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Photo Credit: Chris Lusher Photo Credit: Kitmin Lee
Clockenflap from 28 to 30 November 2014 has once again blown minds way with the amazing live music performances and multimedia art endeavors like Silent Disco and Cinema Silenzio in West Kowloon. HKAAA is delighted to bring you an interview with the team of the annual music and arts festival to share with us their thoughts in creating the incredible event.
C: Clockenflap | HKAAA: Hong Kong Arts Administrators Association
HKAAA: Congratulations on the enormous success of Clockenflap 2014, how do you feel now?
C: Well, the team is exhausted - however we are overjoyed with the results. Each year we learn from previous years and fine tune pretty much every aspect of the festival. This year we felt that we had made a huge leap forward. All of our well laid plans came to fruition. We are also incredibly grateful to all the artists, partners, crew and audiences that supported the event. There were many moments that we could not predict that propelled the festival even higher, Jack Black operating the confetti canons during The Flaming Lips set and The Turbans literally taking over Hong Kong with their infectious busking, just two that stand out.
HKAAA: According to a recent article on South China Morning Post, the festival’s participants had grown from 1,500 to 40,000 over the years. However, there were cancellations of brand-named outdoor music festivals during the last one year in Hong Kong. What do you think? Do you think the culture of outdoor music festival can be nurtured here in Hong Kong?
C: Hong Kong has a unique landscape, in terms of geography, culture, people, arts, and so on (as do other places). We would imagine it to be very hard to simply arrive in Hong Kong with an international brand of outdoor festival and expect instant success. We've been creating Clockenflap for seven years now, and before that the core team were very active in the music and arts scene, both locally and internationally. The key, as we see it, is to nurture a festival from a small grass roots scale, expanding just slightly ahead of the demand - in order to retain genuine connectivity to the local taste whilst delivering an event beyond the audiences’ expectations. This most recent edition of Clockenflap proves beyond any doubt that Hong Kong audiences have a huge appetite for outdoor music and arts festivals - as demonstrated not only by the numbers, but the demographics of those who attended and the manner in which they engaged with the performances and attractions.
HKAAA: Are your audiences all from Hong Kong? Can you see the potential of building the festival as a regional one? Or, Hong Kong can become a regional/an international hub of outdoor music festivals?
C: We see a fairly even split of local Hong Kong Chinese and international Hong Kong residents attending Clockenflap, however there are an ever increasing number of overseas visitors attending the festival. Clockenflap is gaining a reputation internationally as one of the top festivals to experience. Our line-up, arts content, festival site - with the stunning views, and good vibes are drawing people to Hong Kong. We also receive glowing feedback from our international artists - who often tell us in no uncertain terms that Clockenflap was one of the best festival experiences of their lives.
HKAAA: You did an excellent job in including Cantonese local bands in your lineup. How do you decide whom to invite?
C: Thank you. From the very beginning of Clockenflap's life, the majority of artists on our line-up have always been local, Cantonese acts. It's vital to us to be promoting local talent and showcasing the artists to a wider audience, as much as we can. In terms of who we ask, the invitation process is a long and hotly debated topic internally! All year round, our team goes out to shows, checks out links/cds and consistently are in touch with people from all across the community, to ultimately find the artists who will work well on the Clockenflap stage. The reality is we never have enough slots to put in all the acts we wish we could. There's literally hundreds and hundreds of artists each year we need to narrow down to just a very finite number of slots. We certainly consider it a true honour and blessing that we get to do this for our jobs, and hopefully play a small part in keeping the momentum of the local scene moving forwards.
HKAAA: Clockenflap team is quite keen to get across a message - the festival is for Hong Kong. Can you share with us more about this?
C: Well, simply put - Justin was born in Hong Kong and Mike and myself have lived here for 17 and 18 years respectively. Hong Kong is well and truly a home for all of us and therefore we selfishly decided to create Clockenflap so we could attend a music and arts festival in Hong Kong. It just so happened that quite a few other Hong Kongers wanted the same thing! The point is, we started Clockenflap for the single reason that we are passionate about music and art and wanted more of it in Hong Kong. The festival format offers such a wealth of opportunity for exploring creativity - there is really no set formula. Hong Kong is such a melting pot of people and cultures, the festival spirit embraces these qualities very well.
HKAAA: Last but not least, we are all looking forward to next year’s Clockenflap, will the festival be held somewhere else for the construction work at the WKCD site?
C: Rest assured Clockenflap 2015 will take place - though venue details are still in discussion. It might be that we are still able to work with WKCD, by utilizing areas not affected by construction. Alternatively we have several other sites in mind.