Midi School have just announced (Chinese link) that they will be delaying the festival by another ten days or so. Dates are yet to be confirmed. The official reason is that the government expects millions of Chinese tourists to descend on Beijing during the upcoming October holidays to look around the Olympic facilities, including the Olympic Centre planned for use by Midi.
Midi claim that they would be free to go ahead but that the venue would have to remain open to joe public, obligating Midi to pay 700,000RMB a day for the mandatory use of strict Olympic security barriers. Obviously a crippling financial burden.
Festival organisers are in discussion with Haidian park, the site of recent Midi festivals, for the re-scheduled event. They are waiting to hear back from local government on this. The issue with this new venue – which also relegated everything but the main stage of the Modern Sky Festival to an indoor site next door at Haidian Exhibition Hall – is that the park is currently being used by a battery of anti-aircraft guns which were in place as, once again, part of the Olympic security measures.
What this set-back means for Air’s performance at Midi remains to be seen, although I suspect this might kill any hopes a lot of the international bands have to play the festival.
© Ed Peto 2008
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Honestly, I have given up on covering this. The Midi Festival has moved its time and location a total of five times now. The current status is that it will take place between the 1st and 5th of October on the Midi School grounds. Rumours abound that it is fairly likely to not go ahead though.
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