Because we weren’t bringing you enough initials already, the WG News + Arts will be covering SXSW (South By Southwest) this week, straight from the eye of the cultural hurricane.
In our fair Brooklyn neighborhood, the birthplace of many a fine musician, filmmaker and media innovator, we are constantly barraged with more entertainment than we know how to process on a single Saturday night. But nothing can quite prepare someone – even a savvy Williamsburgian – for the storm of cultural/entertainment/informational offerings to be found at the nothing if not immense, South By Southwest.
South by Southwest is no longer the simple music festival originally conceived by its four founders. (Film on the founders of SXSW “Outside The Industry: The Story of SXSW” to be covered later this week.) The festival is now composed of three, giant sub festivals – Interactive, Film, and, of course, Music. But the mind-melting array of activites don’t end there. How can you go to SXSW this year without visiting Flatstock, the annual alliance of rock poster artists from around the country, to pick yourself up a sweet screenprint? Or this year’s Etsy Austin fest? Or Plutopia’s nerdtastic “Future of Play,” exhibit? The entertainment options pour down upon you – they come at you sideways and diagonally. They flood your eyes and drown your brain. Next year I am going to have to look into teleportation, or self-cloning in order to cover all this ground.
Despite the vast organizational and decision-making challenges, I will be your enthusiastic guide, with a first-timer’s perspective on the festival that bludgeons all other festivals with its off-the-charts Cool. With endurance skills honed by walking repeatedly over our own Williamsburg bridge, I will run all over this desert city, relaying nuggets on how to better communicate with our online audiences, synthesizing shows of musicians that may grace our music halls and films that will likely pop up at BAM, posting pictures of facial hair that rivals that of our own bearded and moustachioed sidewalks, and sampling/reviewing more barbecue than is advisable for one person to consume in a thirty-six hour period. (I do this scientific research for you, dear readers.)
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For the full WG Goes to South By experience, be sure to follow me, your Austin eyes and ears, on Twitter @staceybrook. If you know of anything you’d like me to report on, tweet me. And if you’re in Austin, come find me! I can try and conquer this festival world alone, but the more of you that come with me, the more fun it will be for us all.
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