SOS 4.8: a New Green Music & Art Festival in Spain
by Petz Scholtus, Barcelona on 05. 8.08
After numerous music bands, such as Radiohead, took on the fight against climate change and decided to go green(er), more and more festival organisers are also keen on the idea to contribute towards sustainability with their events. A great example is the SOS 4.8 festival held in Murcia, Spain, last weekend for the first time. None other than the Chemical Brothers, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Mills, James, Digitalism and Fangoria (!) performed at the 24-hour event.
SOS comes from the abbreviation of “Sostenibilidad”, the Spanish word for sustainability: “new forms to evaluate in a sustainable way aspects of our life such as democracy, information society, tourism, immigration or urbanism”. 4.8 is the duration of the festival: 24 hours of live creation of art works and another 24 hours to exhibiting them. SOS 4.8 aims to get artists and their fans to reflect on sustainability in the wider meaning of the word.
Rather than associating sustainability almost entirely to the environment or biology, which, according to them, has lead to a “philosophical thought that centred an enormous part of its efforts in resolving precisely the problem of what is “sustainable” in its ideas, with respect to changes in the world and society”. SOS 4.8 wants to focus on the diversity of content that the concept of sustainability may embrace. They believe that “it might be accurate to refer to sustainabilities as concrete manifestations of a broad concept.” The three themed panels that SOS 4.8 have created as part of their sustainable art event are:
CULTURE: Restructuring visual culture, the impact of consumer society and the socalled techno-sustainability.
SURROUNDINGS: Adapting to new consumer patterns, immigration, urbanistics, environment and tourism.
MUSIC: Sustainability of musical language and adapting to the new channels of consumerism and distribution.
Their goal is to establish themselves as a cutting-edge European benchmark. We like the fact that this event focuses strongly on sustainability in its concept and message, and brings in some of the big names, but we don’t know how eco the festival is on a more practical side of things (reduce waste, transport, energy consumption, plastic bottles, CO2 emissions, etc.) Did anyone go? How was it?
Thank you Sergio C. for the tip! ::SOS 4.8
I love the idea of getting music involved in the push towards a more sustainable world, but it also seems quite contradictory to host such elaborate, energy-intensive festivals. At best they could offset the energy used to power the stage, transport festival-goers, and promote the event, while doing nothing to actually conserve/prevent energy use. At worst, they are promoting the idea of sustainability without actually internalizing or practicing what they preach. I hope everyone rode public transport to the show, drank out of reusable containers, and packed their own lunches, but having lived in Spain for a while, I highly doubt this was the case.
A few weeks ago, in SW Wisconsin , there was a music festival aimed at promoting environmental awareness and responsibility. The event sponsors arranged a ride-share program and coordinated bicycling groups to reduce pollution from transportation. They provided places to camp and cooking facilities, as well. Best of all, the stage was powered by stationary, energy-generating bicycles that festival-goers took turns riding. The message of sustainability was incorporated into all aspects of the festival, as should be the case with all eco-festivals.