Group Terms

A short overview

Today, the festivals that exist on the ground of former Yugoslavia, because of its versatile character and function, can be divided into several ways. Though, for better overview, we will offer one classification for which we consider to be valid and under which all festivals can be stated. Through this division we do not define fully the festivals (given here as an example), but we classify them through the function that they represent today. Having in mind that on the ground of former Yugoslavia there is a dissensus of what culture is, we made a list of some festivals we know of and we consider being part of the widely defined cultural space. Hereafter, we take a more detailed view of some of them through a certain prism that we offer, but with this we want to initiate the others to take part in the process and to give their opinions about the subject.

• State - national – representative – festivals that are striving to show the cultural achievements on national level and to celebrate and value the artistic achievements within “the guild”. Most of these festivals exist for a very long time and represent a way to stimulate the production, the cooperation and to value the success. (Sterijino Pozorje, Gibanica, Vojdan Cernodrinski, Risto Siskov, Days of the Macedonian Music, Warm Cultural Wave, Biennial of Young Artists)
• Creative industries – These festivals are, above all, international and are profiled as “brand” (not only the festival, but in certain cases the managers/selectors build a name, a brand through the festivals). They have economical impact, respectively, their aim is to show that the culture makes a profit in a way it affects the economic development. Some of these festivals are formed as private companies, firms, some of them are initiated by the state, the city, and some even by NGO’s. Most of them actually can not make profit in this way, but the mechanisms that they establish remain their main aim. As a creative industry today can be considered those arts that already have their way in the market and their function is to widen it – but also to reprogram it, offering new challenges and positions for certain allied authors. In Macedonia, the support of the creative industry is promoted whilst the system cannot support the very politic, thus making it implicit. (Skopje Jazz Festival, OFF FEST, Bitef, Young Open Theatre – MOT, Ohrid Summer, Bemus, Eurokaz, Skopje Film Festival, The Manaki Festival, EXIT, Taksirat, Dance Festival – Belgrade, Dance Week Festival – Zagreb, Dance Fest Skopje)
• Self-organized/NGO sector – These festivals are formed because of the need to form and formulate a space that is missing, a space for cooperation, experiments, innovation, problem solving, reflection of the context and art, promotion of new – innovative arts. These festivals are built upon a programme and are organized with a team work, and stimulate non-hierarchical approach – self-organization. (Action/Fraction, Kondenz, LocoMotion, Dispatch, Ring Ring, Perforations, Zensk Festival, Aster Fest, BIMAS (Biennial of Architecture), AKTO, Faces without masks, Freak Fest …)
• European festivals – These festivals promote the European principles/priorities. They are supported or formed by the European Commission and have the aim to promote a new community – the European community. (Cinedays, European Culture Capital, BJCEM (Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean…)

We are going to review the following festivals through the offered perspective: MOT (Young Open Theatre, commonly known as MOT – Mlad otvoren teatar) formed with the purpose to introduce new, young forms and to bring freshness on the theatre stage, EXIT and ALARM – formed in order to bring new music styles, to serve as an exit from the everyday life, to represent an excess on the scene; and Dance Fest – formed in order to represent the movement, to promote the authorship, the contemporary dance, and to open the space that is missing.

We have chosen to analyze these three festivals in order to pose the questions – which is their function today? Does it have any kind of role in the development of the cultural context? Does that role affect the development of the community? What is the need for these festivals?
Case #1: Dance fest
Dance Fest is an NGO initiative of the Interart Cultural Center, formed in 1996. We consider that the basic idea on which this festival is based¹ (to follow the world trends in the development of the contemporary dance, to promote the Macedonian contemporary dance scene to the world, to develop new, young audience, to bring in the audience in the process of the development of the contemporary dance, etc.) is not in relation to what this festival performs today, respectively its potential is actualized in the form of continuing the existing institutional matrix.

Although the purpose of an associated group of citizens should be “freeing” the space where people can watch and show the courses of the contemporary dance, to support new associations, productions, audience, to offer “otherness” in the cultural space, on the contrary, this festival becomes a “showcase” of ballet ensembles, troops, institutions, ambassadors, politicians, and support of the official state cultural policy. All that promotes values that build false, non-reference context out of which you can not monitor the development of the contemporary dance art, although that is one of its aims. This showcase “captures” a space where the prestige is promoted, the elite culture is stimulated and represents a parade of ensembles that has no reference to what is happening in the field of the contemporary dance in Europe and in the world today.

We see that certain mechanisms² (part of the promotional ones of the creative industries) are taken over and are applied in the contemporary artistic and cultural space in Macedonia, but they do not correspond with it and produce phantasms instead of realities. This festival can be seen as an example of “privately-ordered freedom”, respectively a space that is requested and initiated to prove that the author can create, initiate, correlate and to represent the community and the needs of the community (contemporary dance community that we can say it does not exist in Macedonia), but at the same time that freedom is used to implement and establish mechanisms through which this space will be hegemonized.

