(Think friendly Japanese expat bower bird bookmaker, stuffed in a capsule hotel.)

People-person Hiromi Tango has holed herself up into that little space no larger than a late model Ford Festiva at Platform (where the old guy with second-hand books lived and died) and is living out her art project Absence. She's there for the duration of the festival, with millions of bits of string, scribbled notes, psychotic drawings and hand-stitched journals.

The liner notes for Absence reckon this project may generate ‘unexpected moments of intimacy and tension'. They got that right. Take the challenge: I dare you not to be in tears after 15 minutes with Hiromi Tango. She is a force of nature (think tsunami, not baby squirrel) who inexplicably melts the hardest of hearts. Moreover, people give her stuff: secret diaries, those stickers you get on apples, White Knight wrappers, bad drawings of Ronald Reagan. Then, when you're gone, she'll catalogue everything, sew it all into books, hang it from string, stick it to the windows, look at it.

I'm a cynical old buzzard when it comes to things like this, but with Absence I'm sold: it's about real people, and the beautifulness of communicating and helping each other. You Choir of Hard Knocks lovers out there sooo have to get on this one.

By Oslo Davis

Format: Project

Motivation: Improves creativity by osmosis

Keywords: Platform, Next Wave Festival

Me: Trevor Flinn plays the drums in his fictional punk band, The Meat Eaters - the highs and lows of their career are charted in the exhibition The Puma, The Stranger & The Mountain at Platform
You: Why are you telling me this?
Me: Well you're in the GOODS section - I'm trying to pique your interest in official Meat Eater merch - band t-shirts and fold-it-yourself sets of sheep skulls, Meat Eaters tour buses and half bricks - available at Sticky until stocks run out.
You: Half bricks?
Me: Yes its the first step towards owning your own dream home.

You: Right ok...I thought you said they were a fictional band....so they don't really exist?
Me: well they exist enough to have Official Band Mercandise. Hey you look great today by the way - you parting your hair on the other side or something?
You: What was that? Are you trying to compliment as part of of your pique-ing schtick? You were, weren't you?
Me: No I wasn't.
You: Okay I'm down with the t-shirts but I've had it with you I'm moving on.
Me: don't go!

By Amita Kirpalani

Product: Objects

Theft: Theft is a risk

Keywords: Next Wave Festival, Platform, Sticky

I used to think audio tours were lame. All those people smugly strolling around galleries, wearing headphones, getting told what to think. I prefer my own inner monologue, thank you very much - ‘Tired legs... hungry... what would happen if I touched that?'. When I finally gave one a try, I discovered they're actually quite enjoyable! It's like being able to remember what you ‘learnt' at art school, or walking around with one of your nice lecturers.

Dear Art, Please Touch Me, on the other hand, is more like rampaging through the NGV with a bunch of bad-ass imaginary friends. Artist Danielle Freakley's tour is constructed from audio fragments provided by characters as diverse as an angry virgin, an edgy toddler and a red-bearded sailor, all giving their honest opinions and gut reactions to some of the NGV's most significant works.

If you're the type who gets intimidated by the gallery setting, maybe this will release you from your shackles. Dear Art, Please Touch Me emphasises the utter subjectivity of art criticism and also the idea that serious art can be enjoyed by anyone. If you're the type of person who has a bunch of bad-ass imaginary friends, you might not need it.

By Max Olijnyk

Release: Compilation

To Cure: A quiet weekend

Keywords: Art, Next Wave Festival

Veronica Kent and Sean Peoples are Scanners. Well, I can't prove it but they have been openly dabbling with telepathy as a means to explore the dynamics and boundaries of people's relationships with one another. Having already telepathically curated exhibitions and acted as mediums between a group of people in a gallery and a lake full of eels, they know their stuff.

For four hours per night over five nights the artists will place themselves in separate windows of the Forum and send messages to each other. The telepathic exchanges will be written down every 15 minutes on time-coded Post-It notes and then stuck on to the window for the passing audience to read and compare. The notes will be used as text for a print publication produced at the end of the season.

Now, I'm fairly sure the mothers of both artists weren't treated with a drug during pregnancy that turned their kids into mind-reading phonemes who can cause people's (not the artists', that would suck as an exhibition) heads to explode. Either way, if their exchanges don't match up too well I wouldn't complain about it.

