This week in PostMag: Clockenflap, The Fringe Club and even more art
What to expect from this week’s print issue, from interviews with indie pop artist St Vincent and former Fringe Club head Benny Chia, to PST ART in California
Sometimes I feel like I might be the only person in Hong Kong who’s never been to Clockenflap. It’s silly, yes – in a city of 7.5 million, that clearly cannot be true. But the way that eyebrows raise along with an “Oh really?” on hearing that this will be my first Clockenflap, I should be excused for feeling so. Over its decade and a half, it’s firmly established itself as a Hong Kong institution.
The festival’s three days of musical mayhem descend next weekend. Ahead of the madness, Karen Cheung speaks with St Vincent, aka Annie Clark. The iconic indie pop artist, who will be taking the main Clockenflap stage on Saturday, has just released her seventh studio album, All Born Screaming – with a Spanish version, no less – and Cheung dives into her shape-shifting solo career.
Festivals pop up elsewhere in this week’s print issue. The Edinburgh Fringe appears as inspiration for Hong Kong’s own Festival Fringe in 1982. In an excerpt from his new memoir, the local festival’s founder, Benny Chia Chun-heng, describes the trials and tribulations of putting it on and locating what became the Fringe Club.
Of festivals and California: my first music festival was actually a Vans Warped Tour – that’s probably far too revealing on many levels – on a San Francisco pier. Despite the pull of checkerboard canvas shoes and skater boys, it did not convert me into a lifelong festivalgoer. It’s a few decades later but perhaps Clockenflap still can. Let’s see next weekend.
