Blur at Coachella, Swear Studio
Coachella Festival, 2024
Role: Set & Show Designer

"Lean into otherness”, they said. "Make it obtuse" and "radically different.”

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"For Blur’s last ever show (maybe??), Coachella's massive screens become a canvas for a chaotic mix of lens and screen styles, conveying an urgent message about a surveillance society where all are watching - and being watched. CCTV feeds from the stage are cut with livecam footage from around the world. We see empty funerals in cavernous churches, cracked-out wierdos caught on video doorbells and abandoned sports grounds with the cameras still rolling. We see our (un)natural recorded world (made all the more poignant as Blur are joined on stage by Coachella Valley’s indigenous Torres Martinez Cahuilla Bird Singers). We see ourselves, humanity, drunk on all this mesmerising vacuity.

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The resulting visual collage is mixed live with closed-caption lyrics and endless, endless ‘terms and conditions’, under a jarring and discordant, hi-gloss, corporate logo. Lo-fi, post-punk, sparse and 'anti-design’, the vision that emerges reflects the absurdist, art school, alt-rock of a frankly brilliant British band."

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Photos: Blair Brown, Alden Bonecutter, Pooneh Ghana