By Kieran O'Shea

Medium: Performance

Drink: Long neck in a paper bag

Keywords: Next Wave Festival, The Forum

The best cure for an art hangover is not to be found in alcohol abuse. Edie Sedgwick, for instance, got wild until everyone at The Factory had crossed out her phone number or whatever it was they did in the olden days. On the other hand, it's nice to have a festival club because sometimes you want to talk about art without having to stand in an alleyway with a plastic cup. Moderation is evidently the key.

The Next Wave Festival Club is perfectly situated between the extremes not only of art and revelry, but also of North Melbourne and the city. Right now, many of you may be decrying, "The Mercat! That's the place my brother played deep house sets in 1991!" But this is not The Mercat that he and his wannabe Detroit tech buddies called home. It's an all-new bar, co-presented by ThreeThousand, that's opening for the first time ever this Thursday night. So you can rest assured, if anyone is playing deep house, they will be way better looking than your brother.

This multi-faceted, indoor/outdoor club will also be home to panels and presentations throughout the festival, so check the Polyphonic program for more excuses to hang out in a space that boasts that oh-so-rare confluence of art, alcohol AND seating.

By Penny Modra

Venue: Club

Meal: Where everybody knows your name

Keywords: Next Wave Festival

Your extensive Italian language and Spaghetti Western experience will tell you that this project involves ‘much death'. Being that ThreeThousand rarely receives an entertainment offer so tempting, we sent a reporter...

Excerpt from a transcription of The Safari Team's location hunt:

- Excuse me, is this the hellishly shambolic handmade cinema cave we saw advertised?
- Yes, but Mr Tarantino has already booked it.
- But does he have a band of outlaws, sex fiends, sophisticates and skeletons to back him up?
- (Nonplussed silence)
- Sorry, dumb question. But does he have a trophy wife and her leather-bound lover hitting the road under the guise of a kidnapping?
- (Continuing silence)
- Oh yeah, well, is he going to perform the film's soundtrack live, complete with attempted Italian narration?
- No he is going to sit at home wearing tracksuit pants, looking at pictures of Christina Ricci.
- (Now it's The Safari Team's turn for incredulous pausing)
- OK, can you pay upfront?

Molto Morte: like Grindhouse, but with cowboys, Italians and awesome live effects.

By Penny Modra

Format: Project

Mood: Epic

Keywords: TCB Gallery, Next Wave Festival

Next Wave is all systems go. And, it's not really the kind of wave that dumped you and your boogie board at Point Leo before dumping seaweed in your pants. It's more like a well-travelled Tsunami, flooding Brunswick coin laundries.

The Agents of Proximity have set up shop in laundromat and they're exhibiting the travel stories of locals. Read about how John got lost with Aviva and discovered a giant cactus. Or how Mem and Liz cycled about before settling down with some apple tobacco. The coin laundry-meets-travel agency tells the stories of Brunswick locals, revealing that even when thousands of people live in one area, they share the space in curious ways.

This agency won't tempt you into forking out thousands of dollars to be poor in another country, nor are the shelves lined with books about exotic beaches, written by people who may or may not know anything about such beaches. But it will teach you about Brunswick folk; just like alley cats, lurking about, rubbing their sweat glands against poles and telling their friends about day-to-day goings-on.

By Isabel Dunstan

Product: Art

Anatomy: Brain

Keywords: Brunswick, Next Wave Festival

When I'm not working out on my Bullworker or transcribing the voices in my am radio's static I like to spend my nights at the Roberts Street park screaming at the stars. Little smug shiny fuckers, shining all bright with their little smiley lightypants and all. Hate em! But you know apparently that don't count for jack because the folks at Yelling at Stars reckon they're sending the first Australian interstellar message to hyper-wonk it's sciencey way into deep space.

Oh well, maybe their space gadget will penetrate further than my EPO enriched lungs. I hope so because those little stars need to be taught a damned lesson! Though I kinda reckon since there's a whole bunch of artists involved in this thing it'll be all poetic and positive and complex and arty and stuff. Whatever, ‘cause even though they suck I'm kinda hoping those stars will like what they hear and get back to us with some kind of message.

