15 Aug 2012

Musagetes: Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Bik Van der Pol

Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a free, all-day rock concert tour created by Dutch artists Bik Van der Pol that will take place on Saturday August 18th, 2012 from 11 AM to 11 PM. This series of punk, folk, rock, classical, and electronica concerts by local bands will form a unique map of Sudbury for one day: eleven local bands on eleven swatches of land.
Any concert tour is an exhilarating journey, full of unforgettable experiences, and instead of the bands touring from location to location, it will be the audience going on this adventure. Together, we hit the road in the morning and keep going strong to the last concert, where we end the night with pop/electronica music under the Pearl Street water tower.

Concert tour creators Bik Van der Pol (Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol, collaborators since 1994 and winners of the 2010 Enel Award for Contemporary Art) have been to Sudbury several times over the past two years. In June 2011, they cleaned a sample of black rock located at Kingsway and Mont Adam Street for the duration of four days, as a performative action. The black rocks, both loved and hated by the citizens of Sudbury, are an unavoidable part of the city. The history of Sudbury as a mining city has not only had an impact on the layout of the city and the everyday life of its citizens. It has also had — and continues to have — an impact on the environment here, visible in the pitted, charred and eroded black rock throughout Sudbury. Bik Van der Pol have continued to work with this black rock, culminating in these concerts which celebrate and reclaim it.

Musicians include newcomer singer-songwriter Justine Giles; contemporary theatrical performer Pandora Topp; award-winning young musician Sarah Bradley and her pop-dance group Fevers; the precise and empassioned Silver Birch String Quartet; rambunctious folk group Pistol George Warren; punk trio Lightmares; celebrated musician and composer Marcel Aymar; vocalist and guitarist Faye Blais; garage-electro-punk group Strange Attractor; and our latest addition, Le Paysagiste. We will finish the evening with a francophone DJ set and dance party in downtown Sudbury.

Each band will play in a different Sudbury landscape, among the trees, under the wide open sky, and of course, on the black rock. In this way, the bus is going to draw an unusual map of Sudbury as it travels from one swatch of land to the next. Between the bands and the land, concert-goers will see some old favourites and make some new discoveries. Together we will hear some superb local talent, make some memories, and spark some stories. Meet you at the black rock!

Between a Rock and a Hard Place is a project of Musagetes. Musagetes is an international organization which seeks to transform contemporary life by working with artists, cultural mediators, public intellectuals and other partners to develop new approaches to building community and culture. Based in Guelph, Ontario, the organization is active in mid-sized cities where change is underway: Guelph, Sudbury, Lecce (Italy) and Rijeka (Croatia).

To participate:
Project Assistant
Danica Evering
Musagetes
519-546-7045
danica@musagetes.ca

For interviews:
Project Producer
Mathieu Grainger
Cube Collective
705-923-2781
mg@cubecollective.ca

For more information:
Project Curator
Alissa Firth-Eagland
Musagetes
519-546-9662
alissa@musagetes.ca