Not just music … Ono and her son Sean Lennon visit gas drilling sites earlier this year, for Artists Against Fracking. Photograph: Richard Drew/AP
Patti Smith, Boy George, Siouxsie Sioux and Iggy and the Stooges will be among the performers at this year's Meltdown festival, curated by Yoko Ono. For a week and a half in June, London's Southbank Centre will host everything from Immortal Technique's hip-hop to the Pet Shop Boys' take on Battleship Potemkin.
Yoko Ono's
Meltdown festival
Southbank Centre,
London
SE1
Starts 14 June
Until 23 June
Details
"I'm not pursuing big names for the sake of big names," Ono said in November, when herMeltdown role was announced. "I'm thinking along the lines of a concept, which is more refreshing. There will definitely be an element of feminism and the plight of women … [and] I am thinking of having one or two events where I ask men to say something strong about themselves too."
The festival's initial line-up is a perfect distillation of those ideas: feminist icons such as Smith, Kim Gordon, and Sioux, who will be performing for the first time in five years; and acts like Boy George, Iggy Pop, Ryuichi Sakamoto and comedian Reggie Watts, who represent different modalities of masculinity. The bill is multi-generational and multi-racial, with new bands like Savages alongside veteran performers such as Marianne Faithfull, who will play with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell.
Ono herself will appear with the Plastic Ono Band, opening the festivities on 14 June. On closing night, "a host of very special guests" will perform Double Fantasy, Ono and John Lennon's final album together. Released just three weeks before Lennon's murder, in 1980, the LP has never been played live.
The Canadian-born musician Peaches will make several appearances at the festival, including a presentation of one of Ono's best-known pieces of performance art. Debuted in Tokyo in 1964, Cut Piece has the artist (or in this case, Peaches) kneeling on a stage as members of the audience cut away her clothes, taking the scraps away with them. "It [is] a kind of criticism against artists, who are always giving what they want to give," Ono said in 1967. "I [want] people to take whatever they [want] to."
Other performances include separate sets by Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, who ended their 27-year marriage in 2011, and Ono's son Sean Lennon, who will appear with Cibo Matto. The film programme includes Sergei Eisenstein's seminal 1925 movie, Battleship Potemkin, to be shown with the Pet Shop Boys' score from 2004. This will be the electro-pop Potemkin's first-ever cinema screening.
In addition to the concerts, film screenings and a planned silent disco, Ono's Meltdown will have a political side. Guest speakers and "some the most influential campaigners of our times" will present talks and discussions over 15-16 June, dubbed Activism weekend, and 22-23 June, Future weekend. In recent months, Ono has been particularly active in protests regarding fracking and US gun control.
Founded in 1993, the Meltdown festival is one of London's most important annual cultural happenings. Artists such as David Bowie, Morrissey, Ornette Coleman, Ray Davies and Antony Hegarty have curated the event, which has included performances by Jeff Buckley, Elizabeth Fraser, Nina Simone and the cast of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. "It's not only a great honour to curate Meltdown in its 20th year," Ono said in a press release, "it's also a lot of fun."