Maybe they'll send us details about when the Interspace Yo-Yo Kings to visit and show us how to walk-the-Martian. I'm curious so I will def' be down at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Kings Doman Gardens, Linlithglow Av to see if what the YAS crew send has a chance of tempting them to get back to us after all this time. I'll be the guy with the G-Love tee.

By Robert Cook

Medium: Performance

Drink: Long neck in a paper bag

Keywords: Next Wave Festival

Rogue is a bunch of dance renegades who've recently stampeded, possibly Fame! style, beyond the mirrored walls of the VCA. The Counting/Ocular Proof, part of Next Wave's 'Things that Dance' program, is a double bill by young, tough and talented dancers that sets out to explore and exploit the body's senses.

Rogue is joined by the equally roguish Antony Hamilton (just off the back of Blazeblue Oneline), who has choreographed The Counting. This work relentlessly pursues the body's inherent rhythms, timing, driving beats and dynamic tensions. It's like experiencing a Magic Eye diagram in moving bodies and sound: you get it, you lose it, you get it again - it derides your meager perceptions.

Ocular Proof, choreographed by Rogue themselves, investigates the notion that the five senses, in particular the eyes, create the supposed truth of everyday life. (NB: Who says you can't hold the moon in your hand?)

By Luke George

Format: Project

Mood: Smarts

Keywords: North Melbourne, Next Wave Festival, Dance

The Movement Movement. Or: your chance to make like Anna Karina running through the Louvre in Jean Luc Godard's Band of Outsiders. Canadians Jenn Goodwin and Jessica Rowe organise large groups to participate in ‘choreographed jogging expeditions through the world's major cultural institutions.'

I love how they insert ‘choreographed' in there - like they want to douse you in icy water before you go off half-cocked on your own unchoreographed run through some random ‘major cultural institution'. Is a large-scale unchoreographed running event even possible? What would that look like? Ooh, ooh, I know, it just came to me! The running of the bulls in Spain. Especially unchoreographed when you're the guy getting bull-gored and trampled and stuff.

There will be no bull when Jenn and Jessica invite you to join them on a run through Melbourne Museum on Saturday May 31, the last day of the Next Wave Festival. But there will, of course. be a stuffed horse. In Godard's film, Karina and co. are trying to beat the world record of nine minutes 43 seconds for running through the Louvre. How long will it take us to lap Phar Lap?

By Dylan Rainforth

Ambience: Indoor

Difficulty: Start training like, last month

Keywords: Carlton, Melbourne Museum, Next Wave Festival

Description:
Unsheltered Workshops investigates the artistic process by drawing together a hoard of international and local artists who create outside of the canvas. Evergreen Terrace (James Deutsher and Liv Barrett) are one such collaboration who admit they're just two confused people trying to experience the world. Their contribution to Unsheltered Workshops involves clothing, a big book and a video. Mediums that kick the canvas wall hanging's conventional ass.

By Isabel Dunstan

Event: Exhibition

Stimulus: A

Keywords: Next Wave Festival

Description:
With five bucks and six hours to spare, it makes sense to spend it all at The Men's Gallery, right? All potential strip club gags aside, The Men's Gallery will prove to be one of the most fascinating - and we use this word so you get your academia on and call this ‘research' (goddamnit, we slipped) - spaces this festival. Patrons will question, explore and utilise the loaded space, understanding how sexuality and behaviour is embedded in spatial design. If gender theory, commerce exchange and double-headed penis-shaped stages are your thing: circle this.

By Isabel Dunstan

Event: Party

Stimulus: E

Keywords: Next Wave Festival

Description:
Be kind to your knees, you'll miss them when they're gone. This advice was one of a string of profound messages in that sunscreen speech. It swept across newspapers, graduation ceremonies and nightclubs, morphing into a dance track along the way. On Friday May 30, the utopian ideals of similar weight will be spectacularly posed on the dance floor. Perhaps chemically enhanced, people-hugging, booty-popping punters aren't as free as they think in the multi-million dollar hedonistic circus of the nightclub industry. But enough of the artsy seriousness. This is the closing party, so dance plenty. Just be kind to your knees.

By Isabel Dunstan

Event: Party

Stimulus: sound the horns!

Keywords: Next Wave Festival