The need for this kind of festival in Macedonia arises as a result of the non-existence of theatre that has a modern dance repertoire and works on the expansion of the artistic productions. But, does this concept of festival fulfils that and in what way? Guests on this year’s festival were The Dance Academy of Rotterdam, Igor Kirov (Macedonian choreographer that works abroad) and The State Ballet School Centre from Skopje. Last year there were representatives of The Academy of Rotterdam, The Ballet of Kosovo, The State Opera and Ballet of Istanbul, and in the previous years The Beli Theatre, St. Petersburg, Russia, The National Ballet of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the troop Galili Dance from Netherlands were presented. The programme of this festival does not correspond to the idea of following the world trends in the development of the contemporary dance, and it is contrary to what we want to stress and point out, but we have to ask – is this festival a space where we can see, follow and analyze the things that are not represented on the Macedonian scene – the contemporary dance? The programme and the function of the festival is a successive complementing of the traditional theatrical matrix, ballet institutions³ that execute the function – presentation of the national theatres, ballets, and cooperation with choreographers that are part of these institutions. This festival doesn’t offer diversity, innovations, and with that it does not represent an excess – which is one of the basic functions of the festivals overall.

However, it does not mean that it does not contribute to enrich the contents in the culture, especially in context such as the Macedonian, where the offer as well as the need is at very low level. In this context, we can note that the above mentioned festival is embedded in the existing models of the festival presentation, which corresponds to the institutional, state policy in the field of culture. This festival neatly follows, without an attempt for deconstruction and redefining, that reader action of the culture of spectacle which is well known and acceptable for the majority.
Case #2: Young Open Theatre (MOT – Mlad otvoren teatar)

The International festival Young Open Theatre (MOT – Mladinski otvoren teatar) was organized for the first time by the Youth Cultural Centre in May 1976. The grand opening was denoted with the play of the Theatrical troupe “Drama Studio Prufkok” with the direction of Edwina Dorman. MOT presents and enables the exchange – the circulation of young, fresh, experimental, avant-garde theatrical energy and experience between the participants and the audience of the theatre plays. Theatrical troupes and independent theatrical artists from over 50 countries of Europe and all over the world took part on MOT.⁴ According to the researches of the Institute for theatrology, the three main points that mark the essence of this festival are the young authors, the experimentalism and the openness for cooperation that is created during its theatrical existence. The need for implementation of theatre that will present the young authors’ energy and the actuality, where there will be interaction and association, exchange of ideas and concepts and where new, young forms will be created which will bring freshness on the theatrical scene and will announce the new protagonists on the scene, in an environment like the one in the former Yugoslavia during the seventies of the last century, clearly marks the policy of that time – free space – free country.

The basic idea is to allow space to as more as possible authors where they can express themselves. So, in this way, with the formation of the state arsenal according to the principles “equal to all” on which basis was formulated and developed the cultural existence, MOT was created in Skopje, which as the state capital had to had “all the benefits of the civilized world”. After thirty years of existence, the festival continues to exist but had to change everything, even its essence – the socio-political and social ambience itself is changed and with all that, the role, the idea and the attributes of MOT are changed. Only one thing does not belong in this field – the dependence of the state which fully finances the festival since its creation.

The Macedonian theatrologist Jelena Luzhina says that today MOT does not mean a thing. According to her, the title itself is great, young open theatre, and the festival should represent exactly that. “If it is open and young then it should be alternative and not mainstream. But today MOT is exactly – mainstream. It should change its name or the concept because something is wrong. At the time of its creation it was known as an alternative festival. The state was happy to have a festival like that and was investing in it”, says Luzhina.

Its role in the today’s constellation is changed (which is a result of a long process and essential changes in the society itself, as the state was transforming from communism into transitional capitalism), its function is not even closely recognizable, and this young open festival is converted into a show of the best plays. In MOT take part plays that have “shaken up” the world, that have caused some kind of a sensation (how much its function is changed confirms last year’s programme, when guest was the play “Pension F” of the director and actor Hubsi Kramar, worked upon the real event with the monstrous father Jozef Fritzl) or plays that can be easily get, on the basis of exchange with colleagues and exchange of projects.⁵ It is just an illusion that at MOT we will see the world and everything that is happening in it – most of the time the international character is valid for the wider region. The whole festival converts into a stale material which only exists on the romantic and nostalgic spirit of the generations of visitors that have built their theatrical taste following this festival. Today it has no “own internal essence”, it continues to function “on thin ice”, just as much as not to break the three decade continuity (the thought itself of dismissal of its functioning is scary) than to think over its function, role and aim as new conditions, unknown for MOT.

