Organizers of Day for Night, an annual Houston-based art and music festival, dropped the lineup of the festival Wednesday, and headliners include Nine Inch Nails, St. Vincent, Solange, Thom Yorke and Tyler, the Creator. Other performers include Justice, James Blake, Earl Sweatshirt and Pussy Riot.
There's an added dimension to the event, in its third year. In order to aid victims of Hurricane Harvey, a portion of the proceeds will go to the Greater Houston Community Foundation. The third annual D4N fest will take place Dec. 15-17 at an old post office in downtown Houston.
D4N's team also is behind the popular Free Press Summer Fest; the group wanted to create a festival experience that reconnected visual art and music. The inaugural D4N lineup included Kendrick Lamar and Janelle Monáe, and last year’s two-day extravaganza featured the first U.S. performance by Aphex Twin in nearly a decade.
Each year’s lineup also includes a bevy of digital artists, who turn the aforementioned downtown post office into a five-story, 1.5 million-square-foot art installation. Artists and collectives from across the globe descend on Houston to share their mixed-media creations. Past guests include actor-artist Ezra Miller, filmmaker John Carpenter and Björk.
This year’s group includes digital artists such as Ryoji Ikeda, best known for his shows at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Paris-based amorphic sculptor Theodore Fivel. The group will create the festival’s 18 art installations.
The fest is increased to three days this year and will kick off with a summit about the intersection of art, technology and activism. There will be talks by Chelsea Manning, Laurie Anderson, Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova and Lauren McCarthy, the UCLA professor who created the “rent-a-stalker” app Follower.
Solange, Earl Sweatshirt and Kaytranada will join forces for “Soul Cleansing,” a performance piece debuting on the festival’s first night. Solange is also one of the headliners of the fest, a group that includes St. Vincent. The Grammy-winning Polyphonic Spree alum — real name Annie Clark — is eager to bridge the gaps between art, music and technology. Clark’s fifth album, MASSEDUCTION, is out Oct. 13, and she’s released two singles: “New York” and “Los Angeles.”
Earlier this month, the artist published a stream of short films on her Instagram feed that she co-produced alongside actor-comedian Carrie Brownstein of Portlandia fame. She’s also set to direct a female-led film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic story The Picture of Dorian Gray. Clark made her directorial debut at this year’s Sundance film festival, where her short film “The Birthday Party” was part of the all-female horror anthology XX. Following the release of MASSEDUCTION, Clark will head out on her Fear the Future tour.
Artists like St. Vincent may be the key to Day For Night’s long-term expansion plan, which the team hopes will include five days and multiple venues.
See the full festival lineup here.