Michael Pedersen, poet, playwright and provocateur, talks to Neil Mudd about Where Are We Now? a three day health-check for the nation at Hull 2017.
“They’ve made Where Are We Now? t-shirts that they’re selling in House of Fraser!” marvels Michael Pedersen. The design is the work of punk artist in residence Jamie Reid whose signature ransom note style, once reviled, today decorates phone cases and lunchboxes.
If the idea is an appalling one, the Scottish poet and playwright gives no indication: “If this provokes people into asking questions about commercial success and counter-culture credentials then we’re all for that,” he chuckles down the phone from his home in Edinburgh when I interview him for Culture Vultures.
The ‘we’ is Neu! Reekie! the Edinburgh counter-cultural wrecking crew Pedersen promotes with Kevin Williamson, publisher and fellow agitator. The name splices Krautrock pioneers Neu! with Auld Reekie, the popular nickname for Edinburgh; there is also a more personal nod to Scottish poet Paul Reekie, a friend of Williamson who killed himself in 2010. “We could do a twenty-five minute interview just on the Neu! Reekie! banner itself,” Pedersen informs me.
For Hull UK City of Culture 2017, Neu! Reekie! has curated a three day state of the nation address under the Bowie referencing headline Where Are We Now? Touted as “a gathering of time-served trouble-makers, spoken word rebels, artistic mavericks and leftfield music pioneers,” the event is a contemporary reaction to our times.
The pair must be cock-a-hoop that a snap election was announced for the first week in June? “There’s a lot of stuff that’s come as a surprise over the period of us agreeing and plotting to do this festival,” Pedersen confesses. “When we started there was no Brexit in place, there was no Donald Trump in place, and there was no General Election called.”
Fortunate for them then that Neu! Reekie! has recruited a band of socially conscious performers eager to engage in wider debate. “Their artistic practice was as reactive to the current political environment as our programming has been,” Pedersen agrees.
In the six and a half years since Pedersen and Williamson began putting on events as Neu! Reekie!, they have watched it grow exponentially from one-hundred people in a Leith back-room to filling venues across Europe and Japan. Opting for idiosyncratic spaces off the usual beaten circuit, events draw a fiercely loyal, partisan audience, attracted by a potent mix of art, spoken word, films, music, drama and theatre.
For Where Are We Now? their original instincts remain intact: “We used that foundation of the visceral, organic way that Neu! Reekie! has built up to home in on those performers we’ve worked with that we thought would be our primary provocateurs for this festival,” explains Pedersen. “Then we looked where we thought the gaps were and tried to see what names fell off the tip of our tongues.”
The acts he and Williamson have assembled for Where Are We Now? are a diverse bunch, connecting the hyper-local with the international. Among them are Mercury Prize winners Young Fathers – “Neu! Reekie! has sort of grown up with them in Edinburgh,” Pedersen says. “As their profile increased, our profile increased.” – Charlotte Church, dub-poet and Peel favourite Linton Kwesi-Johnson, DJ Andy Weatherall, poet Hollie McNish, film-maker Mark Cousins, and pop ironist Momus – the closest this country has come to producing Serge Gainsbourg. Jamie Reid will create a site-specific artistic intervention from scratch, and radical feminist online magazine gal-dem has come up with its own bedroom installation called What’s In a Safe Space?
Easily the most intriguing and bizarre event of the weekend is Forty Darkest Thoughts by Bill Drummond in his guise as ‘The Shoeshine Boy.’ The erstwhile KLF frontman – notorious for purportedly setting fire to £1 million in cash on a remote Scottish island – will be taking to the streets of Hull to shine shoes and ask customers to reveal their darkest thoughts. The best (or worst) of these will be featured in a lecture Drummond will give on the closing day of the festival. “You’re going to have to track him down,” advises Pedersen. “He’s scattered throughout the city, shining shoes before his show on Sunday and he’s not even telling us where he’s going to be.”
With such anarchic tomfoolery to entertain them, locals might well be reminded of COUM Transmissions, Hull’s homegrown Merry Pranksters whose counter-cultural reverberations were the subject of a meticulously curated and fascinating retrospective at the Humber Street Gallery earlier in the year. “We definitely channelled that,” agrees Pedersen, pointing out that while Genesis P-orridge and Cosey Fanni Tutti may now be welcomed as prodigal ambassadors, this was not always the case.
