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Join Jacki Huntington on a weekend trip to Arcosanti, Arizona, for the annual FORM Music Festival, offering a unique musical and community experience, set in the desert.
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00:10This is a place where people and ideas connect.
00:20Should I look at the lens?
00:22It blinds every once in a while.
00:24Okay, okay, but definitely be driving.
00:26Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:27Okay.
00:28We're heading to Arcosante, the town in Arizona.
00:32It's about an hour north of Phoenix.
00:34And this weekend, we have a music festival.
00:38But it's not just a music festival.
00:41It's an experience.
00:43Does the world really need another music festival?
00:46Amidst the sea of commodified memories, Instagramable moments,
00:51huge musical artists, and celebrity product endorsements,
00:54I just feel jaded about giving myself over to a festival.
01:00So we're looking for a parking lot.
01:03We're going to take a shuttle to this amazing place.
01:09Oh my god.
01:11I feel like spiritually too old to be here.
01:17I need to make sure I honor my bedtime of 10pm while at this festival.
01:24We got here.
01:26We're in the line.
01:26The line is long.
01:29It's very long.
01:30We're going to take a shuttle to Arcosante, and then our experience will begin.
01:40It's not a bus.
01:42It's not a bus.
01:45It's a marriage.
01:46This festival may or may not be run by cats.
01:50I like cats.
01:52I like cats.
01:53It's fine.
01:54This is a lawless place.
01:55People are just dying to get out of this parking lot.
02:06This is Lauren.
02:08She's filming me this weekend.
02:14I'm hot.
02:15I'm sweaty.
02:16I'm crammed in a bus with at least 50 people.
02:19All I could think about was staying hydrated and wearing enough sunscreen.
02:23And then Arcosante came into view, looking like an oasis.
02:27It was beautiful, but I was tired.
02:31Lauren was tired.
02:32Would the whole weekend be like this?
02:36What the hell had I gotten myself into?
02:46I slept like a rock, despite sleeping on the ground.
02:54I started my day with campsite coffee, and I joined a rooftop of a hundred fellow festival
03:03goers for yoga at 8am.
03:06Considering how long the day would be packed with events, music, and interaction, it was
03:10really soothing to start everything off by stretching and breathing deeply.
03:19But let's talk to some folks.
03:21And just look into the lens and hold it for a couple seconds.
03:25I grew up here from around the age of 4 to 8.
03:29One hundred people call Arcosante home and live here year-round.
03:33Festival organizers keep forms small, partially out of respect for those residents.
03:38From what I remember of Arcosante, you know, it's more of a really like reserved and sort
03:43of meditative space.
03:45Having all these people here sort of opens it up to like a whole new experience.
03:49I've never miked someone shirtless before.
03:52I'm wearing some sparkles.
03:54My name is Sparkle Daddy, so it's important for me and a high responsibility to sparkle on
03:57everyone around me.
04:00My friends and I came down from Portland because we knew that something really important was
04:05happening here.
04:06And we were not wrong.
04:08Arcosante is a place that's unlike any other place in the world.
04:14So we're here at Forum.
04:16I'm amidst the people.
04:18I've talked to a few folks here that say that what makes this place special, more special
04:23than other festivals, part of that comes from it just being small.
04:26There's at least a few degrees of specificity of the type of person who'd come to Forum.
04:34I think everyone here is just like so well-intentioned.
04:37Everyone here is super creative and super passionate about their work.
04:43There's an openness.
04:44There's a willingness to engage in conversation.
04:48And a stranger rubbed in my sunscreen.
04:50So it's a very kind environment.
04:53As someone who had come to Forum to film a video, I didn't really feel like I was a
04:58part of that experience at first.
05:01What's your question?
05:02What are you poking?
05:04What bear?
05:05What bear are you trying to poke?
05:07I am trying to poke.
05:09To tell you the truth, I felt overwhelmed.
05:12The weekend was about enjoying music all day under the hot sun, drinking alcohol, sleeping
05:18very little, and keeping close quarters alongside hundreds of people.
05:23It's exhausting.
05:25Everyone was happily connecting with each other, but not me.
05:30And I felt like a voyeur peeking in on other people's revelations.
05:34Scaring the view with my camera and my tripod.
05:52So here we are, indoors.
05:55I'm gonna take off my hat.
