Photo: Flow Festival / Samuli Pentti / Tovi Agency
For as long as I can remember, the monday after Flow Festival, has always been the Monday where the autumn begins. It is a sign to stop all the "little-too-fun" summer activities and get back to work.
And before that notorious monday you spend some good times at Flow Festival.
It usually starts on Friday afternoon. You know you have arrived when you start to hear the music playing and spot the first artworks surrounded by increasingly large groups of people as you make your way deeper into the festival site.
It is quite an audience for music but also for contemporary art. Over the course of the weekend, 91,000 people pass through the festival. Many of them stop at the artworks and take a few photos with them. Soon, your Instagram Stories are filled with familiar faces posing in front of the same works, including people you had almost forgotten you followed.
I certainly do not see this many group photos taken in art galleries. But Flow Festival is not an art gallery, and that is precisely what makes the whole thing so great and interesting. This is how we like it: great exposure for great artists.
So, naturally, we also went to see the artworks just beyond the festival’s main entrance.
The format itself appears simple. Or at least we assume it is this simple, which is part of its charm. Each artist is given the same tall, rectangular structure to work with. A few metres high, four sides and no dramatic difference in scale.
What I really liked about the works, I discovered afterwards. Looking at them again now, with more time and without several thousand people moving around, I can see far more than I did at the festival.
Obviously, art is not really meant to be consumed like this, later, through a computer or iPhone screen. But anyone who has been to a festival knows how much noise, movement and general distraction there is. You look, someone walks past, your friend says something, or an artist you had no idea your friend loved is about to start playing. Then you move on.
Or you’ve just lost Veera and are trying to find them. Thank you, @Veuxx and @Laurakemp, for this :D
I will resist turning this into a grand analysis of each piece. These are simply a few photos from Flow Festival’s art programme.
Thank you for looking, and see you next year!
@helmisilvo
All photographs of the artworks were taken by WWW Contemporary.
