Soft Centre: Partying Made Political

Ilias Bakalla
6th Sep 2017

Early this spring sees Soft Centre’s inaugural festival; a dynamic light, music and performance art extravaganza held in the industrial halls of Casula Powerhouse. Expect to dive head first into the rabbit-hole, propelled by the extremities of electronic music, accompanied by an awe-inspiring light display that’ll twist your perception of sight. Exclusive collaborations between performance artists and musicians push the event in to the uncharted waters of Sydney’s cultural landscape.

Music will be provided by a number of DJs and live acts birthed from the local and international underground scenes. A Made Up Sound (Netherlands) and Via App (USA) will be making their Australian debuts. Both artists play experimental, off-beat techno, designed to shatter passive listening and reconceptualise dance music.

The lighting display is set to be phenomenal with Sam Whiteside’s laser projections formulating a geometric mesh above the Turbine Hall, whilst Melbourne's Hyper Reelist installs a LED helix sculpture to ignite the Hopper Gallery.

Perhaps the most exciting prospect Soft Centre has to offer are the four exclusive collaborations performing on the day, bringing a new, performative element into Sydney’s festival scene. Jannah Quilll will be teaming up with Hossein Ghaemi to produce a Persian Dream-Pop chorus performance with a number of art-world extraordinaires. The next collaboration celebrates sexual diversity; thumping trans producer, SIMONA, is bringing her new live act in collaboration with kink-inspired duo Adonis and Beau Kirq. The pair have gained notoriety in the queer community for their genre-defying drag performances.

Experimental theatre and production house, House of Vnholy, will be teaming up with celestial, ambient artist waterhouse. House of Vnholy’s work focuses on the subversion of cultural structures, expressed through a bodily medium. Audiences will witness the artists’ physical contortion amongst an ominous lighting scheme.

The final collaboration is of a musical kind, mixing the electronic beats of Phile with the doom metal duo Divide and Dissolve. Laying siege to white cis supremacy, Divide and Dissolve seek to decolonize any venue they enter with their rumbling distortion. Coupled with Phile, a Sydney duo producing encapsulating noise techno, this collaboration is set to annihilate the willing audience with a solid wall of sound.

Soft Centre is pioneering a multi-experiential movement, no longer limiting music festivals to just music, Soft Centre brings together art, light and performance, conjuring the holy trinity of sensory alteration. An event curated by the covert masterminds that pedal Sydney’s underground scene, bringing together a line-up so bizarre and polarised it’s like chalk and cheese in perfect, palatable harmony. The event resonates closely with the underground ethos of embracing experimental art forms, sexual diversity and considered representation of race and gender in the line-up. Who says partying can't be political! So boogie your booty on down to Casula Powerhouse on September 23.

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1 Powerhouse Road
Casula
+61 2 9824 1121

Mon – Sun 10am – 5pm

http://www.casulapowerhouse.com/
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