- text by Bojana Kunst
- First published in: RAZGLEDI, 1996
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HISTORY
In the beginning of June the Exodos Festival of Modern Performing Arts closed its doors in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. Though the festival is among the most recent ones of its kind in Europe it has already established itself among domestic and foreign experts. It has become an important venue of modern performing arts in this part of Europe as well as a significant contribution to the domestic creative efforts in modern theatre and dance. In order to define the festival's position and concept as clearly as possible, this article aims to bring not only a report and evaluation of this year's events but also as brief survey of its history and substance. Both will help us uncover and understand some of its specific characteristics and structure and also allow comparisons with similar festival events elsewhere. In the early eighties Slovenia saw the development of a strong independent (generally called alternative) art movement (in all domains) that enriched the Slovene reflections on art with completely new artistic concepts and ways of presentation and also had a enormous impact on a generation of theatre and dance artists who today (judging from the fact that they often perform abroad and are well received) are very successful in their creative endeavours. In the domain of theatre director Dragan Zivadinov and the NSK movement brought about significant changes in the aesthetic concepts of modern Slovene theatre; from the second half of the eighties they have actually been achieving their best performances and peaks in the field of motion, conceptual and dance theatre, that is the kind of theatre which is characterized by a consistent personal poetic approach of the author and by original modern forms of stage presentations and aesthetic innovations. The past decade thus saw in Slovenia the development of a production with an expressive and poetic power that puts in on the level of modern European performing arts, a production closely connected with European intellectual and aesthetic trends in many ways; this development also reminds us that the East/West division is not always a concrete factor but frequently rather an apriori construct of the mind. The political domination of hierarchic and fossilised structures of culture in the socialism of the eighties had almost no influence whatsoever on the developments in art; on contrary the alternative art of the eighties was one of the principal exponents of a remarkably intelligent revolt against the ruling ideology, managing to combine with great success "ideological liberalism" with the liberalism of candid and original forms of art. In spite of its successes and the warm welcome abroad the whole development of alternative art did not succeed in changing the way it was treated by the official structures: they continued to define the movement as so-called alternative (read: marginal, unimportant) art and as a result, the status, influence and subsidies to it remained far below those of the production which simultaneously ran in the institutionalised national theatres. This development of modern performing arts in Slovenia - today they are considered to be one of the country's principal cultural exports - certainly was one of the chief reasons for the foundation of the Exodos festival since it derived from the organic need of the domestic creative artists and the public to fuse these productions and the events around them into a conceptually designed presentation. The aim was to bring to Slovenia through the festival's specific aesthetics and recognisable concept interesting and original theatre and dance groups and simultaneously promote the presentation of domestic modern theatrical production to foreign selectors and to the festival's visitors. But in Slovenia the festival, of course, is not only a vehicle of aesthetic presentation and self-presentation, but plays an equally important role in the process of winning recognition for the modern performing arts; the festival provides a structure through which it tries to assert the equal status of modern performing arts to promote them at home and abroad. This organic symbiosis with the domestic modern performing arts is responsible for some of the festival's specific characteristics and defines it in relation to similar festival presentations which started to flourish in East European countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The festival first of all provides an opportunity for the urgently required dialogue between modern artists and cultural policy because its actual goal is to establish itself as the central organisation in this domain while preserving the radical openness of its concepts and continue to develop what started in the eighties. The festival's concept thus renounces the proven and well-worn festival model that consists of inviting representative giants of the theatrical arts in order to popularise modern performing arts; such festivals actually are a manifestation of the power and acquired positions of the domestic cultural policy. Exodos also renounces thematic and genre limitations and refuses to be a strictly defined thematic festival and to present those themes which have come to the front in recent years in the East and are very popular with various festival presentations (cf. one of the more recent Slovene international festivals City of Women, dedicated to art created by women) Instead the festival's approach is organically connected with the domestic and modern theatrical events and, in accordance with their diversity, provides its own conceptual diversity, brings new challenging aesthetic approaches and a wealth of different poetic approaches to stage art, marked above all by conceptual consistency, an autonomous aesthetic relation to reality and continuous obsessive experimenting with expressive means.
