Making a welcome return after a year’s hiatus, the art, music and film festival Fort Process this September brings electrical experiments, free jazz and out and out noise to the stunning slopes, outbuildings and subterranean exhibition (and ammo storage) spaces of Newhaven Fort.
While the complex is worth a visit at any time of year, with Fort Process – especially if it’s sunny – it’s hard to imagine a better, more scenic platform for experimental arts as this. By its very nature, the best discoveries visitors can make are those which surprise – the unexpected performances stumbled upon in the ramparts while looking out across the channel, or deep beneath the surface of the earth, a saxophone’s wail reverberating for minutes before you even set eyes on it as you round the bend in a wartime tunnel.
Highlights this year will be experimental percussion legend Limpe Fuchs, the free/improv jazz saxophonist Evan Parker, and the ‘mechanical techno’ of Graham Dunning, who builds electronic music from layers and layers of props on his turntable. Pierre Bastien, who is also on the bill, is described as “the man who makes Meccano sing.”
Also well worth a watch will be the Skatgobs trio, who utilise any noise you can imagine their mouths could make, simultaneously, to cathartic and often hilarious effect. Away from the more ‘traditional’ stage performances, Darsha Hewitt’s Electrostatic Bell Choir promises to intriguing. Her sound installation uses old TV monitors and static electricity to “agitate an assembly of bells positioned in front of the televisions.”
There is also a talks and films itinerary, which is yet to be firmed up, although respected ambient author David Toop and local historian/writer/polymath David Bramwell are listed so far. The event runs from midday till 10pm, with full bar and food facilities onsite for the day. You can also bag yourself a ticket including all sorts of goodies by donating to their indiegogo fundraiser here.
Newhaven Fort, Saturday 3rd September 2016
Tickets from £30, available at www.fortprocess.co.uk
