The Nordic forest and underground comes to China

What is the point of bringing Icelandic, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish artists to China? (Iceland sounds like a level in Super Mario Brothers, not a hotbed of creative activity.)

NOTCH promoter/DJ Patrick Yu has an answer, “The current culture in countries such as Norway and Sweden pushes art and music in their education, and has helped to provide an atmosphere of interest and speciality. NOTCH is a good opportunity to diversify the local scene.”

The point is to be weird, to have fun, and hopefully be part of something new. Most of us don’t know anything about Nordic music except for Bjork, who, it turns out, is a pretty good representative of the genre.

“The music and culture of the NOTCH festival is concerned with niche interests, not mainstream pop for mass audiences,” says Shanghai NOTCH promoter Jiang Yipeng. There will be your fair share of Icelandic poetesses in the Bjork vein and the folk music to accompany them, but there is also hard, guitar-driven jazz, funky rock, weird trance, and a sampling from the Helsinki underground hip-hop scene. You do want to know what the Helsinki underground hip-hop scene is like, don’t you?

Again, the point is to make something new. The Nordics are coming to China’s comparatively warm, brunette shores to meet up with cutting-edge Chinese electronic artists. This is an opportunity “to give direct exposure to both sides and to possibly help be a catalyst of things to come in the future,” says Patrick Yu.

NOTCH isn’t so much about having a show as it is a beginning, a place where people can come to sweat and move and think, and hopefully leave a little different than they were before. NOTCH celebrates Nordic Culture as having “no mainstream culture, but a mix of subcultures.” They want you to see everything from all sides.

In addition to the visual performances during the shows, which presents at least one artist who has done shows with “floating bloody cowboy hats,” there is also the Nordic Visual Art Exhibition at the Fake Space from 9/22 to 10/7. The last day features an artists workshop with NOTCH artists. “It will be a carnival for young people,” says Jiang.

Yee-haw. Or whatever it is that Nordics say when they’re excited.