PRESENT CONDITION
The organic symbiosis also defines and determines the festival's specific concept which above all focuses on the presentation of some of the most interesting and aesthetically innovative theatre and dance groups; it does so without setting limits to expression or form, but keeps navigating in a space somewhere between dance and theatre, allowing it to present some the most attractive and provocative artistic ideas. Let us have a look at some of the foreign authors who participated in the past two editions of the festival : last year featured Josef Nagy, DV 8, Vera Mantero and Francisco Camacho; this year the certainly most astonishing performance was that of Saburo Teshigawara 's new stage production I was True, further Maguy Marin, Enrique Vargas, Eimuntas Nekrosius, Wayne Mc Gregor and Bambalina Titelles. Guest performances of foreign groups were combined with a presentation of domestic theatre and dance groups (authors like Iztok Kovac, Matjaz Pograjc, Vlado Repnik, Marko Peljhan, Barbara Novakovic) and, in my opinion, this presentation remains the festival's weakest point probably owing to the organic connections of the festival with the needs of the domestic production and what their authors expect from the festival. Along with presenting foreign groups, the festival seems to be literally obliged to answer the essential needs of the domestic artists, to whom participation in the Exodos festival often provides (sometimes the first) opportunity to present themselves to a public of foreign selectors. The essential problem of the festival is thus one of selection: its concept has to be further elaborated so that it will no longer serve as the vehicle for an extensive presentation of domestic groups, thus changing into a shopping mall for foreign selectors; instead it should together with the visiting groups grow into a uniform, organically connected concept. The organisers will certainly have to consider other solutions, for instance the introduction of an accompanying or B programme or something similar, intended for the professional visitors and selectors because this will make it possible to select only the best Slovene groups for the main programme, that is those which meet the requirements of the particular artistic concept of each year's festival. The problem of autonomy is, of course, characteristic of all similar festival presentations, constantly steering between propaganda presentation and a conceptual design, and of course, requires a highly intelligent approach to create a working synthesis. This year's presentation of the domestic production proved to be a hardly beneficial compromise between the demands of domestic creative artists and the concept of the selector team, and this certainly emphasises how urgent it is to find alternative solutions. An additional important indicator in the same direction was the fact that the festival in most of these productions acted as producer or co-producer (though this is one of the festival team's goals - to become a production centre) but failed to clearly define its criteria from the beginning. (This problem is connected with the broader issue of unsolved producers relations and financing in Slovenia and would require special treatment).
Another important characteristic of this year's Exodos was the accompanying programme: on the one hand the Slovene Cinema Centre contributes to the visitors' historical consciousness (this year with a fascinating review of films by Tadeusz Kantor) and on the other hand the festival also deepens the theoretical consciousness and in general popularises themes related to modern theatre through round-table discussions, symposiums and various workshops. As part of the accompanying events lectures were held by the Italian theoretician Marco de Marinis and the American dance theoretician Roger Copeland, a symposium was organised on the theme The challenges of the theatre to theory - The challenges of new theories to the theatre, and a round-table discussion on the production Eastern trends, stage arts. The festival was also accompanied by various workshops, among them an International critical workshop for young critics, in which sixteen young critics form East and West Europe participated. In the workshop the participants above all tackled the issues of a critical encounter with modern performing art, the problem of a critical review of modern dance and critical treatment of the stage concept. Precisely this accompanying programme together with the main one might contribute to Exodos' growing into a centre of festival events in the region, into a festival with a broad programme, own production and own theoretical programme. Together this may lead to the formation of a comprehensive production centre at all levels.
VISION
The second edition of the Exodos Festival of Modern Performing Arts proved that the festival is increasingly shaping its own image, though after the second edition we still cannot confirm that its identity is completely shaped. Nevertheless, the festival's concept reflects the wide range of domestic modern performing creative productions and promotes an urgently required venue for international, artistic, production and organisation trends. The following edition will be in May 1997, that is the month in which Ljubljana will host the European Month of Culture and the festival is expected to be one of its principal manifestations, around which the entire presentation of Slovene and foreign new performing arts will centre. The question remains however (even after the second edition of the festival ) if these megalomaniac demands will allow the festival to preserve its original provocative openness, its challenging search for performing concepts and obsessive aesthetic solutions which gave it its initial specific image. It is true that Exodos conveys the vision of a modern fresh and flexible festival, constantly open challenges and prepared to recognise new artistic forms and that as such it differs from the well-worn festival menus. It is also obvious that the organisers and management of the festival increasingly mange to create the framework for a very active, influential and also internationally efficient structure which, in the coming years, might actually grow into one of the more interesting festival centres in the area and have a significant impact on the domestic scene. It is however too early to venture that the original idea will survive the next editions. Insistence on consistent original aesthetics, probably the most obvious common denominator of the festival, on compactness and last but not least on a provocative concept are pre-conditions for the vision to become reality.