06:00It's the view.
06:02It's a great view.
06:04This is Jeff Stein.
06:06He's an architect and the president of the Cosanti Foundation, the educational nonprofit
06:11behind Art Cosanti.
06:13Who are the different people who you think congregate on a space like this?
06:18Because I think that there are people who are just here for the musical acts.
06:22And then there are people who are here because they're fascinated by the landscape and this
06:27community and its architecture.
06:28A Solange fan and a climate scientist might not think that they have so much in common,
06:35but they have this festival in common.
06:37They might not think that they have that in common, but they do have the festival in common.
06:42The people who are coming from all walks of life, from computer programmers to musicians
06:48to fans, to climate scientists who are coming here of all ages, too, might be coming for their own reasons.
06:57But once they get here, something happens.
07:01This is Zach Tetro.
07:02He and his band Hundred Waters founded Form at Arcosanti not to start a music festival,
07:08but just because they were looking for a cool place to release their second album.
07:13Immediately upon coming here, just connected to this space, started talking to residents,
07:17and really getting the feeling that they were open to new ideas and ways to bring in art and performance.
07:29I grapple with the word festival.
07:31I still don't think that that's the appropriate word.
07:34Why not?
07:35It's like more of a community.
07:36You're stepping into a family.
07:39We're all a part of this experience.
07:41There's a way that things begin to make sense at this place, even if it's just for a short time,
07:50in a way that they don't out in the regular culture.
07:54I truly love music.
07:56Thank you all so much.
07:58My name is Minsky.
08:00I'm really glad to be here.
08:02Anything that strikes that intimate Angel Olsen Leonard Cohen singer-songwriter chord
08:06is bound to make me bawl my eyes out immediately and uncontrollably.
08:13I'd listened to Minsky's recordings before, but seeing her perform live was entirely different.
08:18Like she was giving voice to my deepest hurts, my biggest longings, my largest loves.
08:25Plus, I don't know.
08:26I just cry a lot.
08:27Geez.
08:28The two guys next to me asked me if I was okay afterward.
08:33We shared stories of the shows that touched us in the past.
08:37Maybe I did belong here after all.
08:40I feel like a tampon.
08:44It's, wow, this is a really long string.
08:46A little lower.
08:47You can do it.
08:49Okay.
08:50I just cried my eyes out to Minsky here at Arcosanti.
08:55And now, strangely enough, we're sitting down with her.
09:00Your songs are so intimate.
09:03Like, what does it feel like to share that intimacy with a huge audience of people regularly?
09:09It's intimate, but I don't feel like I'm exposing any secrets of mine because whatever I'm talking about is actually
09:20what everyone is experiencing.
09:22You don't have to be an artist to express yourself.
09:25Everyone has a voice, and it's a myth that there are good voices and bad voices.
09:30It's just every voice is different, and you have to figure out how to use your voice.
09:34It doesn't have to become a product.
09:36It doesn't have to become a painting.
09:37It doesn't have to become a song.
09:39It can just be something that's in you and that you feel and you experience and then let go.
09:45What are you hoping that people who come here are going to take away with them to think about and
09:52contemplate?
09:53We do hope people will think about and contemplate the experience here and digest the spatial experience and the immersion
10:03in architecture and people.
10:07They're bumping into people. You're bumping into people all day long and into the night.
10:13When it comes to experiences like this, sometimes it takes time to let go and feel at ease.
10:21And that breaking point might come on the first day, or it might come on the last.
10:27I felt like by talking to Mitski, Jeff, and Zach that I'd gotten a little closer to the heart of
10:32this place.
10:32Filming here, being an observer by intention here, separates me a little from everybody else, but we've met some good
10:47folks.
10:47I've experienced some transformation.
10:50Whoa!
10:51Connecting with really incredibly powerful human beings, and wiggle my ass off.
10:55When we get back from form, we're going to lock each other in the studio.
10:59We're going to solidify all the art that we want to do.
11:03It was my first time on an airplane.
11:06Shut up!
11:07Yeah.
11:08And it was spectacular.
11:10As I ended my last night swaying in the cold alongside lasers and warm dancing bodies, I felt grateful to
11:19be there.
11:21I knew I wanted to return.
11:23Next time, with no cameras.
11:26We'll see you next time.
11:26I'll see you next time.
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