Christine and the Queens to curate Meltdown festival 2023

Ahead of his Redcar les adorables étoiles at Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall tonight (22 November), it's been revealed that Christine and the Queens will curate the 2023 edition of Meltdown festival.

MELTDOWN CURATOR ANNOUNCED | will curate the 2023 edition of the legendary, longest-running artist-curated festival in the world...

#MeltdownFest 2023 | 9 - 18 June 2023
More info: https://t.co/ArTS0PzLWp#ChristineAndTheQueens pic.twitter.com/bVy516gnSp

— Meltdown Festival (@meltdownfest) November 22, 2022

According to a press release, the first acts for Meltdown 2023 will be announced in spring.

Christine and the Queens says, "What an honour to be picked by the fantastical teams of the Meltdown festival to be a curator this year! It’s a tough thing to be a curator. Art wise, recently, my curating was erratic. Visceral. Sometimes regressive, back to the music I listened to when I was a teenager. A life-saviour, music. One song to soothe them all. We expect from art to still save us yet we endanger it so much, everywhere. Thinking it should sell and clatter like jewels. Thinking it should be the catchiest shit in less than ten seconds when truly the birth of an emotion takes years in some people. We want it to heal it all but we deprive it of its true strength, which is eternity, a cancellation of human time. Now it’s fast, quick, a lot, and never about eternity. Cause eternity is death, too. It’s a cycle of ashes and birth. Over and over again."

"But I digress. Do I? I will actually pick musicians that have some gut-wrenching quality, and I wish for all of us to stroll around in those ten days being rejuvenated by artistic gestures," he adds. "Discoveries. The time Meltdown takes is quite exquisite, the abundance feels appropriately generous too. We need this for ourselves, art in the city, art for the citizen, collective catharsis, a wonderful purge of the soul. I hope you’ll enjoy this glorious edition and again, long live poetry that burns and musicians crazy and brave enough to keep going - they are shaping the emotions of the future. Let’s thank them all!"

Adem Holness, Head of Contemporary Music at the Southbank Centre says, "Chris will be the youngest-ever curator of Meltdown in its 27-year history, an incredible testament to his international pop prowess. We are incredibly excited to be working with such an ambitious artist who, I am sure, will show us all what more Meltdown can be as a festival and a celebration."

This year's Meltdown was curated by Grace Jones, who was originally supposed to curate the festival in 2020 before it was postponed due to the pandemic.