Nene Camara on Buzzcut: 'We want to help create the feeling that Glasgow is a city of possibilities'
Experimentation, community and countercultural voices take centre stage at this festival that has been running since 2012
Nene Camara, organisational director of Buzzcut, appreciates that the festival emerged against a background of cultural absence. ‘It began in 2012,’ they explain, ‘a response to the loss of the National Review Of Live Art and spaces that platformed experimental performance.’ Yet far from being simply a chance to catch the cutting edge, Buzzcut embraces a social function. ‘We’ve been reminding ourselves that we can be part of a network that sustains our community and resists these losses.’
Buzzcut has carved out a distinctive identity as ‘a space for experiments and happenings that are not actively supported in the mainstream. We platform artists whose lived experience resonates with our thinking around alternative, experimental and counterculture.’ This commitment to experimentation extends even to the curation process: using an ‘open-call’ system, Buzzcut invites artists at any stage of their career to apply. Previous editions have seen a diversity of creativities, presented in a space that encourages intimacy and immediacy. The content can be bracing, but is invariably passionate, provocative and innovative.
‘We want to help create the feeling that Glasgow is a city of possibilities, where you can push the envelope and test boundaries,’ states Camara. ‘We want to connect audiences here with artists who they would not normally see and we hope to create the kind of space that the National Review Of Live Art came out of. Ones where you’re offered the opportunity to rethink artistic disciplines and to defy traditional artistic practices, moving focus onto things which feel live, real and personal.’
Buzzcut, various venues, Glasgow, Wednesday 15–Saturday 18 April; Picture: Amber Helene Muller St Thomas / Courtesy of Polina Teif.