Bratislava, Slovakia
Mission Title: Blue Danube - Wilsonic Festival 2008
Mission Date: 06-06-2008
SCRIPT
- Go to Bratislava and attend with your videocamera the annual Wilsonic Festival overlooking the Danube river.
- Interview the organizer of the festival about what these three terms mean to him, and how he's attempting to recontextualize European music, not fromt he West, in regards to dance music as a whole.
- Is there a Bratislavan or Eastern European sound? How's it different from it's UK or French counterparts? Does it grow out of a local history or sense of scene?
- Tape your way to and from the Festival, the entrance, and tons of people functioning in different ways, do they seem to notice it as anything less than a giant commercial dance party like any other, or is there something particular or special about this place at this moment.
- Don't forget you're telling a story, not shooting a rock videoclip or a promotional video, tell a critically incisive story, always keeping narrative concerns at hand, like character and plot for example.
TRAVEL BAG
Can a festival fuse the atmosphere of a concert, a club and a party?
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. Like the infernal beating of a tell-tale heart or more like an incessant jackhammer wrapped in velvet punching you in the chest repeatedly, the beats of dance music are constant, repetitive and provide fair fodder for drug addled lotus eaters looking to dance away their sorrows. It invites conversation like a snugly fitting ball gag and ear plugs, where the participants are stuck motioning wildly about wildly different things and dancing anyways. But people don't come for chats at the Wilsonic Festival in Bratislava, they come to have their eardrums assaulted all night long while waiting in a queue for a toilet. Or perhaps not?
Named after the failed attempt by Bratislava to name itself Wilsonov after the American president and avoid being lumped into Czechoslovakia, the festival, ostensibly set up to feature to Central and Eastern European dance and "urban" music, overwhelmingly features musicians not from Central or Eastern Europe, but, admittedly, a decent helping of local dj heroes. The festival claims to attempt to blend a concert, club, and party, but try as we might to sort out these synonymous terms, we are unable to tell the difference between the three. If they had said a Bach concerto, the Los Angeles gun club, and your auntie's tea party, it would have been more specific, if not at lest intriguingly strange, as it stands we need someone to go in and find what the hell they're talking about. But we hear the price for entrance is a mere
550 Sk, which works out at just 17 euro. A small price to pay for hours of aural abuse, we hear the beer is reasonable, too.
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