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EXCLUSIVE: What to expect from Shangri-La at Glastonbury 2014

"You’ve got an IT department, an HR department. This year is all about the office nightmare"

Shangri-La is the area of Glastonbury that you visit when you want your third-eye opened – it’s a dystopian village full of alleyways, creepy installations, theatre and freaks that hand out glasses of snakebite. It’s sort of like Fright Night at Thorpe Park but not shit: hard-trance music and grown-men riding ten-foot high tractors replace X:\ No Way Out and candy floss.

Established in 2009 – after the demise of Lost Vagueness – Shangri-La is Worthy Farm’s most notorious field. Landmarked by the counter-cultural movement of new-age travellers, the South East corner has, arguably, saved Glastonbury from turning into another over-sized rock festival. Sure, the ketamine and MDMA fuelled parties last for days but it’s also a political forum – a site where utopia, politics and power can be brought to question through a manner of different lenses.

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1500 artists build the visually stunning site; they design to a different theme each year. We caught up with Deborah Armstrong, creative director of Shangri La, to talk about the history of the festival within a festival, and to talk us through this year’s theme.

Noisey: What’s this year’s theme then?

Deborah: The evil Shangri-Hell Corporation has bulldozed the alleyways, everyone has been evicted, and in return they’ve built a shiny new headquarters where they celebrate all their success. In the corporation there’s a number of separate departments; you’ve got the IT department, HR. This year, Shangri-Hell is all about the office nightmare, a cataclysmic demand to pull you to your senses, and question life back at home.

Okay.

This a realisation that we’re really, really fucked. The colonial empire building of the 19th century has transferred the idea of corporate empire building in the 21st. Hell’s behind the profiteering evil-doing of big business, and heaven’s trying really hard to counter it, but not doing well. During our research for this year, the whole thing just became incredibly depressing – but that’s where Heaven comes in, it’s all about exquisite escapism, and every great value we can hold.

So what sort of fun shit can we expect to see?

Last year we dealt with very contemporary sins – bankers, corporations – and this year we’re going deeper into corporate hell. Heaven hasn’t been doing well – the idealism is running out. Hell’s succeeding, so Heaven’s come up with a new accessibility initiative; this year we’re bringing an open door policy. On one side there’s windows and doors into dark worlds – on the other, we’ve got a massive new heaven arena. Everything’s been turned inside out. We’ve got a huge hanging installation made by the permaculture teams, Doug Foster making a massive projection called Pyschotron Infinity Mandala that’ll be stretched across the field, sitar players, a massive birdsong installation of the dawn chorus at Glastonbury that’ll kick in once the music switches off.

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Tell me more!

We’ve got Utopian talks in the dome all weekend, talking about the proposition of fixing shit. Constantine will be talking about setting up ethical operations; there are permaculture talks on changing the natural world through planting, incredible innovation in ethics, and morals about our lives. The main arena might be a fluffy-bunny MDMA party but this year the dome is where we want to make the real point.

That all sounds incredible. I can’t wait to spend five days getting lost inside Shangri La. Do you think the installations are what saved Glastonbury from demise into just another rock festival?

Michael never had to take any of this on – he met Roy, gave us all a field and embraced the entire ethos of the thing. He’s in many ways been really the only person who’s done that, and the incredible result he gets at the end of the day from investing in those artists and people has led to them growing up, having been given an opportunity. They’ve developed into the most incredible crews, riggers and illustrators around.

True – and it’s reaped results.

The south-east corner is all a reference to that. Everyone that runs an area here all used to be part of the crew from Lost Vagueness – from the boys in décor, right through to all the old production crew. Roy, the founder, had an unfortunate habit of falling out with people – and one after another, things broke down a little, but out of the ashes raised Shangri-La. And that was back in 2008. And Michael gave us the go.

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So what is the overarching philosophy of Shangri La ?

Shangri-La is about creating a world that people come to as an experience. There’s one aspect of it where it’s this immersive world of insanity, but in another sense, it’s a response to a theme, something that interests and inspires us, and communicates our thinking on the world. The topic always has to be interesting and inspiring – something that will engage the artists we work with.

How much is it an innovation of your own – and that of other people?

It’s a little bit of both. This year we’ve got loads of visual artists like Ron English, Shepherd Ferry, Mark Jenkins. With some of them, we’re looking for certain pieces of work. We send off the brief and they’ll send back pieces of work that they think either fit the brief or new work they’ve created off the back of it. Often it’s a mix of both. It’s a completely collaborative project. Glastonbury is notoriously poorly paid and always a ball ache – but the crew and the people all make it. It’s an incredibly interesting creative experience, developing artists, students and their work.

Do you think this kind of thing can only really exist in the UK?

It’s funny - I remember going to Burning Man a few years ago, and really, really missing it. There was only one person there that got it bang on. Obviously the work there is incredible, but I just saw one guy rolling around with a briefcase, taking the piss out of the silent discos. He really captured it for me. It’s our sense and spirit for being creative and cynical that really nails it in the UK. The surrealist thing is just always about having a twist on an idea - we call it shangrilising something. It’s really British.

Follow Robbie on Twitter: @RobbieFlash

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