Although this festival was created out of the need for a festival like that, today it carries nothing new for the development of the community, for the support of the young, for gaining new audience. In the last few years, some old programmes were brought back and some new were created, as a market for the Macedonian plays (The Macedonian Open Theatre) that were seen by foreign producers, directors, authors, but still, these news bend and interrupt the basic concept, the festival becomes something else, the optimism and the youth spirit are transformed into senile dementia, lack of energy and a body that is on a life-support machine.
Case # 3: The “Exit Festival”, Novi Sad, Serbia and the similar to it, the short-lived and almost renewed music festival in Macedonia “Alarm”

The EXIT festival came into being in the year 2000 as an act of rebellion against the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, that had for years been keeping Serbia out of touch with the outside world. That summer thousands of young people from Novi Sad gathered in the campus park by the Danube River where concerts, parties and art performances took place. There were also discussions and debates where the young were able to express their opposition to the imposed nationalism, xenophobia, censorship and repression. The event lasted for 100 days and its grand finale was the ‘Get out to Vote’ party, which was held one day before the elections that saw the downfall of Milosevic.⁶

The idea of the festival from its very beginning was to create an independent state the “State of EXIT” which will promote the European values and will present Serbia as a free zone – a country which promotes another values (freedom of expression, exit from the isolation, difference, etc.) and is able to create a different perception of the reality by creating its own, with a passport and its own currency (vouchers) that symbolically open a space of “freedom”. However, through the years there has been a transformation of the primary aims and efforts. Today the symbols and values that Exit has taken for its imperatives are nowhere to be found and have become almost exclusive for their local context and audience. The festival has transformed itself into a retreat for west European teenagers who can afford the stay with their pocket money, whereas the local and regional audience became mainly distanced from the event because of their constantly lowering living standard. In this way, the festival distances itself to a greater extent from the alternative, impetuous principle which was its basic concept. The Exit Festival today is formulated as an “ultra-commercial” music event, for which every visitor has to pay a ticket (not a symbolic one, but rather moneyed) in order to enter the “free-zone”. As a part of the programme the most commercial names from the international music scene perform each year, so that it becomes a parade of branded bands.

In Macedonia an attempt has emerged to create a similar type of festival on an isolated location which offers a different concept: promotion of healthy lifestyle, increasing of environmental awareness and harmony with nature. Namely, that is the “Alarm for Nature” festival which takes place beside the Ohrid Lake. This festival has not reached the grandness of the Exit Festival yet, tough, the story still exists and this year its second edition is going to be realized.

ALARM FOR NATURE includes work on particular projects, both in the field of ecology as well as in the field of music and art that will contribute to awakening the sense of connection and interdependence between the human and nature and to implement the healthy lifestyle in harmony with the natural surroundings. ALARM FOR NATURE unites the forces of the green army, music and art, education and student organizations, science and technology, architecture, governmental and non-governmental organizations, the young and the old, ALL in joint action to protect the nature and solve the problems concerning the environment. The three-day music festival in nature, with a possibility to camp, aims to draw out people, especially young people, from the grayness of the urban life and to evoke their love and respect towards nature⁷.

Alarm for Nature is, in fact, a commercial music event for which one has to pay an entrance ticket. In its programme it tends to include relevant brands and regional DJs, as well as international music names. Through its music contents, the above mentioned component of building an ecological awareness by promoting a different lifestyle usually is not visible to the visitors, and the results from this kind of announced actions are not publicly pursued.

What do the both festivals have in common?

The both festivals are striving to create an ambient of escapement, offer escapism “prolonged youth”, and create an environment that should enable development of ideas using all of the available creative tools. The main themes usually follow the world and European trends, so that they build what is popular at the moment, they create „fashion of life“: coexistence, multiethnic cooperation, environmental awareness, human trafficking, etc. They are meta-events in the field of culture, which impose a feeling of transformation – creating a space in which “young people” get the right to vote and think. They stimulate the young people to articulate, engage themselves, volunteer in order to achieve the “general welfare for all”. In this way, by instumentalising culture and art and the “immunity” they offer, festivals are formed where the values of the neo-liberal matrix, whose final aim is the profit, are stimulated.

On the other hand, the sensation, which is offered by the programme, enables a huge number of visitors and increases the visibility and recognition of the festivals, thus enabling their further development and existence. The “glow” of their final success for which we read after they finish, makes us think that this kind of events truly change the way the audience acts, educate and entertain at the same time, bring the scenes and the “bitter enemies” closer to each other, calm down the “balkanism” suggesting a feeling of equality: socio-economical and political. Thus, on one stage we have got Macedonian musicians and DJs who in love and harmony cooperate with their Albanian colleagues from Skopje, Pristina, Tirana and Belgrade. We have got Albanian bands who sing in their mother tongue and everyone in the audience loudly applauds and tries to follow the tune, in this way bridging the language gap. We have got an audience which dances wildly in the rhythm of the music.

