French artist Christine and the Queens will curate next summer’s Meltdown.
The annual festival takes place at London’s Southbank Centre, and was curated by Grace Jones this summer. It’s a prestigious gig, too – previous curators range from David Bowie and Yoko Ono through to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Jarvis Cocker.
Recently releasing a new album under his new Redcar moniker, Christine and the Queens steps in to helm next summer’s edition. Running between June 9th and June 18th, the first names for Meltdown 2023 will be confirmed in Spring.
Stages will include the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, while you can also expect two weeks of free outdoor gigs, with the shows reflecting the passions and whims of the curator.
On curating 2023’s Meltdown festival, Christine and the Queens says…
“What an honour to be picked by the fantastical teams of the Meltdown festival to be a curator this year! It’s a tough thing to be a curator. Art wise, recently, my curating was erratic. Visceral. Sometimes regressive, back to the music I listened to when I was a teenager. A life-saviour, music. One song to soothe them all. We expect from art to still save us yet we endanger it so much, everywhere. Thinking it should sell and clatter like jewels. Thinking it should be the catchiest shit in less than ten seconds when truly the birth of an emotion takes years in some people. We want it to heal it all but we deprive it of it’s true strength, which is eternity, a cancellation of human time. Now it’s fast, quick, a lot, and never about eternity. Cause eternity is death, too. It’s a cycle of ashes and birth. Over and over again.
But I digress. Do I? I will actually pick musicians that have some gut-wrenching quality, and I wish for all of us to stroll around in those ten days being rejuvenated by artistic gestures. Discoveries. The time Meltdown takes is quite exquisite, the abundance feels appropriately generous too. We need this for ourselves, art in the city, art for the citizen, collective catharsis, a wonderful purge of the soul. I hope you’ll enjoy this glorious edition and again, long live poetry that burns and musicians crazy and brave enough to keep going – they are shaping the emotions of the future. Let’s thank them all!
Meltdown 2023 runs between June 9th – 18th.
Photo Credit: Pierre-Ange Carlotti
