Eclipse Festival 2016 in Sulawesi

PUBLISHED February 9th, 2016 12:00 pm | UPDATED May 30th, 2017 04:31 pm

Happening for the first time from 7 to 11 March 2016 in Sulawesi, Indonesia, Eclipse Festival 2016 has revealed a huge and incredibly diverse line-up in celebration of the rare and spectacular total solar eclipse. Approximately 2 min 55 secs of totality, this upcoming eclipse is one of the longest in history as we know it!

Artists such as Marcus Henriksson aka Minilogue / Son Kite, Secret Cinema, Xhin, X-Dream, Robert Leiner have already been confirmed, and festival goers can also expect art, cultural events, and workshops too.

We managed to steal Laurent, one of the organizers from Interstellar team for quick chat to share more on the concept and planning behind the Eclipse Festival.

Hi Laurent! It’s always nice to see more events popping up supporting a truly extensive range of music, art and culture. How exactly did the concept come about?

Thank you for taking the time to chat with us! The idea for the festival came about when Atiqah, Interstellar founder and Eclipse Festival 2016 director, was searching for astrological events online. She saw that there was a total solar eclipse happening in Indonesia in 2016 and began planning for the event back in November 2014 with her partner Manu.

As you may already know, there’s a festival that accompanies every solar eclipse, wherever it happens in the world. The last Eclipse Festival was in 2012 in Cairns, Australia, and we’re lucky to have this rare astronomical event take place so close to home this year. The event itself is a cross-cultural cosmic gathering of people from all walks of life united in a 5 day celebration of art, music, and culture.

We’ve heard the Interstellar team is packed with a team of superb individuals. Tell us more.

We have a small but very experienced team working full time on the festival as well as our regular Interstellar events. Atiqah is the director and works very hard coordinating everything as well as doing artist bookings. Then we have Manu, a 20-year veteran DJ, label owner, and award winning graphic designer in charge of the design and musical programming.

Antoine Merger aka Punkadelik, a painter and festival stage designer, takes care of all the visual aspects of the festival, from the stages to the installations and the structures for the market place. Joao is our head of lighting. He has massive experience as the lighting director of Boom Festival so the venue will look amazing at night time.

I am the latest addition to the Interstellar family. I was previously doing events in Tokyo, such as the Rainbow Disco Club festival, and events in Berlin. My main role is communications as well as programming the Interstellar events we do at Koh in Bali.

Last but not least, we have awesome local partners on the ground in Palu, Rio, and the Hasan Bahasyuan Institute, who are essential to the realisation of this event as well as a solid team of people coming in from Australia to help with logistics and operations.

Music and art are integral to the festival. With the broad spectrum of music genres, how many stages are we expecting and how do they differ from each other?

There will be a wide range of acts at the festival from live traditional and contemporary world music to old school and new electronic music. The main stage will focus on higher energy dance music such as psychedelic trance and techno. The second stage has a more clubby feel, with a blend of disco, house and techno. The third stage is a chill-out and live stage featuring traditional cultural performances from various parts of Indonesia, live bands, and downtempo electronica acts. We are looking at about 100 performances total over the 5 days with about 50% flown in from abroad for the festival. It’s going to be really awesome!

As for the art department, will we be expecting to see more cultural performances, art installations, projection visuals or live painting?

All of that, and lots of it. The stages themselves are being designed by Antoine, who is an artist with an engineering background, so they will look like massive art installations that people can dance under, keeping them protected from sun or rain. The stages and the venue will be augmented with visuals and lighting at night and there will be some live painting taking place throughout the event.

Our goal is to really integrate Indonesian culture into the festival. So besides fusing local art and aesthetics into the overall visual presentation of the festival, there will be a lot of traditional performances from various parts of Indonesia such as Cecak and Raego dance. Furthermore, we have a rich workshop program where guests can learn and take part in activities such as Ikat (traditional weaving), instrument building, traditional & contemporary healing, yoga, and more.

We understand that Eclipse Festival 2016 is an one-off event on occasion of the rare solar eclipse. Are there any plans after this festival is over?

Although this is our first festival as Interstellar, our team have been doing events for a long time. We feel very connected and have been gifted with a great opportunity with the solar eclipse happening close to where we live. We want to continue to do events as Interstellar in South East Asia always with the aim of bringing different cultures, traditions, arts and people together.

Any shouts?

Thank you to the thousands of you who already purchased tickets! We are working hard to make this an unforgettable experience for you. For those of you who are still considering to come, please do it! Experiencing at total solar eclipse is a life-changing event and there we are lucky to have it happening in South East Asia.

 

Tickets for Eclipse Festival 2016 can be purchased here. For updates of the event, please see their website or Facebook Page.