By Claire Walla
But, how do you escape to someplace?
It seems bizarre and unfathomable and totally senseless — and, really, that’s sort of the point. Escape to New York, an outdoor festival to be held on the grounds of the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton August 5 through 7, is nothing if not an escape.
“We wanted to come up with a name that made you question whether you were in America or New York State,” said festival organizer Fred Fellowes. (He said this concept if further enhanced by the fact that this concert will be held on a sovereign Indian Nation.) “It’s basically to draw a contradiction to where you are.
To the backdrop of live musical performances by such artists as Patti Smith, Of Montreal, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros and Mates of State, concert-goers will be wowed by art installations and other crafty venues. Plus, really high-end festival-goers will have the opportunity to go “glamping” — it’s just like camping, only you have a concierge, a maid service and can actually stand up in your sleeping quarters. This overnight venture is available for around $3,000 a night.
“We embrace the philosophy that there’s a whole lot more to do when you gather a bunch of people together than just stand in front of a stage, watching bands and getting a little bit drunk,” said Freddie Fellowes, the executive director of Escape to New York.
In this case, “a whole lot more” specifically includes: The Octapolis, a structure composed of 50 interlocking cells on which festival-goers can climb, lounge, draw and paint; Rubber Horses, a sculpture made in tribute to the wild horses of Nevada, made with tire scraps from the New Jersey Turnpike; Three Battles, a relative performance space allowing participants the chance to engage in pillow fights, mass bubble blowing and color-changing lightsaber jousts; and Braindrop, a 17-foot tall laser-cut steel sculpture and meditation space.
In addition to other such oddities.
“We’re providing things to get people involved, to break down their inhibitions and allow them to generally have more fun than they would just being at a gig,” Fellowes continued.
The weekend fest is the brainchild of Fellowes, who began his foray into planning unconventional outdoor festivals in 2003 with what’s now known as The Secret Garden Party in the UK. What started with around 500 participants on a small lot in Huntington, England has become an annual gathering of nearly 30,000 people.
As he explains it, the plan was hatched when he and a friend from university were scouting locations for Red Bull, trying to find a site where the company could hold small, outdoor parties.
“My family are farmers,” said the native Brit. “So it was an obvious step to ask them whether there were any spots on our land that would be suitable. And the spot of land that was suggested was so beautiful and to special that me and my friend decided we couldn’t possibly give this to Red Bull, we had to do something with it ourselves.”
Fellowes has since parted ways with his initial accomplice, but his desire to inspire creativity and break down barriers has hardly wavered. While his inspiration for the festival is certainly inspired by his background in art (Fellowes studied art as a university student), he said his motivation is based on a desire to, in a way, explore social habits.
“I guess [the concept for the UK festival] probably more stems from the fact that I’m not naturally sort of a wild and crazy guy who, you know, walks into a room and can instantly be sort of outgoing and confident,” he explained. “So, I’ve always been interested in what makes the difference between the nights when you go out, have the best time, meet loads of new people and play your a-game, I suppose… and the nights when you slightly get inside your shell.”
“I’ve always been interested in how you can engineer a situation to be one rather than the other,” he continued. “And one of the main things that we found [works] is giving people a lot of toys to play with, a lot of props.”
For example, the Secret Garden Party has had on its premises for the last six to seven years a plain, wooden door frame. Nothing special, just a white door in the middle of the grass that people can open and close. “People still haven’t got bored with it,” he said.
And last year, he placed a random row of airplane chairs on the property. “People didn’t seem to get bored with that one for three days,” he added with a light laugh.
“It is a bit Tim Burton-esque,” Fellowes admitted. “But the manner in which it gets people not only to create their own atmosphere, but more take some ownership of it and be part of what makes the party really great, I think that’s what’s really fueled the expansion of it.”
Fellowes never planned to bring the UK festival here. The ultimate push to hop the pond, so to speak, came from a friend, fellow Brit Rocco Gardner, whom Fellowes met at South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas.
Gardner had befriended Eric Douglas, a younger member of the tribe, who was looking for an event to bring to the Shinnecock’s main Pow Wow Ground.
Fellowes said he shrugged the idea off at first, but his motivation to expand his festival pursuits was rekindled in 2008.
“It’s one of our economic development projects,” said Shinnecock spokesperson Beverly Jensen. “We had been talking about [putting on an outdoor festival] for a while,” she added, “But we do a lot of talking sometimes.”
Jensen said the project really started moving forward in a meaningful way this year. According to Pam Lipshitz, who is part of the Escape to New York PR team, the event will also offer high-end food and drinks.
“It’s not going to be one of those things where you sit down and have a hot dog and a warm beer,” she said. The food venues will be curated by a company called Silkstone, which runs Fat Radish in New York City and Ruschmeyer’s in Montauk. So instead of stale breads and fried foods, Lipshitz said the festival will offer an eclectic array of dishes from fresh seafood, hanger steaks, ceviche to Mediterranean food and “innovative sandwiches.”
“The only real concern we would have is if it didn’t look like a party because it was not full enough,” Fellowes said. But he’s confident that won’t be the case. “There will definitely be people.”
Tickets for the three-day event are $275. One-day passes are $100. To purchase tickets, visit www.escape2ny.com.
