Quebec City, CA. (MUTEK) - After having taking a breather during the last few weeks, the MUTEK team would like to take this opportunity to recap what has been another great year for the Festival. Now that the dust has settled, we can now look back on the five action-packed days of activities and emotions with a more complete, overall perspective.
Each year, one of the main objectives of a festival like MUTEK is to reiterate its relevance while maintaining its cutting-edge quality. A few days before the beginning of this year's Festival, MUTEK was bestowed with the Silver Award of the Grands Prix du tourisme québécois, in the 'Festival and Tourism Events (budget under $1 million)' category. Injecting a healthy dose of pressure to continue to measure up to this honour, the award certainly propelled the 7th edition of the Festival to get off to a strong start.
Judging by the tangible results of the attendance numbers and the subjective elements regarding the attitudes of the artists and the public, not to mention the positive buzz that circulated on the international scene, the general consensus was that MUTEK 2006 was yet again another great success. We strived to ensure the elements that make the Festival special were unveiled with renewed energy in order to achieve their full impact.
The 7th edition of MUTEK proposed to the public an exciting curriculum packed with highlights and surprises, as well as new discoveries (for example, Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa) and some rediscoveries (notably Berliners Dimbiman and Pole) for the dedicated festivalgoers. Furthermore, the Festival achieved its annual goal of building upon its audience numbers from the previous year for its venue shows. This was confirmed by ticket sales having increased by 34% since 2005, and by 4 of the 8 indoor programs enjoying sold-out status. Also of note, festivalgoers seemed truly intent on getting the most out of this year's Festival offerings as there were a record number of MUTEK ticket packages sold this year-twice as many as last year!
By showing up in large numbers, festivalgoers made no mistake in establishing some of the highlights of this year's Festival, mainly: Pierre Bastien and Artificiel at Ex-Centris, Modeselektor and Martin Tétreault at SAT, Henrik Schwarz at the Fonderie Darling on Saturday afternoon, June 3rd, Lawrence and Thomas Brinkmann at Metropolis and yet again Deadbeat, who closed out the Festival on Sunday, June 4th at Fonderie Darling. The professional section of the Festival was also well received, notably the workshops that, for the most part, were at capacity.
A refreshing presence in the heart of Montreal at the beginning of the festival season, MUTEK obtained its objectives by attracting once again a strong audience turnout from outside Quebec (35%), helping to confirm its nature as a tourist draw for the city.
On the other hand, we would like to take a moment to emphasize the precarious nature of our organization, which continues to suffer from under-funding, often hindering its ability to effectively attain its goals. From a local standpoint, MUTEK proves its worth each year by working towards strengthening Montreal's position as a cultural and savvy city. Since its creation in 2000, MUTEK has presented over 150 different Canadian artists/projects, representing in essence the most important platform of its genre in North America. MUTEK created a foundation that did not exist before its inception, and helped numerous local creators to shine on the national scene as well as internationally. Through our diffusionary activities outside of Canada, we have succeeded in helping to give the Canadian scene a dynamic and avant-garde reputation beyond its borders; the MUTEK tour of China in March 2005 is perfect example of this notion, as is the important inroads made in Latin America with the MUTEK tour there in November/December of 2005.
MUTEK has never chosen to publicize its difficulties in the past, choosing instead to focus on the positive aspects of its actions in order to achieve recognition and support for its more virtuous objectives and artistic aspirations. We continue to hope that digital creation, electronic music and the artists who excel in these domains will be adequately supported in the future.
SAVE THE DATE: In spite of everything, we are already looking forward to MUTEK 2007 with enthusiasm and optimism: the 8th edition of the Festival will take place in Montreal from May 30th to June 3rd 2007.
In the meantime, relive some of the memorable moments of MUTEK 2006 by checking out photos of the festival or by visiting the podcast section of the WWW.BANDEAPART.FM website (which notably contains exclusive recordings by Pierre Bastien, Krikor and Junction SM).
Or follow further MUTEK activities anytime at WWW.MUTEK.CA.
