In Tuesday's introduction, I mentioned that every year I say 'never again', and every year I come back. This is because Faki offers conditions of no other festival I know - there is a closeness with artists all living together in a non-institutional space, that overcomes the hyper-professionalism of most festivals. Careers are not built here, so much as mythologies. I learn things in this environment - about art, about life - that I could never learn outside the paper-thin walls of the former medical factory, Medika.
For me, this trust and complicity between humans is a feature particular to performance. It can be dangerous - as various recent media accounts of sexual harassment attest. It can quickly be transformed into abuse. (The different between transgression and abuse has received a lot of attention lately - and if it was ever a 'grey area' in the performing arts, it surely isn't now). But, paradoxically, it is also what we love about the stage - its capacity to draw us together in human drama, and to bring out our natural tendency to transgress boundaries, and to confuse and unsettle our perceptions.
There was plenty of drama this week, on and off the stage. The total of 8 great performances might be well down on the insanity of the years in which Irena Čurik was artistic director - where some 30 performances from 25 artists packed both the schedule and Medika itself, generating some frenzied criticism on my part - but Natko Jurdana's programming again demonstrated the benefits of specificity. Every show was programmed for a reason, each of them elucidating the theme of 'Inequality' in a slightly different way. There was a strong anticapitalist bent, with shows such as Dušan Murić's Doći će partizani opet and Zoran Ilić's Smej se Pajaco directly offering alternatives to the inequality and exploitation-producing systems under capitalism. These were refreshingy direct critiques that drove to the heart of the cause of inequality in post-industrial states, but both shows were not there as h8ers, instaead offering alternative collectivities to the exploitation and hierarchy of profit-driven political systems.
Though the theme is unapologetically focused on economic inequality, gender politics was not overlooked. Jirjirak's memorable Braille offered rape as an example of inequality - and though its analysis was for me somewhat skewed, it nevertheless offered a totally different reading of equality that attacked the system of patriarchy in its most undeniable manifestation. The work is ablely contrasted with Katarina Ilijašević's (UMRE)ŽENE, which seemed (in my reading anyhow) to address the oppression of patriarchy by sidestepping it completely, engaging instead in a discourse of women, for women.
A pair of other dance works - Quizzical Körper's Out of Balance and Marje Hirvonen and Anni Taskula's FEST presented alternate realities, logics, or systems that addressed inequality by challenging the status quo - the former through its format of instant composition, and the latter through creating a sense of radical togetherness with the audience. These made up perhaps my favourite works of the festival - not without critique, they nevertheless bravely ventured forth into unknown areas, presenting new perspectives through risk and creation of new complicities for the stage.
The only work of 'straight' drama - The Wall performed by Damian Droszcz, is its own triumph of monodrama, combining text and acting within a contemporary microcosm of today's dissatisfied white working class (complete with its patriarchal image). Finally, Cloudwalkers BONDING may not have been everyone's cup of tea, but it nevertheless displayed a different approach to the theme of inequality that was welcomed by many at the festival.
Inevitably, I will finish by thanking my partner-in-crime this year, the Lithuanian critic Monika Jašinskaitė, for her generous company and argument. Complicity on the stage feeds into the society and its dialogues - and I hope I can speak for us both when I say we endured a remarkable week of performance and discussion, plumbing the depths of performance in search of the various permutations that the shows or the (surprisingly rewarding!) theme could produce. This was realised in the Critic's Round Table on the final day of the festival - more to come on this in the next days.
So as the alps of Slovenia slide past me again and I drift towards Salzburg for my connecting train, I once again bid adieu to another year of Faki. After 5 years, will this writing project finally come to and end, inside its acid-stained fluorescent green walls? I would like to think not. But as usual, what I have to look forward to is another year of agonising over my role here - after all, what makes Faki special is also evidently commodifiable, precisely through the process of writing about it. Nevertheless, there is something eternal about the festival and my time inside it - if there is really a 'not again!', then it is one screamed in joy, and not defeat. The struggle continues - and Faki remains one of the only places in Europe where I have found something resembling a clean (well, let's say 'purely corrupt') platform for international performance, where a new politics can self-generate under the dimming lights of Medika.
