There is at least one theme common to most alternative events - they are polydimensional in form and content. First, they possess overlapping event formats, and perhaps, historically, or even during the course of an event, metamorphose from one event cluster to another. Second, and this is especially the case for ALEs, they are likely to accommodate the heterogeneity of alternate discourse and practice evident within the ACM. As Moore (1995:212) recognises for public events in general, such events are intersections of various 'pathways'. Rarely 'single issue' events, they occasion disputation between constituents over matters of philosophy and method, as well as the interpretation of the event itself. They are what I call alternative cultural heterotopia. In order to describe this, I now turn to a discussion of the concept's principal term.

'Heterotopia' is a spatial concept in receipt of growing interest in recent times. Partially developed by Foucault, the concept has been applied to a range of spheres, installations, geographies and events, accumulating a heterogeneity of meanings in the history of its usage - a confusion which is, in part, a legacy of its brief and non-concise treatment by Foucault himself (1973; 1986). As Hetherington (1997:41) conveys, 'heterotopia' has been used to denote: sites constituted as incongruous or paradoxical, through socially transgressive practices; sites that are ambivalent and uncertain due the multiplicity of meanings attached to them; sites that have an aura of mystery, danger or transgression about them; sites defined by their absolute perfection; marginalised sites, and; incongruous forms of writing.

Heterotopia is Latin for 'place of otherness'. It originally came from the study of anatomy where it refers to 'parts of the body that are either out of place, missing, extra, or, like tumours, alien' (Hetherington 1997:42). In his early work (1973:xviii), Foucault was concerned with the heterotopic character of language - that is, 'the way that a textual discourse can be unsettled by writing that does not follow the expected rules and conventions' (Hetherington 1997:8). Later (1986), however, he used 'heterotopia' in reference to specifically unsettling or ambiguous social spaces. Foucault argued that, by contrast to 'utopias', 'sites with no real place' - which 'present society itself in a perfected form, or else society turned upside down' - there exist 'heterotopia'. These 'counter-sites' are:

a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested and inverted. Places of this kind are outside of all places, even though it may be possible to indicate their location in reality. (Foucault 1986:24)

Foucault suggests that there is probably not a single culture in the world that fails to constitute real spaces that are 'absolutely different from all the sites they reflect and speak about' (ibid).

Hetherington has helped clarify our understanding of such spaces, 'whose existence sets up unsettling juxtapositions of incommensurate "objects" which challenge the way we think, especially the way our thinking is ordered' (1997:42). Rather 'monstrous combinations' appear in these 'almost magical' spaces (ibid:43), since the internal organisation of 'texts' and 'objects' is thought to be derived from similitude rather than resemblance - that is, there is no unity of meaning via resemblance within heterotopia as their content signifies 'through a series of deferrals that are established between a signifier and a signified rather than with direct reference to a referent' (Hetherington 1996b:158-9).

Foucault saw that 'spaces of otherness' can be event-spaces (or 'heterochronia') of transgression (like the festival or the carnival), or spaces for the perfection of social control and order (e.g. the prison and asylum, new colonies or museums and libraries). An understanding of this spectrum has informed Hetherington's take on heterotopia. He defines them as:

sites of alternate ordering ... established by their incongruous condition. That incongruity emerges through a relationship of difference with other sites, such that their presence either provides an unsettling of spatial relations or an alternative representation of spatial relations. (1997:51)

The 'Otherness' of such sites, therefore, does not exist in itself, nor does it derive from the site, but is established via its relationship of difference to other spaces. Such spaces are not fixed as heterotopic - they always have multiple meanings for agents (ibid:51).

Hetherington displays a shift in his position on heterotopia. In earlier work, including his PhD (1993), they are sites of resistance and transgression, marginal spaces where alternate identities are performed. In more recent work, they are 'spaces of alternate ordering', a 'mode of ordering based upon some idea of social improvement' (1997:52).24 In offering 'a theory of the spatial dynamics of modernity' (ibid:ix), Hetherington introduces several spaces as key sites of 'alternate ordering' in the history of modernity. Manifestly ambivalent - accommodating a unique combination of rational debate and hedonistic pleasures - the Palais Royal in eighteenth century Paris was one such site: 'one of the first sites in which the utopics of modernity, the ambivalent interplay of freedom and control, were expressed' (ibid:17). As a heterotopia, the Palais Royal, along with other spaces like the Masonic lodge and the factory, have:

acted as obligatory points of passage, in producing a spatiality that expressed the utopic ideas of freedom and order through which we might begin to understand modernity ... Almost like laboratories, they can be taken as sites in which new ways of experimenting with ordering society are tried out. (ibid:12-13)

Hetherington is not so much concerned with the utopia or dystopia of modernity, but with heterotopia - actual spaces and spatialised processes of ordering. Heterotopia exist, but they only exist in the relationship between spaces, in particular, between eu-topia (good place) and ou-topia (no-place) - the two Greek words Thomas More (1985) merged to form the term Utopia, which meant 'a good place' which was 'nowhere', except in the imagination (Hetherington 1997:ix). Heterotopias are spaces where efforts are made to turn the nowhere of the imagination into the good place - but they are invariably 'in-between' such ideals.

The above clarifications have facilitated the development of the concept of alternative cultural heterotopia (ACH), which, I suggest, involves four interdependent characteristics:

First, they are primarily spaces of otherness, that which Foucault has called 'counter-sites'. That is, centres for alternative culture - expatriates and exiles, outsiderhood, marginality, authenticity - they are places where dispersed ambivalence and uncertainty, displaced and rejected knowledge (Hetherington 1993:92), are celebrated. This constitutes their difference in relation to adjacent sites, in contrast to those 'other spaces' established for the control of disorder like prisons or psychiatric hospitals.

Second, they are heterogeneous spaces. Indicating 'a complex juxtaposition and cosmopolitan simultaneity of difference' (Soja 1995:15), they accommodate variant alternatives, multiple 'utopics'25 - marginalia. Their habitués may subscribe to a vast range of alternative discourse and practice - authentica. They are thus heterogeneous zones, with variant expectations held by inhabitants.

Third, they are contested spaces. Uncertainty and variant expectations condition disputation between inhabitants over the meaning of the space. Conflict does not arise exclusively between inhabitants (organisers and patrons) and non-inhabitants (external bodies), but possibly between inhabitants themselves. This may produce fission.

Fourth, often event-spaces, they are liminal realms. That is, despite contestation, or perhaps because of it, they hold potential for (re)creating alternative identities and effecting 'alternate orderings'. I thus take my cues from Turner (see Chapter 2) and Foucault (via Hetherington) who claims that heterotopia 'do not exist in the order of things, but in the ordering of things' (1996a:38).

My thesis is that ACEs (especially ALEs) are ACH. And, ConFest will be offered as an unparalleled example of such a phenomenon. Not only had the original Aquarius Festival presaged the building of Australia's permanent ACH (Nimbin), but it provided the prototype for the DTE ConFest, which had, according to Altman (1980:116), 'come to replace Nimbin ... as the best known symbol in Australia of the "counter-culture"', or, as I prefer, alternative culture. Yet, it is an inimitable counter-site, and its special place in Australian alternative culture is affirmed and validated through its unique combination of the above ACEs - a synthesis of festival, gathering and mega-event (and accommodating features characteristic of the folk festival, dance party and protest). Such polydimensionality engenders a remarkable environment of contrast and complementarity. Yet, for now, I wish to examine the way researchers have investigated other ALEs.

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