However, the most evident is the hidden semantics which is often lost in the euphoric atmosphere created by these festivals: the themes that are to be elaborated are completely inadequate to the set postulates and aims of the festivals themselves. At the end of the story, these festivals are commercial events created by commercial motivation which only at the surface represent the independent scene, create and promote artistic and cultural values. In fact, by abusing the skills gained while working in this sector, they shallowly and routinely create an event with a content that is seemingly different and relevant in relation to various social and political meanings. Precisely this skilfully hidden tendency differentiates them from the art festivals whose place they have taken.

The both examples can be also seen as an image of the actual state and needs in the places they occur. They consist of combination of organizers’ need for a greater profit, financiers’ need for a greater promotion, and the need of the audience for an event that “entertains”, an audience which in a state of poverty and lack of opportunities to get out of the country’s borders organizes its time and interests in accordance with the available offers.

* The “Classification of festivals” was conceived in the process of collective writing by the members of the working group Terms, as part of the project Deschooling Classroom (o^o): (in alphabetical order): Ivana Vaseva, Elena Veljanovska and Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski with assistance from Iskra Gešoska and Ana Vujanović.

Skopje, summer, 2010

1 Presented on their web site (http://dancefestskopje.com.mk)

2 The protocol of elitism – promoting the creativity with red carpets, evening dresses, speeches, awards, big promotion, commercials, pomp, parades …

3 Last year on the Ballet stage in Macedonia were staged two short modern ballets with the choreographer Raphael Bianco (Italy), a cooperation was established and the play Radiator was also staged by the choreographer Arthur Kugeline (Switzerland); performances by the choreographer Sasa Eftimova were produced, and widening of the repertoire and some new guests are announced.

4 http://www.mactheatre.edu.mk/main/fest_mac_mot.html

5 This policy of exchange of plays can also be positive if it is formulated as collaboration, where it will not step back from the original idea and the concept of the festival, as well as the local needs.

6 The web site of the Exit festival: http://eng.exitfest.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=553&Itemid=197

7 The web site of the Alarm festival: http://www.alarm.com.mk/zosto_alarm.html

Group Terms

The festival, in its primary meaning, understands a “celebration”. At the same time, represents a substitute for socialization. It is polysemic and “hides” the ideas for community, liminal/liminoid, temporality, excess, production, real time, emancipation, present-absent, transformation, transfiguration, intertextuality, local, national, regional, international, hypertext, ideology, margin, centre, power, anti-utopia, Otherness, meaning, sign, deterritorization, transnational, transitivity, fractalization, (de)construction, relaxation, new, interpunction, network…

In this text we elaborate the word/term festival(s) i.e. we analyze its origin, development, function within a particular context (in the ex-Yugoslavia region). We are following its development, that is, its use and function in the practice of a particular environment in order to pursue its position towards the socio-political and economical conditions of the society. We would like to indicate that this word/term nowadays can also gain a different meaning if its use is given a particular direction, that is, if it is used as a format where new production models, practices, tactics and mechanisms will be contemplated and considered; models through which it could be possible to intervene in the context and to point out the needs of the contemporary art and the system in which it functions.

Our effort is to establish a relation to what the festival as a format of a socio-cultural event offers, and also to point out the opportunities it offers; how it can be changed or how it can develop different functions that can be applied, in that way, gaining a different meaning in the actual social context. Accordingly, in the centre of our attention is the research which refers to the art festivals, and focuses on Macedonia and Serbia.

We consider that the festival as a format or model can represent a naming of an artistic, cultural and social practice which has been referred to as an “excess” in relation to the dominant, actual culture.

Modern as well as post-modern art is characterized with tendencies which, at a particular moment, become dominant and satisfy the general needs of the actual culture. The festivals, on programme and organizational level as well, either as content or inner structure of functioning, contain potentiality¹ that gives them an opportunity to construct themselves as “digression”, as constant alertness, as “excessiveness” and as critical reaction at a specific moment in relation to the dominant culture. They, in a way, can serve as a corrective of the actual socio-cultural moment and promote new directions with regard to the content and format.

