Hinterland

Let’s go downtown and watch the modern kids
Let’s go downtown and talk to the modern kids
They will eat right out of your hand
Using great big words that they don’t understand
-Arcade Fire - Rococo

In Roger Ebert's review of The Human Centipede, he said:

“I am required to award stars to movies I review. This time, I refuse to do it. The star rating system is unsuited to this film. Is the movie good? Is it bad? Does it matter? It is what it is and occupies a world where the stars don't shine.”

This is similar, minus the stars not shining. I'm still not really sure how to describe Saturday night. But I certainly will try. I don't know if it was good or awful, boring or entertaining. It was something, but what exactly I do not know.

I went with a couple of friends to something called “Luminocity's Hinterland.” It billed itself as an event where “a woven tapestry of artistry and human romance comes an explosion of utopian confetti, a near perceptual scattering of haunting visuals, and dynamic movement.” Interesting. Furthermore, it said Hinterland is "a mosaic of flesh driven characters and sub-cultures whom at their greatest intensity, wed within the genuine nature of an unusual carnival. A marriage of the art forms will shape the physical traits of Hinterland, amidst six acres of historic downtown Atlanta, a place near the streets that change names; a gravity hot spot bestowed the name Woodruff Park.” Once they cleared the hobos out.  We had no expectations, other than there being a bevy of hipsters and people taking themselves far too seriously to laugh at, such as who ever wrote that description I quoted.

Heading into the city, the dusk sky was a beautiful, perfect transition from orange to deep blue behind the city skyline. 12 hours later I would experience a similar dawn as I headed away from the city.  Hinterland, which was thankfully free, started at 7, which meant it really started at 7:30. During that waiting period, a large portion of the crowd gathered in a circle in the middle of the park around a long, slender table. There was nobody at the table and nothing indicating that something would be there, but people went there anyway. At one end of the park under a gazebo were some people dressed in Steampunk with glow ropes but they appeared to just be people with personal issues and not part of the event. Regardless, people still gathered around them to watch them very poorly dance with no music playing. I just assumed they were on PCP (the performers, not the audience, but surely at least one or two of them were). Then some music started to play out of the speakers, and groups of people gravitated towards where they heard it coming from only to discover it was from a PA system. It sounded like a techno version of the procession music in The Godfather Part II. By this point I commented that there would be no parade, that we were all unknowing and abiding subjects in a Guiness Book of World Records attempt at “largest gathering of confused people.”

Finally, it began. A group of dancers dressed like a poor man's Cirque Du Solei performed some combination of ballet and interpretive dancing, eventually pinning a female dancer to a tree in what could be described as something near a crucifixion or a burning at the stake. Ah, art. They were on ground level so unless you were in the front or you were tall, you didn't see much. It would have been best if they performed on some kind of platform, even just a few feet high. In addition to the dancers there was a guy who looked like a low budget Ghostbuster, another who looked like a Borg, a Jack Sparrow look alike, and one that looked like someone from Mos Eisley space port. This was followed by, at the giant long table, a performance by Big Boi. It was decided on the way over that “Boi” should be pronounced like “moi.” We also agreed that thanks to The Walking Dead, it is now impossible to walk around downtown Atlanta without thinking that there are zombies around every corner.  So Big Boi and some other guy who probably has a SUV with his face painted all over it driving around town performed a song, then got on some giant “two wheeled” contraption that is hard to describe.

This is art.  Really.

Big Boi and some other guy.

 Big Boi on The Giant Contraption.

They made their way over to a large semi-circular wall that was lit up with various spinning lights. The adjacent buildings were also treated to a light display. On the giant wall were dancers on platforms of different heights. Maybe they were signifying the levels of hell, but there weren't 7 of them. Eventually Big Boi appeared for a second of song, the last he would perform that night. I wonder how much he got paid for it. Big Boi spent most of this number on a genie lift. High class stuff. The dancers danced, the rappers rapped, and the crowd shivered in the cold.

There's Big Boi on a piece of construction equipment.  At least pimp that out!

All of this was entertaining in a curious way, then a little bit of mayhem ensued. The dancers exited the area by running full speed from two different egress points. Those points just happened to intersect right where I was standing. The first wave was a bunch of dancers going too fast for their own good. They just ran in a path that completely ignored if people were standing in the way, sending spectators flying. Maybe it was supposed to be interactive. Nearly clipped by that rush of dancers, the second wave came from my blindside. It was a moment of pandemonium, and another onslaught of dancers from the first wave only added to the hilarity of the situation. This second wave of the first wave, essentially a third wave, were far slower than their predecessors. They took the time to stop and make slow, winding movements with their limbs in what is supposedly called “interpretative dance” but comes across more like an acid trip. The last guy was way late and taking his sweet ass time. Dude, your buddies are all up the road. Following the direction of the dance troupe, just a few feet away was a giant bubble with a person in it. We resisted the urge to climb in it and kick out the person inside it to roll and bounce around downtown Atlanta. Then four or five, maybe more, APD officers on motorcycles came rolling in, sirens blasting. They moved spectators back and into a straight line, then proceeded to push through that line like tanks through a forest. No one could make out exactly where they wanted to go, because each motorcycle was going in a different direction. We were nearly run over by them, but it wasn't anything to get pissed about. Rather, we laughed it all off under the sounds of bike engines revving and police sirens blaring. Turns out they were carving a path for The Giant Contraption and drum procession to come out to. The Giant Contraption has a tight angled turning radius, but since it's so big it still takes up a lot of room. So we nearly got run over by that too.

 

Get out of my way tax paying registered voter!

 Yeah just park it anywhere.  Like on my feet or that guy's head.

Looks kind of like that thing from 12 Monkeys.

 

The Giant Contraption's escort drummers.

It would have been really cool if it ate the crowd.

After all that chaos, it was pretty clear that we needed to follow all of this. The carnival-like parade made its way down Peachtree Street, causing all kinds of passers by to stop and wonder what the fuck is going on. Traffic was stopped and drivers stuck waiting for this slow moving event to get the hell out of their way were left looking around in confusion. Patrons at restaurants, people on their balconies in hotels and people just out and about were all equally stupefied. It all ended at Centennial Park, where the mushroom eating drum brigade came to many points where it would logical for them to stop playing but they ignored each and every one of them. Behind them BMXers with flashing lights on them and in their bikes performed lazy jumps and half ass stunts. It was an interesting event.  We couldn't say that we loved it, but we also had to admit that it kept us entertained.  And heck, it was free, so we can't really complain.  We declined the after party and headed out, unsure of what we had just experienced. Two days later and I'm still not sure.