Michaela Pašteková heads Kiosk Festival in Žilina, Slovakia, together with Martin Krištof.
This interview was conducted on the seating bank of Mestská krytá plaváreň Žilina (Indoor Swimming Pool Žilina), apparently the first Olympic swimming pool of then-Czechoslovakia, approximately 30 minutes before the festival finishes. As we witnessed the final performance of the festival, the durational Dead in the Pool by Tereza Sikorová & Tomáš Moravanský (CZ), we reviewed the 4 days of the festival this year, what just happened, and the festival theme of ‘After Human’.
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Richard Pettifer: How did the week go? How are you feeling?
Michaela Pašteková: Tired! And still deeply involved in the festival. I’m waiting for the time when I will be able to step out, and reflect. But the festival will be finished in 30 minutes. Then, I will see how I really feel.
So you’re inside the world of the festival still… is it a nice world to be in?
Yes. I’m doing this festival for the fifth time, it’s sometimes stressful but filled with different emotions. You see friends, there are a lot of hugs and kisses, then you have to make hard organisational things, then sometimes you are angry with your colleagues, and so on. So I leave with all sorts of emotions. Every year I say “this is my last year”, but on the last day I realise, this is the work that I love. Some years on the last show, I start crying with a mix of sadness and happiness. When I see how people are happy and they have fun, in the end, I say “ok, let’s do it again next year”.
I guess it’s very intense?
Actually we are working for the whole year, on different things – and July is very intense. The last years I learned that in the evenings I have to dance a little or have a drink. There has to be time to have some talks with artists and people around the festival, it’s really ok to be ‘one of them’ in the night. We really do everything from dramaturgy to production, buying food for technicians – we are not a hierarchical institution, when someone needs help, we do this or that. Because of that, it’s so intense. You have to be multitasking.
What’s the theme of the festival?
“After Human”
“After Human?”
We didn’t want to call it ‘Posthuman’. We didn’t want to work with this field of theory. The theme is in a process of coming to mind over the year – it begins when we are choosing the performance and pieces, looking to see if there is some connection between them or common topic. Sometimes, there are things that directly influence the theme of the festival – maybe 3 years ago, one of our buildings burned down, and it was one of the biggest dance platforms. It was a big disruption to our plans. So we switched the theme 2 months before the festival to ‘Burnout’ – it was a reference to this fire, and also physical or mental burnout. This After Human – it started following this year’s invasion by russia. Somehow there was a connection to this war – we saw the theme from another perspective. We didn’t want to make it post-apocalyptic (maybe it looked like that because of the weather during the festival!), but a certain pessimism was probably unavoidable – wouldn't the world actually be a better place without us? The theme was also inspired by the fact that some pieces and performances work with artificial intelligence or some non-human things, and start to eliminate the human. And we adapted also to these theatrical things, and we started to think, if theatre can exist without the human, when no-one is looking – and if something like performance can exist without human touch and contact. It’s not a new topic – but it’s always present in art and theatre in some way.
I’m trying to think about the connection with the latest invasion of russia into Ukraine. There is a line of thinking that the actions of russia show a self-destructive, misanthropic and self-hating culture. Is that the connection to the theme?
Yes, now I remember that it was the day after the war has begun, and we were supposed to go to the theatre, and I was like… what? Also, I’m teaching at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, and I had similar feelings when three days later I was supposed to be teaching some Baroque or Renaissance art, and I was like “urgh – I’m not able to do it. Why should I now talk about things like that?” And I was not able to express what I’m feeling, or why I’m feeling like that. I talked also with students, about what happened, and what we are going to do now, and that was the time when we discussed, with my co-director (Martin Krištof), why we should do the festival. It was really a time for everyone I think, where we didn’t know what to do, how to continue in our lives. So definitely these feelings were similar I think for a lot of people.
I guess looking at the program, thinking about the different works that I saw, I would observe that there is not one single position on the ‘after human’ proposal – there is some diversity inside the different works. Were there any big conflicts that you saw inside the program – where you saw one work making a proposal and another work making a counter-proposal?`
We are looking at the program, and trying to make it diverse. There are positions where we try to replace the human, with some artificial intelligence, and no-one was present – very literal. Sometimes there were humans present, very intense, and maybe this ‘After Human’ topic was present in some more emotional way. For example, in the SARX performance the body was very present, you could also feel it and touch it in some way.
The Nic – Moc (English: 'Nothing Much'), I didn’t read it as ‘without human’. My reaction was very focus on the people, and how they are in that situation. You could maybe propose that it’s a work that’s somehow anti-human –
Their topic was humanity in some way! One of its headlines was ‘let’s talk to each other’. From one point of view, you could see it as a piece literally without people, but from the other it was the show built on human relationships and communication.
I was thinking about the contrast between that and the Pro(s)thetic Dialogues, which was a very human-filled work, even, there was no people in it, and it was all simulation of reality in some way, and just a film that the artist sent as part of the festival, they are probably not even physically here. One is talking about humanity without humans, the other is talking about -inhumanity but filled with humans…
I think you name it exactly – we tried to play with the theme. There is no interpretation of the theme from one perspective. We worked with this paradox, that maybe ‘After Human’ is more human-centred than you think. The theme is very open for us – we are never thinking ‘ok, the theme is ‘After Human’ and then fit things into it’. We don’t have to connect every performance with the theme. But this year, I think you can find some reaction to the theme in almost every performance.
There seems to be a lot of events. Is that a choice? Do you agree that the program is very ‘full’? It feels like a busy Kiosk!
I think it’s something that defines this festival. It’s really busy. Every year before the festival we argue in the office. Martin Krištof is always saying ‘oh, we have to put something more, some more pieces, there is a gap in the program’, but people also like to have a beer, to relax and talk, people don’t like to see everything. But we have a full program. And right up until the festival, we still put in the program something else, a small discussion, or small trip or something. So every year, we think, ‘oh we’ll have more of a gap’ but every year it ends the same. But people who are going to the festival every year know it’s four intensive days, and it’s mostly the same people who buy the tickets to everything. They buy a beer, they see hardly anything, but they enjoy the festival atmosphere. I think Kiosk is unique in this way in the Slovak context – Žilina is a small city, so people are either in one hotel, or in a tent in STANICA. Sometimes, when I am in some festival in Bratislava, you take a beer, it’s not so intense, and you go home. But here, you go around the city and meet the people from Kiosk everywhere. Everyone is either in STANICA or in the New Synagogue. This time the weather was not so ideal, so maybe people went to more performances. It’s really some kind of special event. Usually we put in some trips, to try to go out of Žilina, that was also the plan this year, but because of the weather we had to change this Saturday evening. I think that in recent years it is not a festival only about theatre and dance, and it’s really a festival that’s crossing the boundaries of different forms of art, installations and so on.
It’s 14.59. The performance of Dead in the Pool, and the whole festival, finishes in 1 minute. Should we clap?
I don’t think so. Tomas (Moravanský, from Dead in the Pool) said it will officially end at 15.00, but if the Clown would like to stay longer, they will. But we will leave and go to the office to finish some things.
(Some spontaneous clapping is heard as the Clown descends from the lifeguard tower).
So, that’s the end of the festival.
Congratulations.
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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