For me, this trust and complicity between humans is a feature particular to performance. It can be dangerous - as various recent media accounts of sexual harassment attest. It can quickly be transformed into abuse. (The different between transgression and abuse has received a lot of attention lately - and if it was ever a 'grey area' in the performing arts, it surely isn't now). But, paradoxically, it is also what we love about the stage - its capacity to draw us together in human drama, and to bring out our natural tendency to transgress boundaries, and to confuse and unsettle our perceptions.
Two critics forgiving each other. Photo: Josip Visković
There was plenty of drama this week, on and off the stage. The total of 8 great performances might be well down on the insanity of the years in which Irena Čurik was artistic director - where some 30 performances from 25 artists packed both the schedule and Medika itself, generating some frenzied criticism on my part - but Natko Jurdana's programming again demonstrated the benefits of specificity. Every show was programmed for a reason, each of them elucidating the theme of 'Inequality' in a slightly different way. There was a strong anticapitalist bent, with shows such as Dušan Murić's Doći će partizani opet and Zoran Ilić's Smej se Pajaco directly offering alternatives to the inequality and exploitation-producing systems under capitalism. These were refreshingy direct critiques that drove to the heart of the cause of inequality in post-industrial states, but both shows were not there as h8ers, instaead offering alternative collectivities to the exploitation and hierarchy of profit-driven political systems.
Though the theme is unapologetically focused on economic inequality, gender politics was not overlooked. Jirjirak's memorable Braille offered rape as an example of inequality - and though its analysis was for me somewhat skewed, it nevertheless offered a totally different reading of equality that attacked the system of patriarchy in its most undeniable manifestation. The work is ablely contrasted with Katarina Ilijašević's (UMRE)ŽENE, which seemed (in my reading anyhow) to address the oppression of patriarchy by sidestepping it completely, engaging instead in a discourse of women, for women.
A pair of other dance works - Quizzical Körper's Out of Balance and Marje Hirvonen and Anni Taskula's FEST presented alternate realities, logics, or systems that addressed inequality by challenging the status quo - the former through its format of instant composition, and the latter through creating a sense of radical togetherness with the audience. These made up perhaps my favourite works of the festival - not without critique, they nevertheless bravely ventured forth into unknown areas, presenting new perspectives through risk and creation of new complicities for the stage.
The only work of 'straight' drama - The Wall performed by Damian Droszcz, is its own triumph of monodrama, combining text and acting within a contemporary microcosm of today's dissatisfied white working class (complete with its patriarchal image). Finally, Cloudwalkers BONDING may not have been everyone's cup of tea, but it nevertheless displayed a different approach to the theme of inequality that was welcomed by many at the festival.
Inevitably, I will finish by thanking my partner-in-crime this year, the Lithuanian critic Monika Jašinskaitė, for her generous company and argument. Complicity on the stage feeds into the society and its dialogues - and I hope I can speak for us both when I say we endured a remarkable week of performance and discussion, plumbing the depths of performance in search of the various permutations that the shows or the (surprisingly rewarding!) theme could produce. This was realised in the Critic's Round Table on the final day of the festival - more to come on this in the next days.
So as the alps of Slovenia slide past me again and I drift towards Salzburg for my connecting train, I once again bid adieu to another year of Faki. After 5 years, will this writing project finally come to and end, inside its acid-stained fluorescent green walls? I would like to think not. But as usual, what I have to look forward to is another year of agonising over my role here - after all, what makes Faki special is also evidently commodifiable, precisely through the process of writing about it. Nevertheless, there is something eternal about the festival and my time inside it - if there is really a 'not again!', then it is one screamed in joy, and not defeat. The struggle continues - and Faki remains one of the only places in Europe where I have found something resembling a clean (well, let's say 'purely corrupt') platform for international performance, where a new politics can self-generate under the dimming lights of Medika.
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