Into The Great Wide Open 2019
celebrate the future
THE MUSIC
New talent and already known
The festival served this year not only as a nursery for new talent including The Murder Capital, Celeste, and Zwangere Guy. The Sports Field was filled with well-known names like Hot Chip, Jungle, and Parcels, while Eefje de Visser presented her new music to the Netherlands for the first time on De Open Plek with an ambitious live show. The Dutch Wind Ensemble proposed the idea of performing a three-part oratorio by Joseph Haydn together with the Flemish writer Bart Moeyaert in one day. This took place at the foot of the lighthouse and in the Nicolaas Church.
In various places, the future was discussed in many forms around the theme Possible Futures.
This alternation between well-known and lesser-known names was also evident on the art route, where works by visionary artists such as Claudy Jongstra and Atelier Van Lieshout were presented alongside visual surprises, such as Analemma, for which the Japanese artist Yasuhiro Chida stretched numerous threads through the trees and illuminated them at night like a starry sky.
SUSTAINABILITY
Sailing Fossil Free
This year, the festival was declared a Fossil-Free Zone. Because it can be done, but also because it must be done. Even stronger than before, the festival committed to reducing its footprint, for example by having suppliers and caterers travel to the island without fossil fuels and organizing fossil-free boat trips for staff, artists, and volunteers.
Men Who Sail brought not only materials this year but also the Amsterdam collective Personal Trainer to the island by sailing ship. There, in the bunker complex Stelling 12H under the name The Industry, a load of tracks was recorded with among others Lena Hessels, Ian Cleaver, and Pip Blom. The sessions culminated in an all star show in the Bolder, where a choir of Vlieland schoolchildren also participated.
