Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival is an energetic festival of ground-breaking art, digital culture and new cinema. The eclectic cross-media festival will return to Manchester as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad, for its fourth annual edition from 29 August – 2 September 2012.
Drawing from the North West of England’s rich cultural heritage, AND presents astonishing new commissions and extraordinary experiences, turning audiences minds inside out like no other festival. The 2012 Festival programme includes a ‘super-football’ grown from living cells, an outdoor scrap car drive-in, mobile peep shows, a prodigious Alan Turing-tribute film and frank advice from teenagers.
Alongside a large programme of activity, AND also sets out to explore the term ‘success?’, taking a closer look at artists who have claimed ‘failure’ to offer more imaginative and insightful ways of existing in the world. AND introduces an array of artists, filmmakers and performers taking risks, crossing boundaries and setting adventurous parameters. Expect a programme full of explosions, entropy and experiments.
Activity kick-starts with a preview weekend on 22 – 23 June, followed by a spectacular tour of the Northwest in Cumbria, Cheshire and Lancashire, culminating in the festival’s arrival in Manchester at the end of August. Debbie Lander, Creative Programmer for London 2012, said “AND Festival is fun, challenging and one of a kind. The 2012 edition of the festival promises to be the most ambitious to date with a series of new commissions designed especially for the London 2012 festival – the finale of the Cultural Olympiad, bringing together leading artists from across the world with the very best from the UK.”
Participating programme venues and partners for the August 2012 festival include Anthony Burgess Centre, Arts Catalyst, BBC Big Screens, British Waterways, Cornerhouse, DaDa – Disability & Deaf Arts, FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology), the Football Museum, Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Liverpool University, Madlab, MOSI Museum of Science and Industry, Octopus Collective, Preston Guild and Rogue Artists’
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