9’6” HIGH After Hours is an 18-hour live and interactive art event that will transform an industrial streetscape into a playful and artistic arena.

We will bridge creator and spectator through creative exchanges of performance, installation, sound, music, screen, projection and word art.

9’6” HIGH After Hours is based at Pink William’s home on William St Balaclava, a light industrial strip in Melbourne’s South East. The festival will run from 9pm Saturday April 18 till 3pm Sunday April 19 2015.

After Hours is the first instalment of 9’6” HIGH. It tells of an industrial street humming with activity during working hours, and left abandoned after hours.

Participating artists will investigate three poetic provocations: ‘playing with industry’, ‘the awkward self’ and ‘unfit for use’.

Audience members will reciprocate via an open invitation to play, exchange and create works.

This story began when we at the Pink William laboratory dreamed of a festival for William St, with its mashup of barbed wire, graffiti and pallets; creative and industrial spaces; fitness stampedes; drilling, lifting, packing and piling.

Perched on a 9 foot 6 inch high shipping container, our dreams invited questions: What is this place and should we fit? What is artistic engagement? How can we experience beyond the binaries of public and private, artist and audience, ownership and community, production and play?

9’6” HIGH is our response, a vision for action. An exhibition. A festival. A gathering. A party. A critical engagement with experience. An experiment. An exploration of the tensions between industry and art, consumerism and creativity, business and play.

Can artists, shoemakers, performers, baristas, and barristers all gather for an event that smashes typical categorisations?

For 18 hours in April 2015, we will try.

Pink William is a grass roots non-profit community arts organisation. Experimentation and critical thought are at the heart of Pink William’s collaborative and creative practice.