Nottingham’s underground arts scene has been rumbling for years, spear-headed by the prodigal all-round creator Lukas Wigflex, whose parties at The Brickworks, NYE events at secret venues and his Wigflex City Festival have offered up some of the most creative audio-visual work in the world. 

The pandemic forced the festival to cancel, along with all other nightclub opportunities for the Wigflex crew. However, true to form, Lukas teamed up with cross-discipline technologist Multimodal in search of a solution. Their answer: Fleximodal TV.

Fleximodal TV is a 48-hour visual arts experience from the fictional utopian world Flexmodia. The platform will host a rich roster of music, AV shows and art, all broadcast via four TV channels, and will be partnered by Crack Magazine. 

What we know so far about Flexmodia is that it’s a realm that is free of restriction, thriving off a new kind of counter-culture that we won’t have seen before. 

The digital experience will feature music from the likes of Call Super (presenting a Hard House set from a casette recording in 1998), Midland, Ben UFO, GiGi FM, Yazmin Lacey, Adam Pits, Sonja Moonear, Audiobahn as well as a Black Bandcamp showcase from NIKS. 

Accompanying the music will be videos from Multimodal, AVVA Studio, Wolfgang Buttress, Poets Against Racism and many more industry-leading names.

As if the broadcast wasn’t enough, there will also be a physical exhibition in Wigflex’s Flemoxdian War Bunker venue. The exhibition has been curated to offer a historical narrative of Flexmodia in an all-consuming fashion.

Through various hacks and cheat codes, we managed to get in contact with the Flexmodian Administrator of Cultural Affairs to find out more.

---

When did the conversations for Fleximodal TV begin? What motivated you to decide to give humans access to your world?

After the collapse of the old world, Flexmodians made the unilateral decision to permanently erase the World Wide Web and all of the evils that came along with it; debt, dopamine inducing algorithms and exploitation in every form imaginable. For years the country went back to blissful basics and spent time re-connecting with their surroundings rather than their phones and digital screens. Flexmodia was flourishing. 

However, the removal of the web left a gaping hole where culture and creativity previously sat. This led our community to come together to re-imagine how the very best art should be presented and enjoyed by the masses. The result was Fleximodal TV; a homogeneous, socially driven transmission that works to showcase our countries finest talents in a way that transcends all sense of reality and time. We hope that sharing this beauty with those still stuck in the old world will help them to escape and join our dystopian utopia.

Tell us a bit about Flexmodia and what we should expect to experience.

Expect a forage through space and time, where you will collect mind-bending simulations and audio delights aplenty. 

Your lineup of audio and visual artists extensively traverses genres and styles. How did you choose who should be involved? What makes an artist suitable for Flexmodia?

As one of our greatest and most highly revered leaders The Right Honourable Barry Cob once said, ‘if we likes it we plays it and if we don’ts we won’ts.. but no matter what, shits gots to be wonky’.

You will also be hosting a physical exhibition in your multi-story Flexmodian War Bunker venue. What can people expect from this and what were the inspirations behind the exhibition’s design?

The physical exhibition will be an opportunity for people to visit Flexmodia in the flesh and be fully immersed in our world from all angles. It will be unlike anything we have ever put together before.. Think music, drinks, a narrative and a digitalised fully body experience that will entirely warp all sense of perception. 

Support for parties and promoters from the council and governors of cities in our world has been quite poor over the years. Is Fleximodal TV an opportunity for us to peer into a world without restriction? 

The old world big wigs only permit and support culture and creativity that is driven by financial gain.. when parties are run with this same ethos rather than being rooted in a simple and puristic love for music, we’re all running at a loss. 

Fleximodal TV has been an opportunity for us to take back the reins and get back to basics without all the political, disingenuous  nonsense. It’s the very best of the music and art that we love without any inhibition. 

Talk a bit about the minds behind this immersive experience. 

In total, we have over 80 creative contributors to Fleximodal TV. This includes musicians, artists, audio visual producers, poets, graphic designers and everything mad and beautiful in between. Mostly, these are people who have in some way been a part of the Wigflex parties over the last 13+ years.. so to be able to bring so many of these amazing minds together at such a turbulent time is something very special indeed.

If you could pick five tunes that will warm us up for the event, what would they be?

Anything Ricky V or Shackleton.

Fleximodal TV airs at 18:00 on September 12th here.