There are some times when being at Kiosk Festival feels like a bit of a throwback. Somehow the coming together of people in this place – mostly Žilina’s New Synagogue and the converted train station STANICA – lacks the cynical edge you find around most theatre institutions, driven increasingly by a calculated and meticulous approach to audience. Here, people can hang out in a free way and watch great performance together, and it’s easy to forget that this is a very cool thing.
This year’s theme is “Invasion”, a no-bullshit direct reference to the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Whereas it was possible in the previous two editions of Kiosk to skirt around this subject - for example, "After Human" (2022) was only ever indirectly related, and "No Power" (2023) may relate to the targeting of electricity systems but not necessarily - this year’s edition asks more directly about this human tendency to take the space of the other through aggression, abuse, and trauma. Although these things are universal, the presence of people from Ukraine here, as well as its close proximity to borders of russia’s 2022 attack, ensures that there is little room for interpretation as artists still attempt to deal with the philosophical and cultural fallout of this single disastrous decision by the russian state.
Day 2 of Kiosk Festival saw a couple of shows that were fantastic in different ways. Trying to do them justice is a little difficult – apologies to the morning’s Adam Dragun: ALEX and Blízke stretnutia, respectively a presentation of a work-in-progress about blurring categories in crisis, and a short peaceful interlude into the tradition of Camera Obscura. The meaty program saw the afternoon’s activities include a puppet-theatre work, a promenade performance in nearby Rosina, a fascinating piece of war composition played by a string quartet at a petrol station, finally retuning to the New Synagogue for a deconstruction of masculinity in the form of “the cowboy” and then some outdoor silent discos and DJs at Stanica. Overall, hard not to enjoy it, as you walk around catching up with friends from previous editions, exploring new facets of the valueless diamond that is the concrete city of Žilina.
Your correspondent has fallen a little bit ill, so I’ll do
something a bit irregular as I’ve missed Day 3 of the festival. Instead, I’ll
split day 2 into 2 parts. First up, it’s Sonic
Highway Motorest and Nemiesta, and save the other two for tomorrow.
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Sonic Highway Motorest
Sonic Highway Motorest is a collaboration between members of the group MFK Bochum in Germany and locals to Slovakia, from Žilina and Bratislava. As such, it’s the type of vision that Kiosk Festival excels at – a site-specific, international and pan-European work, blending different experimental forms around a theme of environmental protection and citizen rights. In this case, we are treated to a bus ride, a 4km walk along an abandoned highway, and a strange, choreographed happening on a hill at the sunset.
The series of fortunate events begins with the bus ride, with local expert Marián Gogola (Mulica) guiding us through the history of the Žilina bypass road’s and tunnel construction (it was supposed to be finished in 2010, and supposedly “at least one direction” of it will be open in the next years). We get off the bus in an urban dystopia of concrete and dilapidated industry – the kind where you might dump a body – and walk around the corner to find a small DJ set from Marlene Ruther, played from a loosely set-up decks on the back of a broken car. Some “easter eggs” are already lighting our path: for example, someone in beach clothes casually strolls through holding a giant umbrella. We are led by another collaborator, the camo-dressed Adam Samuel Marko, and given instructions that we participate at our own risk, and amusingly (I think?), that there are no toilets available for the next 2 hours, but the assistants have plastic bags. This section is left with the motto of the National Highway Association: “Who wants searches for a way – who doesn’t want, searches for a reason”.
After a 30-minute walk through the countryside, we approach a crossing with a hilltop, where we can see our friend with the umbrella enjoying the view. A man approaches, singing a traditional Slovak song with two traditionally-attired actors at his side, in a sort of parody of nationalism. Everyone disappears, and we keep walking to approach the site of the highway: a vast, sprawling chasm dug into the side of a mountain, with glorious views of the fields beyond.
Photo: Natália Zajačiková
Here we’re treated to a series of happenings as we drink a beer and enjoy hot-dogs and their variations: a jog through the chasm, a voice addressing us with some poetic references to non-human agency “If you want to become a stone // you should just come over here and wait // and after a while you will become a stone.” Another DJ set follows, this time a collaboration between Ruther and Katarína Marková, while Franziska Schneeberger plays around with a giant remote control car on the distant highway. Finally, it’s time to go – but not before Lars Blum sprays the words “Enjoy the Silence” onto the highway barrier after singing the classic Simon and Garfunkel tune.
It’s an inventive, fun use of a weird situation: one that deploys many techniques of site-specific theatre to maximum capacity. The details of the performance are well-organised: no mean feat, given the amount of variables one has to control. And the outcome of the journey is a fun, social happening that is educational and provocative, among the best I’ve seen of this type of work.
Nemiesta
The bus pulls up at a petrol station, as busses sometimes do. Only this one is a little different: it has a small stage set up outside, with some chairs, and four people in workers outfits setting up their musical instruments. This Tescos is a little out of town, amidst banal middle-class shopping haunts and next to a sporting arena (which also hosted performances in 2022, including Dead in the Pool). We take our seats, soak in the weird atmosphere, and prepare to listen.
Photo: Natália Zajačiková
Miroslav Tóth seems no stranger to composition – the Prague based composer has many years experience. But Nemiesta – translating to “non-places” or perhaps the preverbial “no-man’s land” of military language – is surely one of the better experiments. Played together with the Dystopic Requiem Quartet (two violins, one viola, one cello), it’s a selection of 6 pieces relating to abandoned places, each creating a distinct atmosphere and each in conversation with the last, the common thread seemingly a dystopian, almost cacophonous approach to music, that severely undercuts threads and melodies with cries of anguish, digital noise, and an adventurous approach to the string instruments and musical production.
Piece 1 introduces this theme, which directly approaches the festival theme of invasion, grinding its way through an explosive opening of staccato bursts mixed with punctuated cries from the performers (through mics attached to their instruments), interacting in sync with the spiccato of the strings. The digital components sit interestingly under the score, complimenting and interacting with the strings in a way that I have never exactly seem before, seeming to loop in and out. Piece 2 calms things down, as the backing track moves to a crowd scene, and the melodious string line floating through, giving the impression of loneliness. Piece 3 works with drags and scratches, deconstructing the violin and working more with plucks to bring out a kind of cascading logic that pervades the piece. Piece 4 opens with a walking around led by the backing track, seamlessly undercutting the string lines, which remain essentially at one pitch for the first part of the movement, evolving into a series of declining crescendos before everything suddenly drops together into a low rumble, which dissipates into the air at the end of the movement. Pieces 5 and 6 returns to summarise the whole, before moves into a deep and emotional longing, leaving a mellow flavour.
As a whole, the piece is an interesting contribution to contemporary music, with traces of Ligeti and Steve Reich. The activation of lost places echoes as an honest approach to the trauma of violence within the context of the festival - one that sets alight the Tescos Petrol Station, well-encapsulating the theme of invasion.
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Sonic Highway Motorest
Concept, performance, costumes: MFK Bochum (Katarína Marková, Marlene Ruther, Franziska Schneeberger)
Dramaturg, perfomance: Milo Juráni
Set Design, perfomance: Lars Blum
Performance: Adam Samuel Marko
Nemiesta
Violin: David Danel
Voilin: Anna Veverková
Viola: Jakub Chlebo
Cello: Štěpán Drtina
Elektronics: Miroslav Tóth
Note: Current publication is done with the understanding that colleagues and communities from Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kyiv, Lutsk, and Lviv among others in Ukraine are currently under attack in an attempt to erase Ukrainian culture and identity. No artist should be forced to rehearse how to pick up the gun.
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