Žilina's station. It's memory lanes strolled. Tent popped-up - legs tired, but still walking.
Off to see some performances at this year's Kiosk Festival 2023, where, sadly, your correspondent – due to a mix of bad planning and stress – only managed to catch a handful of shows over the final two festival days. I'm told the other two days were fantastic, and there's at least a hint of the usual Kiosk buzz around STANICA and Žilina's New Synogogue, where a majority of festival events normally take place.
Although this year's festival theme "bez elektriny" (translating to "No Power") is aimed more in an environmental direction, I can't help but think about digital cultures as I stare out the window on my 10 hour train ride from Berlin. The cultural logic of digital life has emerged as the dominant metaphor since the pandemic took away 90% of income for performing artists in Europe, completely transforming previously fundamental dramaturgies, narratives, and understandings of life. As we build our digital double-lives, one of the most aggressive cultural shifts in Western history has taken place with barely a whimper, its direction serving the interests of power (including big tech and resource-extraction) too well to be meaningfully challenged.
Was this really what we wanted? Is there realities, or "selves", to be found outside the surfaces of our controllable, manipulable digital identities?
As I dissect the programme over a coffee in the morning light streaming through the windows at STANICA, it seems to me that "Bez elektriny" can also remove the screen, and see what's left afterwards.
Festival worker Anna Kováčová, Photo: Natália Zajačiková
Vystaviť sa telu 2: Ne-činnosť (ENG: Expose yourself to the body 2: Inaction)
Among the low-fi selections of the morning is Yuri Korec & Co's choreographic
investigation of the body in a gallery (and non-gallery) environment. The
audience arrives in the rear of Zilina's Museum of Art, greeted by a crumbling
structure in a delapidated car park. The destroyed structure is decorated with
the body of performer Anja Naňová lying in the rubble, front covered in tape,
skin blending with the bricks and mortar. The performer slowly rises, enacting
a kind of "twitch" movement while exploring the space.