The festival can be considered as a performance. Identities, models, transformations are performed, and also collectivity, community, general social atmosphere, territory and genres are performed. At the same time, consequences are bared – since the festival is a very responsible “action”, in which a collective value of a particular period and more spaces are being created in a single space. The festival either resumes or ascertains particular actual streams or opens new paradigms. Therefore, the one who undertakes such a ”celebration” has to take the responsibility of risks and consequences. ²

We witness that more often the festival is considered as a compromised and conformistic resuming and attracting, and not as something that establishes new practices and models. This understanding always triggers a danger to turn the festival into a centred, authoritarian, homogeneous, self-sufficient, autonomous and self-centred segment within the society. Contrary to the above mentioned, the festivals could also develop their other functions. They could permanently open themselves for “text fragments” from various synchronic and diachronic backgrounds, to represent indexes of the actual and historical styles, forms of expression and presentation. The festival could permanently become a part of a peculiar “game” with numerous codes within culture. The festival could be a “digression” from the norms of the contemporary society, the temporary free space where the new mechanisms, work protocols, production formats are being examined and explored; by that, its meaning will also be reformulated into a space for democracy, examination and production of innovations. Establishing more of these “excesses”, “digressions” and temporary free spaces could influence the context(s) and lead to change of its content.

General terms of the festival as a need and phenomenon

Nowadays the interest to analyze and contemplate the function of the festival format and its development into new political, economical, social and theoretical conditions increases progressively. These conditions impose an increased level of need for new models of practice, organization, and production within the frames where one can experiment, and the experiment will become functionally applicable.

The focus is directed towards the art festivals in order to analyze, synthesize and (re)define their function, diachronically and synchronically, at the present time. This “action” is perceived dialogically and polemically, since we consider that the festival, in its fundament, has a strong communicative value and necessarily understands polemics in its postulates, as well as within the context, time, space, genre and theoretical paradigms it refers to.

In this way, we can detect a key distinction that is present within the phenomenon itself – whether the festival is a format of representation that propagates and resumes the elitist culture and exclusivity (similar to the understanding of the term culture in the post-transitional “traumatized”³ societies), that is, whether it is about revue or “parade” of art production, which mainly has a decorative role or whether we ask for the festival to be a dialectical performance, developing punctum that will communicate and will critically position itself towards the present models of art practices, promoting a new and different role within the context.

We are advocating the second perspective and our key effort is to signify that the festival, in fact, can have a role of intervening practice, and it can be even close to the parameters of activism.

A few points

The festivals have a very long history which dates back to ancient times, and its beginning was noted in 534 BC, when the first celebrations dedicated to the God Dionysius took place in Athens. In the medieval, the festival was mainly related to religious celebrations and its purpose was to bring the community together, on a religious basis. In the 18^th century, for the first time, occurred festivals which made a digression from the religious concept and gained a secular dimension. They were dedicated to arts (for e.g. Comedie francaise was performed in Paris, and in 1764 the actor Garrick organized the festival in Stratford upon Avon in honour of Shakespeare’s birthday). Afterwards, followed other festivals dedicated to an artist or artistic form. Those festivals where the dominant form is the national or state representation were mainly established in the 20^th century.⁴ These festivals promote a model related to the practice of the person, or to representation of the national/state achievements in the field of culture (for e.g. the Theatre Festival “Vojdan Cernodrinski” in Macedonia that is supposed to be considered as national, with an accompanying tune of the national tradition in the theatre creation; The Venice Biennale, where the countries represent themselves; May Opera Evenings, etc.).

It can be concluded that the festivals, the “celebrations”, the “festivities” as a very close form of human need for a symbolic resume and presentation of our own needs, wishes, visions, are organized throughout the history around several points:

• Presentation and celebration of the Gods in ancient Greece,
• Religious celebrations in the medieval,
• Presentation of a particular idea – from revolution to an artistic form
• Celebration of particular people
• Representation of the state and national achievements in the field of culture

A more free interpretation of the etymology of the word festival, as well as the experience through history refers to the fact that the festivals mean a periodical celebration that occurs usually on an annual basis (usually on a fixed date) and in the frames of which a particular human activity or his particular creative achievement is being celebrated. The festivals have a public character; they are always aimed towards the audience and hide, in their basis, the fundamental human need to celebrate the achievement which is considered to be valuable. They rely on a particular programme and concept.

The festival format – paradigm for artistic and social orientations

The festival (with cultural-artistic contents) forms and reforms itself though centuries, thus becoming one of the most used formats in which the presentation of culture and art is organized. From a perspective of the cultural policies, we can notice that through the festival are articulated and organized, both, the visible and also the subversive cultural flows and powers. Therefore, the festival by itself represents an icon of the existing and also of the upcoming orientations, and not only to the artistic, but also to the social ones. The festival as cultural, and in some discursive registers, so to say, a pop-cultural phenomenon, represents a screen through which hidden social references of power, present and absent are represented and broadcasted.

Although there are attempts to classify the festivals, it seems that there is not a relevant division that can be considered as a general valid model and a corresponding intellectual paradigm. Dragan Klaic states that after the Cold War there is an expansion of festivals in Europe, and their number is unknown, perhaps two or even three thousand. He also says that because of this quantity we cannot talk about a sole, unique concept or profile of the festivals today and that it can be hard to find the real parameters that can help us differentiate them.

