it’s a few days now since the 090909 UpStage Festival, & i’ve sort of recovered from the 20+ hours marathon of live online performances; however i’ve thrown myself into the eclectic tech carnival, & that coupled with a lingering cold means i still feel tired … but i have no other cause for complaint. once again the UpStage festival went off without a (visible) technical hitch, & the variety of performances – style, content, technique – blew me away. it’s so rewarding to see other people using UpStage in such diverse & imaginative ways.

the day began for me at 4am – no, make that 3am, with the ramadan drumming & yelling in the street to get everyone up in time for breakfast before daylight. then i dozed until my alarm went off at 4am, & got up to make coffee, check my email for last minute emergencies, & make the links to the stages live. my first 090909 HQ was my humble hostel bedroom. at 5am istanbul time everything kicked off in the 090909 foyer, where 20 online audience members plus an as-yet-unknown number at nodes in canada (surrey & calgary) & new zealand (dowse art gallery & hutt city libraries) where gathered to celebrate the start of 090909. the first performance was “maui & the sun”, performed by year 5 & 6 students at a school in south westland, new zealand. the whole school was watching a projection of the performance, which told the maori legend about maui catching the sun in a net in order to slow it down & have more hours in the day. if only we could learn how to do that … i’m not going to attempt to write about all the shows now, hopefully there will be some reviews or other comments that we can link to from the UpStage site to give you an idea of the rest of the festival. also some shows may be reperformed, so if you’re kicking yourself for missing something, keep an eye on the UpStage site or join the announcements list to find out when the performances will be. after the first 5 hours of performances, we had a short break during which time i relocated to haymatlos, the venue for the /etc & where we were to have the istanbul UpStage node that evening. here at last i could get a real turkish coffee (only instant at the hostel : ( & sat on the edge of the first day of the /etc.

i had a vague idea that i could listen in to the /etc at the same time as 090909, but this was of course impossible. during 090909, we curators (vicki, dan & i) act as hosts, introducing the performances, assisting the audience in getting to the right stage, checking that the performers for the next show are ready, counting audience numbers, answering all manner of questions about UpStage, the festival, the performances, the weather … & we’re also checking our email in case of emergencies, perhaps chatting with someone in skype, whispering to each other in UpStage, & generally madly busy keeping the whole thing running smoothly. having an ear on the /etc at the same time was just a bit more multitasking than even i can handle. everything continued well, & about 6pm we set up the node in the bar at haymatlos for the istanbul node. people came & went over the evening, with some getting quite engrossed & staying for several shows, while others came to see specific shows. my friends from tiyatro boyali kus came to see “machine divas”, the performance that i was in, which happily went more or less according to plan : )

we packed up the istanbul node around 10.30pm, with still a couple of hours of the festival to go – & the after-party. i hurried back to the hostel through a torrential downpour – luckily i had my umbrella, but still got pretty wet. back online in my hostel room again, the shows were continuing; & as the last tones of “karen karnak” faded into the ether, our virtual dj copy cat crimes (aka dan) wound up the turntables & the after party kicked off. by this time, i’d been awake & functioning at high capacity for over 20 hours, on about 2 hours sleep, so i left the more awake cyberformers & friends to groove on into the night & crawled into my bed for a deep & satisfied sleep : ) the highlights included getting our first ever donation; the show “lines” doing something we didn’t know could be done; “user profile” giving an encore performance due to raucous public demand; & much more. i’ll try to write something more about the different shows a bit later, when i have more brain space; also there will be links to documentation on the UpStage web site as we get it together. thanks to everyone who made 090909 happen – Creative New Zealand; CityLink; AUT; the wonderful RL access node organisers; the documenters; all of our background support people; & most of all to the wonderful artists who experimented & imagined & played & made 090909 a rich & lively experience.