FAKI Festival 24: ESCAPE!
FAKI – Festival of Alternative Theatrical Expression in Zagreb will present from May 24-30, under the motto Escape!, 30 live performances from across the world that will be hosted in the halls of the former pharmaceutical factory Medika at AKC Attack.
The 24th FAKI presents a non-stop week of face-to-face and online events, all accessible from the AKC Attack site, and online via the Festival Livestream from 20.30 nightly.
According to Artistic Director of the FAKI Festival 24, Richard Pettifer, the COVID-19 pandemic has taken away freedom of expression.
"People are stuck working in institutions they hate, working in ways they don’t want to. Traps are everywhere at the moment. That’s what I observe. Art is not free at the moment. The Stage is not free. We need to set it free. That’s why the Festival Theme is ‘Escape’ - it’s trying to release the Stage from the prison it’s in", said Pettifer to SEEcult.org.
Face-to-face performances begin on Monday with an Italian influence, as Torino’s Skaraventer Project bring their residency work Cassandra to the stage, followed by Milan-based Luan Machado and his queer-Butoh drag show I’M NOT A ROBOT. From 20.30, the evening’s online program will see Indian theatre artist Kapil Paharia perform a work about starvation, and Taiwan’s Jiang Feng deconstructing sex in Alt-Sex.
Tuesday sees Slovenian contemporary dance trio Petra Peček, Alja Lacković, and Manca Trampuš take to the stage with Clearance, a play with absurdity and the mundane. South Korean performer So Young Kim then makes her debut at Faki with #SINKHOLE, a deep exploration of the self and other – told with Lego. Two dance works finish the evening program, with Katya Volkova (RUS) offering a return to humanism in Performing Nothing and the US group mignolo dance presenting Self-Help – the development of a new movement language around mental health.
On Wednesday, the Festival moves temporarily to Zagreb’s Institut français for Hugo Baranger’s Les mots de recours, a technological experiment using the artist’s own wifi-listening device, “Sniffy”. At 19.00, the Festival moves back to AKC Attack, where Serbia’s Teleport Teatar will perform On Srđan: Which Nationality is the Truth?, a deep discourse on national identity, grounded in the death of Srdjan Aleksić. In the evening, a video work from Lithuanians Apeiron Theatre, ESCAPE, provokes a rethink about ‘good’ art, while Ori Lenkinski (ISR) presents The Suit, a curious exploration of a 1962 tour of the White House, led by Jackie Kennedy.
Thursday sees a turn back to contemporary dance, with Brazil/German Anajara Laisa Amarante and Spain’s Carlota Berzal both presenting works. While Amarante’s Freaks centres around a personal meeting between the artist and a ‘hobo artist’ on the streets of Greece, and the death of a friend. Berzal’s Vegetarian Ophelia revolves around another tragic figure from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, presenting her dark, subversive power. The evening’s Online Program focuses on the Festival’s two subscription-only works: Daria Kaufman’s Dispatch (available daily throughout the festival) is a poetic meditation on the spectacle, whilst Panna Adorjáni & Dániel Láng’s Closer explores the multiple pathways of the COVID-19 pandemic. What better way to finish the evening than with an online date? Martina Freyja Kartelo will go on a date with a live stranger at the festival, ending the evening with a bang.
Anajara Laisa Amarante, Freaks
The fifth day of the Festival sees Austria’s Miniature puppet theatre MOŽ! present the puppetry work MOŽ! sit with me, about an old man falling in love with a lamp. (Look out for the artist and the puppet MOŽ on the streets of Zagreb in the daytime!). The later show sees Serbian choreographer Katarina Ilijašević return to the Festival with Luka Jovanov, and the performance Don’t Let me down. An environmental focus pervades the online works, with Brazil’s Rastros de Diógenes and the USA’s Em Kaufman both presenting works motivated by the increasingly critical topic of our relationship with environment.
The weekend begins with Finnish/German choreographer and performer Marje Hirvonen, who’s Bona Dea investigates the body as a political weapon. Following this, NARANJAZUL presents an aural theatre experience as an escape from the inner labyrinth. The Online Works of the evening see Sebian author Zoran Ilić return to the Festival, followed by the French collective compagnie évohé and their magical contribution Almost Touching the Stars – based on Saint-Exupéry’s loved children’s tale The Little Prince. The evening will be finished with German instant composition group Quizzical Körper’s return to the festival, Endless by 3: Escape Chapter.
Closing day of the 24th FAKI begins at the earlier time of 16.30, with Zagreb’s own circus group Generation X Y Z offering a meditation on the difference between generations. A collaboration between Greece and Croatia follows, with Nives Tušak and Aristaios Tsousis’ Where did Zeljko go? explaining the connection between doll and human. FAKI wouldn’t be FAKI without something totally crazy – and the official “Smashing of the Koala” event promises to be a spectacle that matches the hype of the performances themselves.
Finishing the festival, critics Dijana Karanović (RUS/SRB) and Liam Rees (GER/UK) will offer their thoughts on the works and the festival theme, Escape!, before finishing the week with Rima Pipoyan and Vladislav Bondar’s cross-border Armenia-Ukraine collaboration Me, My non-Self and I, before Serbia’s Marco Nektan closes the festival with his butoh work on the mythical character of Persephone.
