The first of four events that will take place in various cities around the world this summer, Saturday's event was designed to generate buzz for the Project, and all the right elements were in play: a murderer's row of much-hyped music acts, interactive, visually appealing art installations, and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of free alcohol.
The plan certainly worked (if you were following things on Twitter, you probably felt like you were missing the event of the summer), but what might get lost in the shuffle is just how well it worked, and for whom.
Aside from Die Antwoord, who probably just booked themselves an American tour with their thrilling North American debut, the real winners on Saturday were fringe artists like Chantal Passamonte, who records under the name Mira Calix.
From the outside looking in, Passamonte probably doesn't seem like much of a fringe musician: she's been signed to Warp Records since the late '90s, and in that time she's toured with indie titans like Radiohead, Aphex Twin, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
But in the past half decade, Passamonte's journeyed far outside the box that the above paragraph should put her in. Though she also had a DJ set at Saturday's event, Passamonte was there with My Secret Heart, a multimedia installation that Streetwise Opera, a charity that puts on stage productions in homeless shelters, commissioned her to write music for.
Though it's won, by Passamonte's calculations, “a shitload of awards," it's not exactly the kind of thing that will appear on the same radar as, say, Sleigh Bells or M.I.A.
“Even if they hated it, it's nice that they were at least confronted with [it]," Passamonte says, “stuff that they aren't normally exposed to." (continued)
That is the secret of the Creators Project. Almost nobody at Saturday's event was caught unawares by the Pitchfork-friendly band lineup, or by the work of big-name music video directors Spike Jonze, Danny Perez, and Radical Friend; most of the 3,500 people that came to Milk Studios came for them. “But judging by the flow, it seemed to me people did check things out," Passamonte says.
“There were people who did kind of walk into the room with their bloody camera phones and go" she makes a funny face and jabs her arm out, miming someone taking a quick digital picture “'K, I've done that!' But there were loads of people who stayed.
“I think it could've been a majority of iPhone wavers," Passamonte continues, “but instead it seemed to be 50/50."
By corporate event standards, where drunken cell phone waving is the norm, that is quite a favorable percentage (and also, from what I can recall, maybe slightly generous on Passamonte's part). Corporate sponsorship has poured into pop music in the past decade, and while it's lent a helping hand to many an artist, the benefactors have not yet proven that they are committed to anything more than capitalizing on the cultural cache of rising artists.
Passamonte doesn't share the moral objections to corporate funding that a band like Fucked Up does. “I say, 'Throw as much money as possible! You guys can afford it!'"
But she does worry sometimes. “At the moment, I'm wary in the sense that I think it may not last," she says.
That, ultimately, is why she's so enthusiastic about the Creators Project. “They've put in a three year commitment, which when they started, wasn't there, so it's growing and that's brilliant."
She'd like to see more of that, “something like a foundation that says, 'We're going to support the arts for ten years,'
“That would be great."
Because if the Creators Project is providing exposure to things as unusual and exciting as My Secret Heart in year one, imagine what they'll be showing us in year three.
