2024 marks a decade since Hidden Door opened up the Market Street vaults for its first week-long festival.
We’re planning a full festival later this year, but for now we’re throwing a birthday party at a unique underground location – Basement 3 at St James Quarter. We’ve lined up an ambitious programme of music, visual art and performance planned for Friday 10th and Saturday 11th May.
If you’re coming down, enter via the Blue Picardy entrance. If you are coming into the building at Leith Street or Multrees Walk, head to Picardy, or access via Little King Street, next to our food partners Ozen. Our box office is by the Blue lifts at B3. Take the lifts or stairs to find us.
Scroll down for more about the musical acts and visual artists set to feature at our event.
Visceral, textured and infectious songs fit for the dancefloor, influenced by the luscious sonics of 80s pop and modern, ethereal electronica.
We’re collaborating with the band to bring back their acclaimed ‘art-electronica’ show Microsteria, which has truly blossomed since its early days at previous Hidden Door festivals.
One of Scotland’s most celebrated DJs, Eclair Fifi’s style is as playful as it is studied.
With relationships to international collectives such as LA’s Low End Theory and Turbo Crunk in Montreal, and having held residencies across Europe, Eclair Fifi’s sets work through a multitude of influences, hopping between classic electro, Detroit techno, and powerful, affecting house.
“A highly sought after selector” – Crack Magazine
Presenter of EHFM’s flagship show LUNCH, Nikki Kent brings her knowledgable, eclectic and intuitive style to Hidden Door. The Edinburgh mainstay has a well earned reputation for energetic mixing, and a real hand for party starting sounds.
“From chuggy house bangers to intricate breaks and the swirling sounds of cosmic disco – Nikki has you covered” – Resident Advisor
Growing up immersed in the free party scene around Forres, and now based in Edinburgh with a previous residency on EHFM, Moray Leisure Centre attributes her love of music to the experiences felt through dancing. She skillfully brings together techno, electro and UK bass to create a cathartic dancefloor experience.
“One of the central belt’s finest selectors through harder dance styles, favouring high tempo techno, wobbly electro, and bone shaking jungle” – Resident Advisor
Weaving melodies around distorted samples and unpredictable rhythms, Hyperdub regular Proc Fiskal takes inspiration from elements of Scottish culture past and present to create something new and exciting, in tandem with tongue-in-cheek visuals.
“A dewed web of rich imagination” – The Quietus
Experimental duo of Beth Horseman and Danny Igoe – a semi-improvisational, sonic hot-spring of field recordings, organic samples, ethereal vocals and spoken word.
Combining creative coding, delay patches, analogue synthesis and a tidal wave of reverb, they explore ambient, shifting soundscapes through digital loops, feedback and a fascination with the sublime.
Scottish electronic producer, DJ and songwriter, whose work spans across experimental, left-field dance and pop genres.
Having released their debut single Magnolia in January this year, with a second track UVA following shortly after, we’re delighted to welcome them back to Hidden Door.
Where We Used to Wander, aka the ‘Wanderers’ is an interactive, roaming style dance-theatre work that premiered at Hidden Door 2023.
The project was dreamt up and directed by Tess Letham, created collaboratively with the performers and designers involved.
Engaging with high energy, unique physicality, and a playful vocal language, the performers embody charismatic, futuristic creatures. Dressed in vibrant, bespoke costumes by designer Cleo Rose McCabe, they guide audiences through realms of imagination, absurdity and wonder.
For the Hidden Door Birthday Party, the Wanderers will traverse the unexplored world of Microsteria!
An award-winning animation and filmmaking studio specialising in illusionary immersive experiences that bring stories to vibrant life.
Precious is an Immersive film installation from Bright Side Studios, Pantovola and Alabaster De Plume. An animated tale of Bragi, a sad young man whose pearl-like tears are collected by a woman called Precious, who is in love with his melancholia. The artwork was created in support of the Joshua Nolan Foundation.
Elvey Anna Stedman is a sculptor and printmaker based in Glasgow. She graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in 2021 with a degree in Fine Art. She centralises the way she makes around an appreciation for fragility and ephemerality. She strives to frame certain natural materialities in contexts that emphasise unsettling, folkloric qualities that have transfixed her since childhood. Through the use of organic materials, Elvey examines the various ways in which humans connect to and reject their relationship with the natural world.
A multi disciplinary artist focusing on both sculptural methods and knowledge in metal, glass, ceramics and plant life. Emma explores environmental bodies through ecological storytelling, playing with a working concept of ‘semi-fiction’, alongside archaeology and mysticism. Her interests in material processes and histories, as well as science and science fiction are explored through world-building.
A visual artist based in the East Coast of Scotland. Her practice is centred around the Scottish landscape and its coastal regions. She has a broad range of work that comprises sculptures, installations, large scale paintings and prints, allowing the concept behind the artwork to inform the materiality. Recently, she has been exploring climate change and the effect this has had on our landscapes, specifically regarding the threat of sea level rise and the danger this poses to our coastal environments and communities. Although it is quite clear that human interference has led to our current predicament, her work will centre around the idea of hope, exploring the way that human influence can affect change for the good of the landscape, the environment and for all living creatures that inhabit it.