Marje Hirvonen, Bona Dea, foto: Alessandro De Matteis
All through the week, performances will be available through registration on the festival website or at the door (registration necessary due to COVID restrictions). From 20.30 each night, the crowd shifts to AKC Attack’s Info Shop, where a projected livestream shows the evening’s online works, with critics Dijana Karanović and Liam Rees interviewing the artists shortly following the presentation of their performances.
"We invite you to ESCAPE with us, into new post-pandemic worlds that will show the way forward, inside and outside the world of performing arts", said the organisers.
Richard Pettifer – Artistic Director of FAKI 24 said to SEEcult.org that the biggest chalenge for him during the process of preparing this year's festival edition was actually avoiding risk management.
“Managing risk” is hard at the moment, but also dominant in every little action of our lives. We risk being overtaken by the logic of risk management itself, which is an idea from business. In the arts, we can use risk management techniques, but it should not determine all of our decision-making for an art project. For me, the biggest challenges came when we had to face a situation where there needs to be good understanding of the different types of risk – like a public health risk, which is important – and balance them against the risk of not having any art at all, which is actually hugely risky on many levels. As an Artistic Director, I have duty of care towards the people working on the project, and definitely to the society in which we are working, that there is no COVID outbreak – that someone’s grandmother doesn’t die needlessly for our self-expression. But my key responsibility is to make the festival a high-quality articulation of a particular art project – this year it’s about ESCAPE. I told this today to the creative producer Želimir Schauer: “Our biggest achievement has been making the pandemic smaller”. Public health is important, but it’s actually a challenge to make the pandemic smaller in your mind, when everyone – media, governments, everyone – is screaming at you about risk management all the time. It’s also not as simple as “but art is about taking risks”, for me, it’s more a question of how to avoid the concept of ‘risk’ completely – which so dominates us today – and just focus on and protect the art project of the festival, which is happening in a particular situation with some limitations. I just read that an opera house in Australia made massive profits because it didn’t have to produce any shows during the pandemic… this raises the question – are we actually better off without art? Things would be more streamlined! Less money wasted! Much less risk! I know it’s an old conversation, but it seems like it’s coming back in a new way at the moment. In this festival, we ‘waste’ money supporting artist and on things they need, bare material living and budgets, and creating art, said Pettifer.
Richard Pettifer, foto: Anamaria Iordache
Pettifer stressed that art is important – especially now.
"I feel like we are pretty close to artless in cultures at the moment – within my definition of art, anyway. No-one is talking about that. That’s what makes the Faki Festival this year such an act of resistance. Some of the artists in the festival have created absolutely massive works for such little resources that the festival can offer. The artists have shaped meaning from a meaningless scenario", said Pettifer, an Australian theatre director, critic and theorist based in Berlin, who is a member of the collective Atelierhaus Australiasche Botschaft OST, housed in the former Australian Embassy of East Berlin. He writes criticism on his critical writing platform Theaterstück, as well as for publications such as the Sirp (EST) and Arterritory (LAT), and journals Symbolon and Methis.
According to Pettifer, the pandemic has totally destroyed the performing arts, at least all the things he value about it.
"The life has gone, the resistance has gone, people have given up. There has been a huge split in continuity of people’s training, their rituals, their repetitions. Most of the funding for culture seems to have gone to institutions, except maybe in Germany? But even there – it’s a huge centralisation of resources. Loss of diversity in culture, loss of alternatives, loss of new ways of thinking… these are the tragedies of the pandemic, on a cultural level, and they are not small, and may be leading or have already led to their own horrific outcomes.
I don’t think it’s about ‘recovery’. I think we can look around ourselves well, and try to ‘use’ the situation for art. These days, what resonates seems to be little clips on YouTube or Facebook that ‘connect’ with people, in a novel, but superficial, way. Nothing like Panna Adorjáni & Dániel Láng’s festival project Closer, which deals with the pandemic and its effect on the imagination. Nothing like mignolo dance, who developed a whole new work in progress about mental health just for the festival. There’s a lot of artists like Em Zuckermann or Rastros de Diógenes working in our (new?) relationship to environment. These works are very responsive, in my opinion. But there is room for continuity as well. The choreographer and performer Marje Hirvonen told me the pandemic was like being in a big circus tent alone, training by yourself, for months – you can rehearse for a little while, keep yourself going, but after some time it’s like why am I doing this? I think the performing arts needs a big, big shove right now. The festival is in a specific position where we can shove in a particular way, if we have the courage. But it’s hard to push back during the pandemic, when you’re kept busy managing risk, on an individual and collective level. It’s also hard just to find the energy. We can do it with solidarity, community, and co-operation, in my opinion. But even these very old concepts seem pretty lost in the pandemic, or at least stripped to the bone. They take generations to build and, these days, can be collapsed in a day", stressed Pettifer.
- Daily performances accessible by face-to-face formats, and Online via Livstream from 20.30.
- Online performances also available by Livestream Projection from the Festival Hub, AKC Attack.
- All performances Free-of-charge.
Full Program and Livestream access - attack.hr/faki24/
Facebook - faki.festival
The ONLINE Launch Hangout, Friday 21st @ 20.30! Fb event
(SEEcult.org)
