Boom festival brings avant-garde culture to Charlotte in October

Call a project “Boom,” and a question follows: What are you blowing up?

The first Boom festival, set for Oct. 16-18 along Central Avenue, aims to explode the notions that Charlotte has no avant garde, that only big institutions and familiar venues make art worth seeing, and that a county with a million people can’t support three packed days of performances by companies local and national.

Founder Manoj Kesavan announced the event Thursday night at Pecha Kucha, another of his alternative offerings. (He runs the nonprofit cultural collective Que-OS, as in “chaos.”) The format will be simple: 12 to 15 productions offered each day, with patrons drifting from one to another and flowing in and out of bars and restaurants. Five Charlotte groups will coordinate programs, performing and/or importing other artists to do so.

Moving Poets Charlotte, On Q Productions, Taproot, XOXO and a troupe led by UNC Charlotte’s CarlosAlexis Cruz will anchor the festival at places such as Snug Harbor and Open Door Studios.

“The idea came out of things we did at the Democratic National Convention (in 2012),” Kesavan says. “We had 140 artists, performers and curators in a collaboration by a very diverse group. We started to talk about how to do something yearly.

“A lot of these artists go to fringe festivals in other cities: Edinburgh, New Orleans, Philadelphia. Little Greensboro has had a fringe festival for 12 years. It says something about Charlotte that we have all these big institutions but do not create smaller work here.”

Fringe festivals usually have an open call for entrants. Boom 2 may cast the net wider, but this one works by invitation only: “We want to keep it manageable but high-quality.”

Charlotte has known few such experiences. The closest parallel may be First Night, the former New Year’s Eve event where people came uptown for a free-from evening of culture.

Actor-dancer Hardin Minor, a Charlotte performer for 37 years, likened the idea of Boom to both the early days of Spirit Square and the internationally known Burning Man Festival.

“The thing that held Spirit Square back from the demolition team in 1976-77 was that it turned into a people’s center. That was a gathering of different artists and media that seems to (relate to) what Manoj is shooting for. It’s also like Burning Man, where you have this small city of people who roam from site to site. You catch up with some guy shooting volatile jet fuel, then go to an installation with balloons that light up in sync with Bach.”

On Q founder Quentin Talley, who’ll do the first full live performance of his album “Freedom Day,” sees two benefits. Audiences who may not attend On Q’s productions at Spirit Square – such as “Seven Guitars” May 27-June 6 – or may know the company only through plays will get a better understanding of it. And Boom will fill a niche.

“Festivals like this get artists to come together and audiences to see things they may not have seen before,” says Talley. “A lot of (local) arts organizations and a lot of events don’t cater to fringe-type performances.”

Kesavan expects to have finalized the list of invitees and venues by early summer. Meanwhile, he’s looking for corporate and foundation sponsorships.

“My job as orchestrator is to make sure we pay all the core companies and keep doing it every year without overextending ourselves,” he says. “This is how Que-OS works: We think up great things, then figure out how to pay for them.”

This story was originally published May 1, 2015 at 2:55 PM with the headline "Boom festival brings avant-garde culture to Charlotte in October."