We are queer, passionate, and alienated Dance lovers, as we are scientist, musicians, biologist, ghosts, ravers, and cinephiles. We are between Arte-factua-lity and Anima-lity. And yes, we are Europeans, and yes, we are part of the culture which has been created from the history of the white male. With such a load on top, we are also Syrian migrants, rioters in Honk Kong, animals from the bushfires in Australia, we are LGBTQ fighters in Russia and East Poland, black refugees, Muslims in India, native fighters in Amazon, we are the extinguished white rhinos.
NEW MOVEMENTS OF EVOLUTION
Humanity not only has an environment, like all other animals, but it is an environment.
Humanity only exists between the two.
We only exist as humans between.
Humanity only makes sense between.— Tristan Garcia, Form and Object
Months ago, we were preparing the 2020 edition of the 9th Spider Festival. We were contemplating the continuation of our core interest: the movement of evolution. Everything seemed to be going in a steady flow. Suddenly, a break occurred. The lockdown intensified the already present rules of the engagement of bodies. Now what? No movement? Nothing as movement?
It seems that the world has hit the point of involution. More and more socio-political structures are turning back to the dynamics of the between. The prevailing ideology which celebrates ownership maintains a cultural model, allows the humanity (especially Europeans) to view itself as an unparalleled force on the planet, thus entitled to use its resources as it sees fit. From feudal relations to imperialism, a certain “master” narrative has been at work. Furthermore, the EU’s imperialist foreign policy helped develop the dynamics between “self” and the “other”, which in turn attributed to the notion of otherness as synonymous with subordination.
And it doesn’t end there. Today we know that our natural resources are not vast and that there is no more territory to discover. Instead of accepting such a reality, we are involuting by flattening our awareness to the state of total despair. So better hold to our territory tide, because beyond the edge of floating flat disc, there lies the hell! Not evolution or revolution, but retrograding towards traditionally acclaimed entanglements!
An alternative perspective presented itself to us: Involution as an inalienable internal dynamics of an organism, or better, organisms. The process of becoming a spatial social network, a horizon of horizontal face-to-face encounters with all their collisions and frictions, a non-hierarchical participatory construction of movement as language and knowledge, and vice versa. Yes, now this.
That being said, we are not inviting you how it used to be and not to how it is. Rather, we are inviting you to how it might be. We abandoned our carefully prepared program, as we also abandoned the idea to cancel the festival. We abandoned the theaters or any kind of indoor activities. Our dance floor was set in the natural environment of the Tivoli Park in Ljubljana. Our guests and their ideas are the ones who created this edition of the festival.
Welcome to Spider Festival 2020.
This year we are putting in focus the between as a modality that may bring us together. We are queer, passionate, and alienated Dance lovers, as we are scientist, musicians, biologist, ghosts, ravers, and cinephiles. We are between Arte-factua-lity and Anima-lity. And yes, we are Europeans, and yes, we are part of the culture which has been created from the history of the white male. With such a load on top, we are also Syrian migrants, rioters in Honk Kong, animals from the bushfires in Australia, we are LGBTQ fighters in Russia and East Poland, black refugees, Muslims in India, native fighters in Amazon, we are the extinguished white rhinos.
Matej Kejžar, artistic director of the Spider Festival
More Information for the Spider Festival 2020 at www.spiderfestival.com
©Matija Lukić
The festival took place between 17 and 20 June in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Our dance floors was set in the natural environment of the Tivoli Park and other partner’s sites in Ljubljana.
The festival took place between 17 and 20 June in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Our dance floors was set in the natural environment of the Tivoli Park and other partner’s sites in Ljubljana.
