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Artist News Gigs & Festivals
Christine And The Queens to curate Meltdown Festival
By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 23 November 2022
Christine And The Queens will curate next year’s Meltdown Festival at the Southbank Centre in London, it has been announced.
“What an honour to be picked by the fantastical teams of the Meltdown festival to be a curator this year”, says Christine And The Queens. “It’s a tough thing to be a curator. Art-wise, recently, my curating was erratic. Visceral. Sometimes regressive, back to the music I listened to when I was a teenager. A life-savior, music. One song to soothe them all. We expect from art to still save us yet we endanger it so much, everywhere”.
“Thinking it should sell and clatter like jewels. Thinking it should be the catchiest shit in less than ten seconds when truly the birth of an emotion takes years in some people. We want it to heal it all but we deprive it of it’s true strength, which is eternity, a cancellation of human time. Now it’s fast, quick, a lot, and never about eternity. Cause eternity is death, too. It’s a cycle of ashes and birth. Over and over again”.
“But I digress”, he goes on. “Do I? I will actually pick musicians that have some gut-wrenching quality, and I wish for all of us to stroll around in those ten days being rejuvenated by artistic gestures. Discoveries. The time Meltdown takes is quite exquisite, the abundance feels appropriately generous too”.
“We need this for ourselves, art in the city, art for the citizen, collective catharsis, a wonderful purge of the soul. I hope you’ll enjoy this glorious edition and again, long live poetry that burns and musicians crazy and brave enough to keep going – they are shaping the emotions of the future. Let’s thank them all!”
he Southbank Centre’s Head Of Contemporary Music, Adem Holness adds: “Chris will be the youngest-ever curator of Meltdown in its 27 year history, an incredible testament to his international pop prowess. We are incredibly excited to be working with such an ambitious artist who, I am sure, will show us all what more Meltdown can be as a festival and a celebration”.
Southbank Centre Artistic Director Mark Ball also comments: “Meltdown not only allows us to understand the passions of an artist, but uniquely to see them come to life as a fully-formed festival across the Southbank. And to get inside Chris’s imagination – an artist whose ideas and inspiration comes from his politics, his history and identity, his love of theatricality and of transgressive underground culture – will be an incredible musical treat for audiences”.
As well as pulling together special performances from other artists, the French musician will perform his latest album, ‘Redcar Les Adorables Étoiles’, in full. The festival will take place from 9-18 Jun.