“They got chased out of town, pretty much, did they not?” Pederesen asks. “We were down for the COUM Transmissions thing and it was interesting to hear (Genesis and Cosey) looking back. It was almost as if they were rectifying the cultural mistakes of the past in order to empower the cultural forces of the future. That ethos is something that really appealed to us and was something that was pretty essential to what we should do with this festival.”
Film-maker Mark Cousins has stated that the most important word in Where Are We Now? is ‘Now.’ The roots of the festival – and presumably also its connection to the ‘roots and routes’ phase of Hull’s year as UK City of Culture – lie in challenge and dissent. In this, Neu! Reekie! has previous form.
In the 1990s, Williamson founded cult publishing house Rebel Inc. with its mission statement of ‘Fuck the Mainstream.’ An early champion of writers Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner, Williamson was also responsible for retrieving the likes of Alexander Trocchi and Richard Brautigan from the wastepaper basket of literary history. Pedersen is keen to emphasise, however, that Neu! Reekie! is not about simply revisiting past glories but “about taking that agitative, ardent method of curation and looking forward to the future with it.”
The generational mix is key to the festival’s success. “We have young, thirsty performers asking questions alongside cultural veterans who have been rallying troops and audiences for decades.” Where Are We Now? may well be its cultural obverse, but Pedersen wants to attract similar audience numbers as Radio 1’s Bank Holiday Big Weekend event, if only to “prove that some of the most important questions are being asked below the commercial radar.”
Pedersen laughs when I recount a story about being told I ‘looked the type’ when I attended the Basil Kirchin weekender in February. There is not a typical Neu! Reekie! fan it turns out. “Our audience always comes to these events from a different perspective. We want people to come along and witness performances they can glory in, but be taken on the back-foot by performers they wouldn’t have anticipated finding themselves in front of.”
“We’re aware there will be people on this bill that are not even local names, let alone national or household names. If we can tunnel into their counter-cultural roots – because popularity doesn’t evaporate that, and these people are still tricky and difficult to work with – then it provokes an interesting question: Can you continue to be part of a counter-culture as you evolve in terms of commercial success and popularity?”
“There are all these super-interesting little mini connections that we’ve made in our heads,” Pedersen continues. Citing Andrew Weatherall’s crucial role in Young Fathers winning Scottish Album of the Year in 2014, he sees evidence of a subliminal network of enforcement at work – the DJ’s intervention was effectively a bequeathing of ‘talents and endorsements’ from one counter-cultural generation to the next: “I think it’s these unique relationships that will make things happen outside of what’s programmed, and which will make Hull one of the most electrifying, empowering places to be in the UK for that weekend.”
As programmers, he and Williamson have approached Hull much as they do Edinburgh says Pedersen. “We’ve spent over a year utilising venues, building up an audience, trying to work out what culturally works within this city. We’ve invested more in this city than in any other city apart from Edinburgh really. It’s not something that we take lightly.”
“We’ve had to come down to Hull many times, been involved in other events, speaking on panels, engaging with people, community groups, local performers. At every Q and A people ask us what we think of Hull and are we going to come back after the festival? There has been a real investigatory nature about what we’re doing, and piece by piece we’ve had to earn the respect of the audience.”
Pedersen perceives many similarities between the two cities – both look out onto tidal rivers with the ruminative qualities of character that suggests; both suffered catastrophic industrial decline and mass unemployment followed by the inevitable social consequences – as well as one key difference: “At the time that Scotland unanimously voted to stay in the EU, Hull was one of the biggest Brexit cities in the UK. We’ve talked about how we see this as a political gulf.”
It might well have spurred Williamson’s extraordinary decision to stand for Parliament on a Hull for Scotland ticket, a candidacy he was forced to withdraw through the vagaries of rules intended to ameliorate the electoral process. (Define irony!) “That came out of Hull asking us to respond to the General Election,” laughs Pedersen. “In terms of a long-term legacy: an independent Scotland and an independent Hull, you can’t ask for a greater legacy than that.”
As the interview winds down, Pedersen tells me he thinks the team behind Hull 2017 have ‘pretty much nailed it,’ that Hull’s tenure as UK City of Culture will be spoken about in similar revered tones as former host cities Liverpool and Glasgow. “It’s been provoking and exciting in equal measure,” he says. “Let’s hope we can play a little part in that.”
As part of Hull UK City of Culture 2017, Where Are We Now? by Neu! Reekie! runs from 2nd – 4th June at various venues across Hull, including Hull City Hall. Tickets are available online here.