After the acclaim of last year’s first SUPERNORMAL - an event which brought together an eclectic range of artistic talents - from original Krautrockers Faust to a disturbingly funny and thought-provoking performance from the ‘Onkel Hans Peter Party’ (not forgetting go-go dancer Trixie Malicious) - 2011’s second incarnation will further unite the various strands of experimental art. (The event was described as something between an idealistic early Glastonbury in atmosphere and a non-elitist Glyndebourne in artistic ambition!)

With an on-site cinema and participation from numerous artist-led initiatives from all over the UK and abroad, the main field will offer a space for commissioned artists to to produce a critique of entertainment, spectacle and of the white cube gallery environment. The live music programme will range from the thrillingly experimental to the fabulously kitsch, alongside impromptu performances, events and talks which will take place throughout the grounds.

SUPERNORMAL is an intimate event for an exclusive audience of five hundred, allowing the exploration of the seventeenth century site of Braziers Park, with its' Strawberry Hill Gothic manor house and Grade II listed wooden barn and out-buildings where a variety of events will take place. Braziers Park also celebrates its' sixty first anniversary in 2011 as a School of Integrative Social Research, a community driven by new ideas of collective action, a unique attempt at social co-existence that points toward a future built upon mutual respect.

Braziers Park is an eco-site with fresh running water and hot outdoor showers.

Dates: 19-21 August 2011

Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research, Oxfordshire OX10

Image Credit: Greg Neate

SUPERNORMAL 2010

DATE: 20TH-22ND AUGUST 2010

LOCATION: BRAZIERS PARK, OXFORDSHIRE, OX10 6AN, UNITED KINGDOM

LINE-UP: FAUST, TEETH OF THE SEA, HYRST, GNOD, THOUGHT FORMS, BONG, A BAND, EMILY BREEZE, EL TORO, BIG NATURALS, SUNDAY MOURNING + MANY MORE

Set in the grounds of a 17th century country manor house formerly inhabited by Ian Fleming and the family of Marianne Faithfull, SUPERNORMAL is an art entertainment event for an exclusive audience of eight hundred, less a conventional festival than a generated artwork in itself.

Art organisations from OPA Guadalajara Mexico to Aspex Portsmoth, are creating new works fro SUPERNORMAL, a visual art, film, music and 'in conversations' programme situated across fifty acres of quintessential English countryside. Professional artists selected to create SUPERNORMAL present ideas and working processes in a variety of disciplines and media, representing the breadth of contemporary practice and issues from the political to the personal.

SUPERNORMAL will inhabit and incorporate the varied buildings on site including a Gothic Manor Performance House, Caravan Discotheque, The Grain Store Talks Programme and The Luna Cinema. The live entertainment programme features krautrock legends Faust headlining a specially selected and wildly diverse bill comprising art rock independents, psychedelic visionaries, garage-fixated hellraisers and acoustic troubadours alike, with premium quality DJ action following into the night and beyond.

SUPERNORMAL is an eco site with hout outdoor showers, fresh drinking water, local food and breweries providing organic seasonal produce, with not a portaloo in site.

Branding by This Is Studio.


Image Credit: Greg Neate

BBC Radio 4: Supernormal

Fifty years ago the Happening was what was really happening, on the international visual art scene. Instead of people visiting galleries to look at art objects, audiences became involved in a series of events that made no distinction between observer and observed, and sometimes didn't seem to have a beginning, middle or end. Happenings paved the way for performance art and live art. And the 60s wouldn't have been half as groovy without them. Early Happenings, like Allan Kaprow's 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, Claes Oldenburg's Snapshots From A City and Al Hansens' Requiem For W.C. Fields, inspired a generation of young artists, and grabbed the attention of the public. In this programme, Bob Dickinson re-imagines the Happening with contemporary artists and writers including RoseLee Goldberg, Ilana Mitchell, Andrea Cusmano, and Lorenzo Fusi. Dickinson also investigates the way Happenings travelled around the world, to Asia and Europe, thanks to Nam June Paik in Korea and Japan, Adrian Henri in Liverpool, the Viennese Aktionists, Joseph Beuys in Germany, and Yves Klein in France. As Happenings became part of popular culture, they became increasingly spectacular, and in 1967 Britain's biggest ever example of the activity was staged at Alexandra Palace in London - the 24 Hour Technicolour Dream. It was a high-point, in more ways than one, for the hippie counterculture, but it also marked the point when Happenings stopped being art. We meet an eye-witness. Now, half a century after Happenings transformed the art scene, some contemporary artists, such as Tanya Bruguera, from Cuba, are revisiting and reviving several of Allan Kaprow's classic Happenings for a new audience - and we find out what happens when she tries them out on the streets and shops of Liverpool.

BROADCAST: Thursday 21 October 2010 11:30AM BBC Radio 4

Supernormal Festival: 2010

Tom Medwell Photos for Supernormal Festival

The Guardian Guide Preview

SUPERNORMAL FESTIVAL, IPSDEN

Faust. Photograph: Gary Wolstenholme

In spite of the unassuming title, Supernormal really does look different from other festivals. Non-commercial and artist-organised, its debut incarnation off-sets an inspired music lineup with performance art, film screenings and artist's talks. Kraut-rockers par excellence, Faust headline, with support from the likes of experimental folkie Alexander Tucker, Teeth Of The Sea's far-out contemporary space-rock and Gnod's psychedelic drone. Meanwhile, artists will be causing creative sparks with new work and discussion groups throughout the site. It's all happening amid the 50 acres of a 17th-century country house, celebrating its 60th anniversary as a proto-hippy commune.

Braziers Park, to 22 Aug, supernormalfestival.co.uk

Skye Sherwin