The Invisible Wind Factory opens in Liverpool
We go behind the scenes at the Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool's new arts venue from the team behind The Kazimier, and enter the world of spectacular opening show Omphalos – Energy Eternal...
When Liverpool club The Kazimier closed on New Year’s Eve 2015, it celebrated with the spectacular sci-fi-themed party Escape to Planet Kronos. True to the venue’s inventive ethos, we waved goodbye to the Kaz as a giant spaceship flew off from the club’s home in Wolstenholme Square – a symbolic departure away from the old and into the unknown new.
Now the ship has landed in Liverpool’s desolate North Docklands, with the team behind the Kazimier rejuvenating a formerly derelict warehouse to create a spacious new arts venue, the Invisible Wind Factory. The venue will open with the immersive promenade experience Omphalos – Energy Eternal on 19 May.
The Bauhaus-like art collective have owned a workshop in North Docklands for the last two years, making shows from their very beginnings: coming up with ideas, manufacturing sets and developing technology, all while running The Kazimier in Liverpool city centre. However, they quickly found their ambitions outgrowing the club’s size.
Not just another warehouse venue
The Invisible Wind Factory now offers the group the space to create experiences that fit their visions, and to collaborate with other producers to amplify theirs. Managing director Liam Naughton emphasises that the Invisible Wind Factory will not be the usual warehouse venue, with the group’s eventual aim for it to include studios for artists, a coffee shop/bar and an outdoor garden.
“We’re making lots of our own things happen in this building and they’ll range from things people know us for, such as big party spectaculars, to really quite meditative immersive experiences,” says Naughton, speaking from the Factory’s new music editing suite. “We want to create a venue that’s more than a venue, more of an attraction: somewhere you can come for an experience. We want this to be completely unique in that it’s our home stadium, in that this is where we can make shows. They can happen for the first time here in Liverpool and then they’ll have a life beyond the building.”
The trailer for opening event Omphalos certainly makes it look incredible in its scale, chock-full of pseudo-scientific delights reminiscent of Ken Adam’s James Bond sets or Lost’s Dharma Initiative. Far from its origins in the first Invisible Wind Factory show in December 2014 – a party extravaganza with giant fans, dry ice and techno band Dogshow in a 360-degree levitating pod – Omphalos seems to have developed a mythology of its own, casually touching upon issues like fracking and renewable energy.
Omphalos (running 19-22 May) will be a fully immersive experience that is “part science museum visitors centre, part ritual and part operatic theatre,” Naughton explains. The event on Saturday 21 May will even be prefaced by a stand-alone dining session, a modular eight-course meal created by high-level chefs under the guise of an ‘operative training programme.’
“I think the best way to describe it is a bit like an astronaut’s dinner,” Naughton teases.
Omphalos, culture and regeneration
Tickets for Omphalos are priced at £25, and Naughton is keen to emphasise that Omphalos is a labour of love; not a party, but a unique one-off experience. “If we were going to reveal everything that’s happening, I think it wouldn’t be hard to sell it,” he says. “That’s the Catch-22: we can’t reveal all that’s in the show and it’s important to keep all this a mystery, and somehow rely on the goodwill and trust of the audience.”
With more and more creatives fleeing the trappings of London, and events already planned for the summer, Naughton hopes that the Invisible Wind Factory will, in its small way, encourage revitalisation in the North Docklands area.
“We really care about this area and jobs happening, creating development, making an old zone come back to life again,” he says. “I think it’s important for any regeneration that happens that culture should be at its heart.”
Invisible Wind Factory featuring Dogshow (2014)
Omphalos – Energy Eternal, The Invisible Wind Factory, Liverpool, 19-22 May, 8pm (Saturday 21 May 2pm), £25, thekazimier.co.uk