Electric Zoo 2010. (Bennett Sell-Kline/ElectricZooFestival.com)
On a recent Sunday, The Observer stood on a vacant lot neighboring the East River. While wistfully admiring Manhattan’s picturesque Eastern skyline, we soaked in the park’s halcyon beauty. Turning back to face the body of the Randall’s Island, we tried to visualize this site swarming with thousands of sweaty, painted, and dust-covered beings.
The next time The Observer will be here the scene will be much different. In less than one month, this site will be filled with a crowd—twice the size of a packed-house at Madison Square Garden—moshing to the most celebrated deejays in house and electronic music.
On Labor Day weekend, Randall’s Island will host the third annual Electric Zoo music festival, an event that shares an unconventional history with the island. Unlike other music festivals whose tenancy lasts only as long as festival weekend, Electric Zoo and the island’s management have developed a unique symbiosis over the past decade; a relationship that extends beyond Labor Day and into the renovation of the island itself.
“We’ve spent all year working on making Electric Zoo 2011 even better than the last two,” Mike Bindra and Laura De Palma, Executive Producers of Made Event (the festival’s sponsoring organization), told The Observer in an email.
The three-day festival is expected to draw one hundred-thousand people, and will showcase over one hundred world-renowned deejays, a collection of themed art installations, multiple popular food vendors, and a ceremony spotlighting a new public art exhibition on the island entitled FLOW.
Electric Zoo 2010. (Bennett Sell-Kline/ElectricZooFestival.com)
Five years ago, Mr. Bindra and Ms. Palma teamed with Aimee Boden, the Executive Director of the Randall’s Island Sports Foundation (RISF), to collaboratively develop the island as a public space. Drawing on inspiration from the festival, Ms. Boden conceptualized FLOW, a seasonal, outdoor art exhibit which consists of five large-scale installations throughout the lower-half of Randall’s Island. The exhibition’s title “evolved from both dance music and from artistic expression,” Ms. Boden told The Observer in an interview at the Foundation’s midtown offices.
Having no artistic expertise, she enlisted the help of Sergio Bessa, the Director of Programs at the Bronx Museum of Art. With the support of Made Event and the Rockefeller NYC Cultural Innovation Fund, RISF and the Bronx Museum launched FLOW. Made Event donated over $42,000 to the project in 2010, and this year they will dedicate $2.00 from every festival ticket sold to the exhibition.
The artists for FLOW were selected from a pool in the Bronx Museum of Art’s Artists in Motion program (AIM). AIM is a highly competitive, biannual program that consists of twelve workshops designed to prepare emerging artists for the art market. “It is the most successful program the museum has ever implemented,” Mr. Bessa told The Observer in a phone call.
“This is just the beginning,” Mr. Bessa eagerly informed us. He added that Randall’s Island has recently signed a contract to host the esteemed Frieze International Art Fair’s first exhibition in the States.
“Made Event has a big stake in this,” Mr. Bessa told The Observer, and Ms. Boden agrees. “[Mr. Bindra and Ms. De Palma] go beyond just looking for a venue to slap down an event,” she told us. “They have an appreciation for the Randall’s Island environment.”
With the support of their venue and city, Electric Zoo 2009 exploded out of the woodwork. More than forty-thousand people traversed the East River and Hell Gate rapids for the two-day festival. And Made Event never looked back. In 2010, Randall’s Island shook under the feet of fifty-thousand indefatigable bodies dancing to Benny Benassi, Kaskade, and others.
“Music and art have always been a part of New York City life and bringing those two elements together within a city park is a natural fit,” Mr. Bindra and Ms. Palma wrote to The Observer.
Electric Zoo 2010. (Bennett Sell-Kline/ElectricZooFestival.com)
According to DJ Magazine, the festival’s line-up for 2011 boasts seven of the world’s top ten deejays. The festival’s headliners—Armin Van Buuren, David Guetta, and Tijs “Tiësto” Verwest—currently hold the top three spots on the magazine’s esteemed international rankings.
With this in mind, The Observer called-up native-New York deejay and Zoo veteran, Richard “Moby” Hall, to get his thoughts on the festival. Mr. Hall is currently on-tour in Europe, but we were able to reach him in his hotel room before he went live in the Spanish nightlife hotbed, Ibiza.
Mr. Hall confessed that despite being born only two miles from Randall’s Island, he never even knew it existed until he was invited to play the Lollapalooza Music Festival there in 1995. He recalled being struck by the island’s antiquated infrastructure. “I thought it was the place where the Legion of Doom would’ve been housed,” he half-joked.
Mr. Hall played Electric Zoo in 2010. “I was really surprised how big Electric Zoo was last year,” the festival-hardened deejay recalled. Yet despite its size, he was shocked that hardly anyone in the music business was aware it was happening. “It was literally an underground festival for fifty-thousand people, a mile away from New York City.”
He feels that it is the production value that distinguishes this event from the rest. “Electric Zoo offers this huge, over-the-top festival,” he asserted, and then added, “In many ways the festival isn’t even about the deejays, it’s about the production.”
“It’s kind of like the Wizard of Oz in that way. I’m just the small man behind the curtain,” the famed disc jockey concluded.
The Observer spoke with Victor Calderone, another wizard of the Electric Zoo festival.
Mr. Calderone, who was the deejay-du-jour for both Madonna and Sting, has taken his electronic stylings all over the world, but he gets particular pleasure performing in his home city. “I didn’t feel like I was on Randall’s Island or even in New York,” he said about last year’s Zoo.
“I have not heard better sounds at a festival,” the Brooklyn-born deejay and three-time Zoo vet, told The Observer. “It’s just an explosion of energy that you don’t have playing a small after-hours club room” the once resident-deejay at the Roxy continued.
Mr. Calderone told us that location is what makes Randall’s Island an excellent venue. “I can’t think of any other locations in New York that work the way Electric Zoo works on Randall’s Island,” the nightlife legend mused, paused, and then added: “There are so many components that make sense.”
Electric Zoo 2010. (Bennett Sell-Kline/ElectricZooFestival.com)
One such component is that Randall’s Island lies in the East River and connects the boroughs of Manhattan, The Bronx, and Queens. “Location and venue are a big part of any festival’s character, so the two are never mutually-exclusive,” Mr. Bindra and Ms. Palma told us, admitting that they’ve had their eye on the island as a prospective venue for their festival for the last decade. “All the improvements they’ve made to the park over the years just made it a no-brainer for us,” the duo wrote. “It was just a question of timing and all the pieces falling into place to finally realize it.”
Despite its auspicious location, the island has a grim history. Since the 19th Century, it has sustained—among other shady establishments—a burial ground for the poor, a psychiatric hospital, and a reform school for juvenile delinquents. Although founded in 1992, RISF finished developing the island earlier this summer. Unveiled with a ceremony on July 1st, the island now has over sixty “state-of-the-art” playing fields, a driving range, a tennis center, the Icahn Track and Field stadium, a redesigned waterfront, gardens, and pedestrian pathways. Ms. Boden also pointed out that the construction restored nine acres of wetlands.
“We want to get people who are not there just to play on the fields to come over and use the island in a new way,” Ms. Boden told The Observer.
And Mr. Bindra and Ms. Palma agree. “New York City’s parks are such a valuable resource without which Electric Zoo could not exist in its current form,” the sponsors concluded. “Our goal is to not only support the island as it grows, but to be a part of its growth and improvement.”
As we made for the footbridge back to Manhattan, The Observer glanced back over our shoulder. After surveying the rehabilitated island, the image of the space alive with thousands of flowing bodies suddenly didn’t seem too far-fetched.
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