Festival Season Continues With VIA Festival This Week

By Katie Karpowicz in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 29, 2014 9:15PM

Chicago, the city where festival season seems to never end, is welcoming yet another new festival to the fall calendar, but this one offers more than just trendy bands and fried foods. After five successful years in Pittsburg, VIA Festival expands to our city starting this Wednesday.

VIA Festival aims to highlight audio and visual art while also redeveloping the stereotypical festival layout with interactive performances and workshops, undergrounds artists and unconventional venues.

Spread across multiple venues—many of which are secret, to-be-announced spaces—VIA Festival will feature concerts from acts like 8-bit rockers Anamanaguchi, LGBT rapper Cakes Da Killa, Canadian electronic pop band Blue Hawaii and local juke and footwork pioneer Traxman. Performances will also feature live visual art, short film screenings from local directors and limited t-shirts designed by performers.

Festival producer Bojan Jovanovic, reached by email, has teamed up with local promoter and gallery, respectively, Them Flavors and LVL3 with plans to explore VIA's "festival as a laboratory" ideals. He expects first-year ticket holders to be impressed by the way the venues (Primary and Wicker Park's Emporium have already been announced) are transformed to best integrate the audio and visual performers' work for a truly immersive experience.

VIA Festival runs Oct. 1 through Oct. 4. Tickets to individual festival events can be purchased separately and an all access pass gets you into every event for $55.