PLACCC Festival will take place again this year for almost a month, with foreign and Hungarian artists, and with a series of thematic events – on trains, in railway stations, on riversides and other unusual locations.
On the last weekend of August, the festival will kick off with a three-day birthday event of the SVUNG Research Group, which turns five this year. The audience can enjoy – among others – the work-in-progress premiere of Journeying, a participative performance on a train as well as a selection of body experience-based practices from the collective’s earlier projects under the title Meetings with the landscape through SVUNG practices.
Since 2021, PLACCC has been organising Sensing the City, a programme reflecting on environmental issues, curated by visual artist and activist Éva Bubla. This year, we have once again launched an open call for small-scale projects that by appearing in public spaces – or shared spaces – and engaging urban dwellers, help to (re)connect them to the urban fabric and ecosystem.
Éva Bubla will also be contributing to this year’s festival as an artist: her installation Microbial Future Labs is a travelling laboratory, an ever-expanding collection of future medicines and treatments, focusing on the mutual well-being of human and non-human beings.
This year, we are inviting Ukrainian and Belarusian artists again, as we across Europe are beginning to forget that the war in Ukraine is still going on and the political oppression is not becoming lighter in Belarus. We have joint the Bridges of Solidarity programme initiated by the Yermilov Centre in Kharkiv, and we have commissioned Ukrainian artist-architect Bogdana Kosmina to create a site-specific work, and invited Belarusian artists Igor Shugaleev and Sergey Shabohin with their autobiographical performace Ich heiße Frau Troffea.
Another foreign artist, Rita Hoofwijk from the Netherlands has been creating a site-specific participatory performance about, with and along the Danube under the title Danu.
We started the initative Artist as Curator in 2023 with the aim of making the programming of the festival more horizontal by including at least one project each year proposed by an artist who regularly collaborates with PLACCC. Scenescape Drama Club was invited to PLACCC 2024 at the recommendation of Napsugár Trömböczky, a member of SVUNG Research Group and Femini duo. The drama group provides opportunities of free artistic expression for participants with migrant backgrounds, and their Every Brilliant Thing series explores Duncan Macmillan’s monologue of the same name in a ‘home theatre’ format. The performers from Egypt, Jordan, Peru, Mongolia and France host the audience in their own homes.
The Franco-Hungarian artistic team of Brida Horváth, Pierre Martin, Stéphane Pogran often uses locations of (former) production (out-of-use factories, industrial and other production sites), the imprint of times gone by, monotony and long-lasting process(es) are also themes of the creation which is also inspired by the past, the history and the physical features of the specific location. Their site-specific dance-music-video performance Shift a will take place in an unused mill and it will also be broadcasted live online.
Another Hungarian collective, Femini will present their performative walk, Stories Carried by Old Waters. In their collaborative art process with senior ladies, they explore the themes offered by the Danube, exploring the qualities and situations we share with the river, and the water as an archive of human and natural history.
PLACCC 2024 Festival will close with a performance in public space by Zoltán Grecsó and Ádám Móser: in their duo It is what it is the dancer and musician’s approach is inspired by the contradictions and tensions in the urban fabric, the gaps and ditches that are becoming deeper and deeper.
PLACCC 2024 is supported by:
National Cultural Fund
Ministry of Culture and Innovation
IN SITU
Creative Europe
European Festivals Funds for Emerging Artists
Fonds Podiumkunsten / Performing Arts Fund NL
Trust for Mutual Understanding