The program for this years Manchester International Festival has been announced featuring work from AFRODEUTSCHE, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Yayoi Kusama and more.
Factory International have announced the 2023 edition of Manchester International Festival (MIF) which will be scheduled to run from 29 June to 16 July. The returning bi-annual festival will host a wide-ranging programme of original work by artists from around the world including: Ryan Gander, Maxine Peake, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tino Sehgal and Juan Mata, and music from Janelle Monáe, John Grant, Angélique Kidjo and more. The works will take place in venues and spaces throughout the city and at Factory International’s much-anticipated new home, which opens its doors for the first time for the Festival, in advance of its official opening in October.
Factory International have seemingly pulled out all of the stops for this years festival with a huge array of works and performances for people to experience. In anticipation of the event, we have picked some of the works that we are most excited to see:
A centrepiece of the Festival presented at Factory International’s flagship new venue, Yayoi Kusama’s You, Me and the Balloons (30 June – 28 Aug) will bring together three decades of the renowned Japanese artist’s spectacular inflatable artworks for the first time. Created especially for Factory International’s vast new warehouse space, You, Me and the Balloons will be Kusama’s largest ever immersive environment, featuring works over 10 metres tall. The exhibition will invite visitors to take an exhilarating journey through Kusama’s psychedelic creations including giant dolls, spectacular tendrilled landscapes and a vast constellation of polka-dot spheres.
Manchester’s inventive classical scene plays a key part at this year’s MIF, as electronic artist and BBC Radio 6 music host AFRODEUTSCHE premieres a new composition with the innovative Manchester Camerata (5 July), and Royal Northern College of Music partner with Anna Meredith (8 July) for a sensational performance of her Mercury Prize-shortlisted album FIBS as part of RNCM’s 50th anniversary celebrations. Manchester Collective and theatre company Slung Low will present a vibrant staging of Benjamin Britten’s community opera, Noah’s Flood (9 July) featuring Lemn Sissay live as the voice of God and 180 schoolchildren alongside a professional cast. The BBC Philharmonic will perform a world premiere by John Luther Adams, played by pianist Ralph Van Raat alongside new commissions by Ailís Ní Ríain and Alissa Firsova – all the works in the evening’s programme, Sonic Geography (7 July), are inspired by the climate crisis.
Dance company L-E-V and London-based record label Young come together to celebrate the freedom, energy and intimacy that runs through club culture in a night of dance and music in Manchester’s iconic New Century Hall night club. R.O.S.E (13-16 July) brings the dark hedonism of Sharon Eyal’s choreography and artistry of the L-E-V dancers off the stage and onto the dancefloor alongside new music curated by Young for L-E-V. Ben UFO DJs throughout.
A rich performance programme includes Kagami (29 June – 9 July), a unique collaboration between award-winning musician and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tin Drum, the world’s premiere mixed reality content production studio. Drawing on a body of work spanning electronic to classical composition and performance, Kagami represents a new kind of concert, fusing dimensional moving photography with the real world to create a never-before-experienced mixed reality presentation. Audiences will wear optically-transparent devices to view the virtual Sakamoto performing on a piano alongside dimensional art aligned with the music, and are free to wander and explore during the hour-long event at Versa Manchester Studios.
You can find out more about the full list of works on at this years Manchester International Festival here.