As a painter and photographer James Sinfield has been exploring edgeland locations for over 25 years, trying to make sense of them and describe their power and magic. A former theoretical physicist and ironmonger; his work is also informed by the philosophy of science and mathematics.
His work is inspired by psychogeography and attempts to make sense of post-industrial Edgelands and other innominate places. Layers of paint applied and removed reveal layers – the process echoing the repeated erasure, use and abuse of the Edgelands themselves.
‘The archaeology of Rave’, was a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project, which evolved as both a sculptural installation and a live performance in an abandoned warehouse for Hidden Door Festival in September 2021. The work was developed around the notion of Rave as a lost and ancient culture, and ‘The Archeology of Rave’ was an installation and stage set for performance presented through a series of glowing prints, sculptures, and crafted artEfacts.
Lewi Quinn AKA BOIIING is perhaps best known for large scale murals, although the multidisciplinary artist works in video, installations, painting on canvas and more.
We’ve commissioned Lewi to apply his skills to our pop-up bar, bringing more than a splash of colour to Basement 3 – we can’t wait to see what he comes up with!
An artist living and working in Aberfeldy, Matthew studied at Glasgow School of Art 1992 – 1996 and is a VAS Professional Member.
Matthew’s focus on abstract forms and the transformations they undergo is as important as any images that emerge. He is also fascinated by the space inside the painting, images, forms and suggested narratives. The images and structures change radically as the artist seeks a tension and a sympathy between language and representation.
Graduating from Duncan of Jordanstone in 2021 with a First Class Honours, Martin has won The NOMAS Gallery Prize, The Leslie Russell Memorial Prize and selection for the Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporaries Exhibition – where he went on to win the RSA Art Prize 2022 for his installation. Martin has worked several times with Hidden Door; has exhibited in group shows in Japan, Chile, Spain and Scotland and has an upcoming solo show in Kyoto this July. He is currently Artist in Residence at The Global College in Madrid.
Dr Miriam Mallalieu is an artist-curator based in Dundee. Her current research interests include collections care and organisation, particularly relating these to interpretation, knowledge, and structures of power. Miriam was awarded the Queen’s College Scholarship and recently completed a practice-based PhD at the University of Dundee.
Miriam has a broad artistic practice based on critical examination of collections through art writing, sculpture and print. She has won several awards for her work including the John Kinross Scholarship (2017) and the Watters-Maclane Medal (2013), exhibits regularly internationally.
Oana Stanciu is a visual artist from Romania, living and working in Edinburgh. Her work combines performance, photography and moving image to create unnatural and subtly distorted self-portraits. She merges her body with different objects and environments, improvising scenes and transforming herself into unusual characters and creatures. Her work features black and white photographs and moving image that help bring these surreal characters to life.
Oana has exhibited regularly at Hidden Door festival through the open calls as well as an invited artist. She has also had her work in exhibitions at the Ingleby Gallery, Royal Scottish Academy, as well as in Romania, Japan, Norway and other cities in the UK.
In 2022, Oana was awarded a Knighthood by the Romanian president for her contribution to Romanian culture in the UK, and she has received several awards including a VACMA award 2023, Stills Award 2022, RSA Morton Award 2021, Ingleby Award, Latimer Award, and the Meyer Oppenheim Award, and in 2019 she received one of the Royal Scottish Academy’s RSA Residencies for Scotland.
Sarah Calmus (PPVAS) is an interdisciplinary artist, producer and founder of Studio Sumlacs, a socially-driven artist studio.
Interactive, multisensory experiences are central within Calmus’s practice, often drawing focus on environmental concerns; installations are built to provide space for interaction with critical reflection on ecosystems of varying scales.
Silas Parry is a visual artist from Edinburgh. He makes large-scale, colourful sculptures and installations that tackle big concepts in surprising ways. His work speaks to environmental change, science-fiction futures, and encounters with non-human entities.
Silas is excited by synthetic materials like plastics, rubbers and foams. He uses these man-made substances to create abstract forms that become more organic or biological.
For our birthday party, Silas presents Ootheca for New Worlds, a unique installation being developed for our unique underground venue.
Inspired by the theme of Environments Tiphereth Print Studio were commissioned to produce a series of large scale banners for Hidden Door 2023. The group printed at a large scale to create a unique aquatic environment. These hanging prints take the viewer on a journey; sea lions, birds and mermaids at the shallows; down to the glowing crustaceans and octopi at the bottom of the ocean.
Ursula Kam-Ling Cheng is a Scottish based visual artist that intuitively combines diverse mediums to produce joy filled, colour popping cuteness overloads in the form of murals and various other illustrative applications. Mind manifested characters collide with biotic interactivities wherein they connect in realms to form a psychedelic dreamy landscape uniquely her own. Empower love and harmony, she says. Sense all that is surrounding and delight!
Zoe Gibson is a Dundee based artist whose works combine sculpture, filmmaking, installation, mural painting and drawing. She is interested in themes of memory, myth, grief and domesticity and is inspired by folk art, festival, ritual and the Scottish landscape. She is currently studying for her Masters at DJCAD
For this event we’re taking up residence in the Level B3 car park at St James Quarter in Edinburgh’s city centre.
An underground venue never before used for an event like this, Basement 3 will be completely transformed to host our ambitious programme of music, visual art and performance across two nights.