“Frenetic” Cluster Fest returns for a 17th year

Black outline of a person whispering into an oversized ear in a telephone booth. Image is in black and white.

Maggie A. Clark

A person steps into a booth. Inside, they see a giant ear. A virtual text prompt invites them to whisper a secret into it. They oblige and their disembodied words are distorted and rebroadcast to a live audience.

This isn’t the synopsis of a lost episode of Doctor Who; it’s an interactive performance art piece coming soon to the West End Cultural Centre. In fact, Savant Flaneur, Chimwemwe Undi, and Zoë LeBrun’s Psst! is just one of the many sound experiences in store for the seventeenth edition of the Cluster New Music + Integrated Arts Festival, which takes place May 27 to 31.

I sat down with the festival’s artistic director Ashley Au to talk turkey.

Stylus: How long has Cluster Festival been running?

Ashley Au (AA): We will be entering our 17th year now, so it’s been running for quite a while. I’ve been at the helm of the festival since March 2020, so it was a bit of a weird time to get involved. But things are great, and I love this festival.

Stylus: How has the festival [changed] in the time since you’ve been involved?

AA: It’s shifted its timeline in the year. It used to be a festival that would happen in mid-March and then I moved it into early June for a bit, and now we’re pulling it back into late May. It’s [also] shifted in presentation style. Before, it was taking place in a bunch of smaller pop-up venues in the Exchange [District]. It’s now shifted to being presented in a handful of venues with a bit more […] production infrastructure.

Stylus: Where will the events be this year?

AA: The majority of them will be happening at the West End Cultural Centre and there’ll be a gallery installation at the Poolside Gallery in the Artspace building, on the second floor […] and we’ll also have an event at Public Domain on the Sunday afternoon.

Stylus: Does this year’s version of the festival have a theme?

AA: I guess not so much as—

Stylus: If you were to invent a theme off the cuff right now, what would it be?

AA: Oh, I don’t know — “frenetic”? Frenetic, yeah.

Stylus: High energy?

AA: I’d say it’s fairly high energy. There’s some really fascinating collaborations that are happening. There’s a lot of new work being premiered. A lot of new work, at the moment of this interview, that’s still being developed, which is really exciting. Right now, I have a sense of what the show is going to be and a sense of what the artists are going for, but I won’t really see it until it happens. And that’s the beauty of this festival: it’s a celebration of new works, artistic risk-taking, and everybody’s along for the ride.

Stylus: I assume artistic directors aren’t supposed to pick favourites, so I won’t ask you in those terms, but are there any artists you’re especially looking forward to in this year’s lineup?

AA: There are definitely a number. We’re gonna be seeing the presentation of the next iteration of Psst!, which was an installation that Savant Flaneur and Chim Undi [presented] during Nuit Blanche last year. […] It’s partially interactive, partially installation, partially concert. It’s the next evolution of this project that they’ve been working on.

Savant Flaneur is an experimental music duo, [consisting of] Nathan Krahn and Gage Salnikowski. They’re working with Chimwemwe Undi, who’s a poet. […] Savant Flaneur, Chim Undi, and Zoë LeBrun put together this project which incorporates poetic text prompts and a little bit of audience participation. There’s essentially a […] booth with a giant ear in it. I’m not sure what it’s made of. I think it might be […] plaster, but it could be different this time around because it is currently in process.

People are invited to enter the booth. There’s a text prompt given to them and they whisper a secret into the ear, which is recorded and then reimagined by a series of generative effects, which are then incorporated into a live performance. What is emitted from the person’s voice is completely disembodied, deconstructed, reconstructed, and, in real time, reinterpreted as a performance piece. I think, at the time of the original installation, it was just the generative sounds that would come out of it, and it would create this beautiful collage and wash of everybody’s input over the duration of the installation — but this is now in a concert format, which I’m excited to hear how that works out.

Stylus: Would this be at the West End or at Video Pool?

AA: Yeah, this would be at the West End. I’m also really excited to have the Sun Dog Ensemble, who are led by Theresa Thordarson from the band Bicycle Face. Their ensemble is gonna be premiering a bunch of new compositions. […] It’ll be a concert of all new works, which I’m really excited to hear.

We have Eliza Bagg coming in from L.A., who is an electronic and vocal artist who performs with the vocal ensemble Roomful of Teeth, which is a Grammy Award-winning experimental music ensemble. […] She’ll be here performing a whole new body of work that she’s currently in residency developing, so that’ll be really exciting.

We have Mas Aya coming in from Toronto, who will be performing electronics and percussion. He’s maybe more well known as the drummer for Lido Pimienta. He’s also worked with Tanya Tagaq and US Girls and a ton of really great musicians. This is a solo piece that’s very energetic, [has] lots of cool layers, and it’ll be a treat for folks.

Stylus: Here’s a philosophical one for you — what does art accomplish and how?

AA: I guess, for an artist, it accomplishes the expression of an idea or the interrogation of an idea. For audiences, it opens up an opportunity to experience the world through a different lens.

Stylus: And what do you hope that people will come away with from the festival this year?

AA: What I’m always hoping for folks to come away from with the festival is to get a lot more curious in their listening habits. I think, today, we’re living in a world where so much of what we consume is dictated to us by social media platforms [and] algorithms. Oftentimes, it’s overly polished or it’s missing intention.

[With] the ways that we consume media, we’re asking folks to create content and churn things out at a clip that doesn’t really feel conducive to art-making [and] free expression. […] It doesn’t represent the creative spirit, the human spirit, so what what I hope people take away from this experience is piquing their curiosity, connecting with real people, being very vulnerable, putting out new work, and celebrating that kind of artistic risk that people take — and also to take that same energy and channel it in their own lives. Yes, work on art, make art, take artistic risks, but really think about how what you’re making — whatever it is, whether it’s something small at home or just for a group of friends — has a really great impact on your wider community, on yourself, and allows you to show up in new and better ways. Because those creative juices are flowing, the mind is thinking beyond the horizons that you see.

Ashley’s Top Five Albums

(“Off the top of my head, I would say…”)