When COVID-19 cancelled the 80-venue Ural Music Night Festival in Yekaterinburg, organizers used their free time to get creative. And very weird.
They gathered the site plans and line-ups from 11 events the world and created AntyFest, the first ever virtual music festival made for ants. The full list of festivals besides UNM include Blue Bird (Austria), International Music Showcase Festival (Israel), Lagos International Jazz Festival (Nigeria), Le Guess Who? (Netherlands), Stereoleto (Russia), Summer Sound Festival (Latvia), Terminal Music and Arts Festival (Serbia), Busan Rock Festival (South Korea), Pohoda Festival (Slovakia), and V-Rox (Russia).
Natalia Shmelkova from Ural Music Night says, “We had the idea to unite people, music and concerts with Antyfest, a macro-festival of festivals. We secured the site plans and line-ups for all these festivals and have recreated, in detail, scale replicas of the experience that would have taken place should these festivals have gone ahead.”
Here’s Courtney Bartnett perfoming at Busan Rock Festival in South Korea. For ants.
And a taste of the Garage Stage from Slovakia’s Pohoda Festival. With more ants.
And I’m just going to say it, but we’re all thinking it. Ants seem like assholes at a festival.
For a small scale taste of festivals from around the world, check out the feeds at the AntyFest website.