Did you know? There are academics who study festivals!
One fundamental theoretical idea about festivals comes from philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin's 1965 book Rabelais and His World in which he describes the idea of the carnivalesque. The carnivalesque creates a space and time in which the norms of society are suspended. A norm is an standard of behavior set by society. Norms are not innate biological understandings, but socially created rules that change depending on where you are and when you are. (For example: in your own life, who wears what types of clothing?) Bakhtin spoke specifically of "hierarchical norms," but the idea has since been expanded. HONK! creates a space that changes and challenges our norms--and one way both attendees and performers externally manifest this change in standards is through the way they dress their bodies and instruments.
One element of the carnivalesque is the ability to explore and occupy new identities, and--to vastly oversimplify the concept of "masking"--masks are one means of doing just that. In other words, masks allow people to express a new side of themselves or escape the confines of their societal norms. In the U.S., we might immediately associate masks with the Carnivals we imagine in Brazil or the Caribbean. But that type of masking appears at HONK! as well. This represents at a small scale how the space HONK! is making falls into the tradition of the carnivalesque and is in conversation with other types of carnivals and carnival events.