A particular, specific example are the festivals that emerged in this region, that is, in the frames of SFRY.

In the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia the festivals were established with a purpose to attract attention and to point out that the state builds a system -socialistic- which perfectly suits the human being, or „soft socialism“⁵, i.e. that Yugoslavia is a country of a tolerant and friendly self-governance and does not dictate, but in contrary, enables creation of climate in which the society will be re-examined, and experiments can be done. The following examples, Bitef, MOT, Eurokaz, MESS, Eksponato, where created to enable a “free” space without any censorship, or as Jovan Kirilov, a founder and a programme director of Bitef says, the only thing they were not allowed to do was ”not to throw dirt on the person and work of Josip Broz”.⁶

The formation of such international festivals has a political connotation which points out that Yugoslavia is a country open towards the West, which digresses from the totalitarian regime and the communist doctrine of the Eastern block. Yugoslavia works to find its own way and these festivals are spaces where this way can be verified – the self-governance and freedom of expression, a free society where the social reality can be re-examined. It can be even said that the festivals are a paradigm of a well planned political strategy in order to communicate with/present and stress the “new look” of Yugoslavia in front of the Western world, on the other hand it can hide the other unfreedoms and weaknesses that exist within the state.

These festival formats in their “state ordered freedom” as they are called by Ana Vujanovik represent an illustrative example of the Louis Althusser’s thesis, who refers to art as a “relatively autonomous practice” and calls it an “ideological state instrument”.⁷

Some of these examples of Althusser’s “ideological state instrument” have a significant role in the development of particular artistic practices, of the alternative expression and experimentation in the 1970s and 1980s in Yugoslavia.⁸

BITEF from its foundation in 1967 until the 1980s supports and generates the new tendencies and opens a space for a problematic thinking within art and culture which rejects the real socialism and does not accept the capitalistic consumerism.⁹ This, in fact, is an example for that aim of the festival when considered as a phenomenon that promotes pro-activity with a need of development, intervention and criticism. In fact, this kind of “reading” of the festival is the one we should promote, upgrade and practice as a segment of the cultural policy. The festival conception that, in a way, starts from the bottom up, from the needs for an alternative contemplation of the dominant practices, is inherent to the phenomenon, in this age when there is a dissensus about what is culture (national culture, pop-culture, no culture, subculture, quality in culture, etc.).

Today, in the region more and more festivals are being established for a different reason, and some of them represent the bottom-up concept (for e.g. Action/Fraction, Kondenz, LocoMotion, Move!, Dispatch, Ring Ring, Perforation, Festival Zensk…). The festivals that are created from the bottom up through a programme practice can develop a policy of varieties, decentralization (in the sense of organization and programme), solidarity, policy of memory and remembering¹⁰, can be based on self-organizing processes and by that can provoke a creation of space where the context, in which the contemporary art is created, will be critically contemplated. Some of them are created as a part of the context of neo-liberal capitalism they try to approach or stimulate, and alike have also become some of the early socialistic festivals, for e.g. Bitef, MOT, etc.

A part of those festivals which were established in ex-Yugoslavia, even in the 1990s and post 2000 as an initiative of individuals or groups nowadays are adopted by the states and are presented as “good policy” of the power and governing structure which supports the development of the so-called creative industries (Skopje Jazz Festival, Bitef, Belev, Days of the Music Youth, etc.). Many of those who are involved in the creative industries have started to accept those parameters and become or strive to become profit or market oriented. By becoming a segment of that milieu, they erase or minimize the space for problematic thinking and contemplation of their own function.

In the 1990s and post 2000, in the Balkans dominates a state policy which recognizes and uses festivals as spaces where the national identity can be promoted, which at the time as well as nowadays, after the downfall of Yugoslavia, is one of the priorities of the Balkan states. Other examples show the influence on different state policies, and they have the same aim – to minimize the space for problematic thinking, development and reflection with regard to the dominant policy. The example dating back to the Cold War period, given by Maaike van Geijn¹¹, talks about the policies of Western towards Eastern and Central Europe, and the relation to arts that come from the countries of Eastern and Central Europe. She states that the audience was interested in the performances coming from “behind the curtain” and by valuing them under the motto “window to the world” explains how the performances create exclusive and sensational values, and that is the case since the theatre productions are seen not only for their artistic value, but also as a reflection of the political ideals and processes, explains van Geijn.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall these performances became uninteresting for the western audience and media. All of a sudden, they were all rejected, interpreted and labelled as old-fashioned and ordinary, already seen, she says and points out how significant is the context in which the performances are given.

