Artsfest: Friday was a Blast

ArtsFest, Birmingham’s free arts festival (and Europe’s largest apparently, if that means anything) kicked off on Friday with a fantastic piece of performance art/theatre/engineering/pyrotechnics/steampunkery called Blast.

I have to say that I was thoroughly impressed with the event. Gaffer-taped together dead technology, a vast sprawling space on an ambitious scale, dirty soot-covered artists hammering away on whatever they could find, huge high-tech video projections, booming explosions, video art, subtle yet powerful synchronisations of fireworks, cacophonous and seemingly random arrangements of whistles and explosions, and all under the careful, subdued, understated control of some mysterious button-pushers in a lofty computerised perch. All on a vast scale several hundred metres long set against the backdrop of an active trainline with confused passenger trains passing in the background and hooting their horns in response to the work.

Fascinating stuff, fantastically well produced and not only one of the best things I’ve seen come out of Birmingham in recent years, one of the best performance pieces I’ve seen full stop. The great thing about it is that it encapsulated so much of the spirit of Birmingham as a city into a single work. No hiding away from the truth behind what this city is about and where its roots lie. Industry and art work hand in hand to beautiful effect.

Sophia Tarr and the team at Urban Fusion have shown significant vision in commisioning such a daring and relevant piece, so my congratulations to them.

Edit – There’s some more info on Blast on the Urban Fusion site.