration Loops"
Marina Abramovic
Hal Willner: "Freedom Riders"
Charles Atlas / Antony and the Johnsons: "Turning"
Planningtorock + Light Asylum
Joey Arias
Buffy Sainte-Marie
The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black + Tenderloin
Kembra Pfahler + Claywoman
Diamanda Galás
Marc Almond
Myrninerest + Cyclobe + Derek Jarman Films