However, our question is whether the festival is a space in which the context can be problematised, rather than to be re-affirmed. Should the festival be a space where the socio-political and economical context will be re-examined and reconfigured? Van Geijn also illustrates an example for a festival(s) which cares to increase the citizen consumerism through sensational stories and politically developed mottos, thus confirming that the same (citizen consumerism) is a result of delegating and shaping the cultural policy from the top-down, policy that passivated the audience.

What can be seen from this example is that in, at the time, binary divided world in western and eastern block the situation was very similar, i.e. art was a “relatively autonomous social practice” and was an “ideological state instrument” where the policy of delegating and reshaping culture from the top-down supported and built the citizen consumerism by delegating exotics, exclusivity, sensationalism, prestige. The question is why the festival as a format supports (supported) that.

Nowadays, except for the national or state policy has also emerged a policy on a supra-national level, i.e. the policy of the European Union by which new parameters for measuring the cultural development have been defined and determined.

The festival as a factory for new policy — critical parameters

The supra-level policy shown by the EU priorities for cultural development, which formulate the principles and conditions for work and communication, conditions the building of a system in which art, cultural and also festival programme policy is established. One of the most prevalent is that the festivals can be defined as spaces that should educate and entertain (dolce et utile). A long time ago, this idea was mostly applied in the theatre and is an idea argued by the Roman poet – scientist Horace in his Ars Poetica,¹² however, today the same can be seen in the programme policy of many festivals.

The festival can be seen as one of the institutions and models that produce new forms of knowledge production. The festival, in that sense, for the participants and also for the audience should offer an emancipatory concept, an idea for education (though new approaches and programmes) by which it will help to complement the cultural needs for more social groups, and will become an impetus for a social growth. This emancipatory aspect of the festival can be offered through educational formats that the festival will establish within its content, above all, through transformation of the central component or through the concept of self-discipline, i.e. the concept of life-long learning, which belongs to the university circles, however, it is widely spread nowadays. As stated by Gerald Raunig this concept is not emancipatory anymore, in contrary, the idea becomes a life-long (self-) obligation, as an imperative and a life-long prison of continuous education. Hence, the festival transforms itself into a factory of knowledge¹³, which in fact is a part of the milieu of forms of social dominance, or subordination, in this case, of the audience as well as of the participants. The transformation of this component in space where the context will be contemplated and problematised, where new models and production forms will be experimented and explored, where potentiality will be examined, using the transversality, which is contained within the festival as a format and which offers a permanent relation of elements exchange¹⁴, is one of the possible functions that can reform the festival into space for intervention.

Another priority of the EU policy which reflects in the festival practice is the “networking”. On one hand, the “networking” upgrades the “mutual”, on the other, stresses the transience of that association as well as its own. New communities are formed, whose function is transient and single, although the basic fundament is a formation of new social networks.

However, today, the “mutual” has a different meaning that changes, and the one that connects is being created on different parameters, i.e. on those of the neo-liberal market discourse. According those parameters, for numerous festivals, is created a programme policy which satisfies wider needs, the needs of the majority, rather than the needs of the multitude. By creating short-termness and transience, the opportunity to take part in the creation of the national cultural scene or of the one they temporary perform, is taken away from the participants. The short-termness creates an ambient in which there is not enough time to reflect on their own context or to reflect on the foreign contexts and cultural policies of the countries where they perform as guests.¹⁵

The audience is not an equal participant in the new “communities” and associations in the social, festival networks. Thus, in that dominant shaping of the festival, the communication with the audience becomes secondary, and the networking of the “active participants” primary. The aim is to promote priorities, the EU principles, i.e. mobility, creativity, cooperation, networking, exchange of experiences and similar (seasonal) “key words” whose meaning has become more and more empty; principles that point out the European policy which supports the free flow of “products”, that is, gives a priority to the principles of the neo-liberal market. The orientation to build a system within the festivals which enables connecting, association and creation of transient communities of “active participants” minimizes the need for discovering new methods of communication with the audience which itself becomes more and more a “passive participant“.

Contrary to this, the festivals should develop models of communication with the audience which will enable the audience to become a more active participant. The festival should use its timely framework, its “temporality” and to point out its openness and excessiveness, through which it will establish new unity based on new practices that will reshape the local context. It should contemplate ways, formats and new contents that will minimize the distance between the creators and the audience, that is, not to take the distance into consideration, as by the act of recognition emerges a larger gap which should be bridged.¹⁶ On one hand, the exchange of experiences, networking, mobility are opportunities for the very xenophobic contexts to be gradually transformed through short-term experiences with the “others”; and on the other hand, that mobility determines the short-termness and marks the shallowness of the system by taking away space and time which disables deeper contemplation, re-examination, that is, disables the opening of a new space for problematic/critical thinking. This dominant top-down festival policy can lead to a creation of a specific type of individuals (above all, programme editors and artists who go from one festival to another hoping that they will establish contact with some of the “programmers”) whose life turns into a festival itself, as Rok Vevar calls it in one of his lectures. Through self-ironization, he makes a specific profile of cultural workers pointing out on that what they have turned into as the time passes by. He states a couple of characteristics adopted by the festival systems and ironically explains: Performing a professional, Selfpromotion, Performing smartness, Competition about references, etc. ¹⁷ The festivals create temporality, transience and they can be even called heterotopias¹⁸. In the fourth principle Foucault explains: “Heterotopias are most often linked to slices in time – which is to say that they open onto what might be termed, for the sake of symmetry, heterochronies. The heterotopia begins to function at full capacity when men arrive at a sort of absolute break with their traditional time”. Additionally, he explains that there are different heterotopias “there are those linked, on the contrary, to time in its most flowing, transitory, precarious aspect, to time in the mode of the festival. These heterotopias are not oriented toward the eternal; they are rather absolutely temporal [chroniques].”¹⁹ Hereupon we can continually link to the question of what exactly means the overflow and development of festivals after the World War II up to present, that is, whether it represents a construction of factories for creation of new policies which result in temporality, transience, shallowness, numbers, and system of distribution of money, profit, parameters of work which are propagated by the neo-liberal market, or the festivals emerge as a result of the need to use the temporality, the space out of time, to create a continuous excess that considering the context in which the festival takes place, will create a space that will not only reflect, but rather will change it from the inside out.

This text addresses questions, opens and points out the conditions, affirms a particular need for reforming the festival practices and formats and does not tend to give an answer to the opened questions. By this text we would like to stimulate the contemplation of how the mechanisms and policies can be redirected in turning the free spaces into spaces for “action” – efficiency, contemplation, correction. We would like to stress that the festival as a format contains in itself an intervening potential which should be much more examined and implemented. By this text we affirm the perspective that can give a different meaning to the term festival(s).

(As an annex to this text – we enclose a draft-proposal for division, contemplation and reading of the functions and conditions in which particular festivals exist and are being realized).

* The essay “The Festivals (in the ex-Yugoslavia region) as a “microphysics of power” “ was conceived in the process of collective writing by the members of the working group Terms, as part of the project Deschooling Classroom (o^o): (in alphabetical order): Ivana Vaseva, Elena Veljanovska and Biljana Tanurovska Kjulavkovski with assistance from Bojana Cvejić, Iskra GeÅ¡oska and Ana Vujanović.

Skopje/Belgrade, spring/summer 2010

1 See register of “Publication in process“ by Bojana Kunst
2 Jon Mckenzie “Perform or Else“ Zagreb, 2006, CDU (he addresses the normative function of the cultural performance nowadays and therefore refers to it as a liminoid practice, not liminal).
3 Milena Dragicevic Sesic, from writing: New meanings of artistic festivals – „artivist“ practices and festival ethics in traumatized society – bottom up cultural policy, from lecture in Poznan, (explains that the Balkan countries are not societies in transition anymore, but “traumatized” societies instead, which build their politics in state of trauma or post-traumatic state as a result of the events from the 1990s until present)
4 Dragan Klaic, Theatre 4000 years, chronology (Pozoriste 4000 godina, chronologija), Belgrade, 1989 and other sources
5 Bojana Cvejic, The Secret Vices and Public Skills of BITEF (Tajni poroci i javne vrline BITEF-a)
6 Ana Vujanovik, New Theater Tendencies: BITEF (Belgrade International Theater Festival)
7 Ibid
8 Ibid
9 Ibid
10 Milena Dragicevic Sesic, from writing: New meanings of artistic festivals – “artivist” practices and festival ethics in traumatized society – bottom up cultural policy, from lecture in Poznan.
11 Maaike van Geijn author, edit. Dragan Кlaic, Future Of Festival Formulae
12 Schechner Richard, Performance Studies, Rutledge, 2003
13 Gerald Raunig, In Modulation Mode: Factories of Knowledge, Translated by Aileen Derieg, excerpt from: eipcp.net
14 Gerald Raunig, Art and Revolution. Transversal Activism in the Long Twentieth Century, translated by Aileen Derieg, Semiotext(e)/ MIT Press 2007
15 Ana Vujanocic, writing: Politicality of Contemporary Performing Arts – Aspects and (/that can be) Tactics: Subjects, Media, and Procedures of Work (prepared for the eponymous workshop in Weld, Stockholm 2009 and a segment of the workshop Stratagames by Bad.co, Steirischerherbst, Graz 2009)
16 Jacques Ranciere, The Emancipated Spectator, La Fabrique, 2008
17 See text R. Vevar in „Publication in process“
18 real places – places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society – which are something like counter-sites, 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..in Michel Foucault. Of Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias.
19 the use of heterotopia is in another context, however, it is an inspiration to read Foucault’s text that opened and explained some of the relations we have been elaborating