Čtyři dny | Four days

The 4+4 Days in Motion festival was founded in 1996 by Pavel Štorek, Denisa Václavová, Markéta Černá and Nikola Böhmová, who continue to organize the festival today. Over the past 20 years, the festival has presented more than 400 Czech and foreign ensembles or individuals engaged in all manner of contemporary art (theater, dance, music, art, film, video art).

Through its cultural projects, the festival has brought to life places such as the old sewage treatment plant in Prague-Bubeneč, the abandoned ČKD Karlín factory halls, the former municipal brewery in Holešovice, an old brickworks in Šárka Valley, the HC Hvězda hockey stadium in Vokovice, the Tyršův Dům gymnasium, the Nostic Halls, the former Federal Assembly, the former Casino in Pařížská Street, the former Center for Folk Art Production building (ÚLUV) on Národní třída, and the Stýblo Palace on Wenceslaus Square. The festival has also initiated the creation of numerous premiere site-specific projects by Czech artists, presents group exhibitions by contemporary artists and curators, and collaborates with leading art historians and architects to hold public walks and lectures. The festival also has a long history of working with various cultural organizations, including Kruh, Jednotka/Unit, the Academic Research Centre of the Academy of Fine Arts, and Start Vršovice, among others.

This year’s 4+4 Days in Motion festival is celebrating its 20th anniversary. Is there any point in analyzing the past, and does it need to be livened up or changed in any way?

I never look back. Not on New Year’s Eve, not when celebrating my birthday. But the festival is a category of its own. It is a collective effort with a joint goal and a secret motto: “Endure at all costs!” It is a joy that we have “survived” 20 years as the same organizing team. It is truly a rare moment. In the summer, I had some free time during which I thought back and dug around in our history. It’s probably the first time in my life that I’ve looked back.

Since 1996, we have invited 170 foreign ensembles and held more than 60 Czech premieres – and I am not counting site-specific projects, happenings, art installations, lectures, symposia, discussions and the like. I got a mixed sense of joy and sentimentality, because when I looked at our history over time, there is a clear change in the festival’s programming.

How has the festival’s program changed?

It changed face gradually, but I would say that it did so intuitively and in response to circumstances – not on the basis of any strategy. We began by showing movement theater and site-specific projects, then we shifted towards contemporary dance and slowly added drama. New festival traditions in recent years include art exhibitions, lectures on architecture, and guided walks.

I have been attracted to music since the beginning, but it has always been a marginal feature at the festival. I never ventured to add music, even though it attracts me more than theater. Only this year did I find the courage and perhaps also impertinence to do so, and built almost the entire program around a dialogue between music and the performing arts. My aim was to effect a change in direction. Whether it makes sense and whether it was enough or too radical will be judged by this year’s festival audiences.

How would you describe the festival?

I long fought the label “festival of contemporary art,” but I must admit that my colleagues who pushed it through were right. The range from performing arts to art and architecture has helped to expand our audience base to include another generation. And what is more important – it has prevented us and the artists from getting stuck in a rut.

Over the festival’s last 20 years, what changes have there been in how your team works, and how has your taste in theater changed?

Our team, which is centered around four people, has aged 20 years. Most of us have had children, and so our priorities swing – in the words of Ivan Vyskočil – from family obligations to work and back again. Which is a source of joy, and our current priority.

I am sure we were more ambitious, more determined, and also more naïve… Today we are more pragmatic, experienced and professional. But still – just as I never wanted to stop smoking, I never wanted to stop the festival. And I am sure that here I speak for the entire team.

We are also friends in private life, and so we often talk about the energy young people have and how we can’t keep up. Sometimes we laugh at it, other times we find the speed all around us frightening. On the other hand, I believe that our experience cannot be transferred. It is a rare and valuable thing. I mean this seriously. We traveled abroad to find artists and to negotiate financial support, but at the same time we scrubbed the toilets at the festival or cleaned pigeon droppings from the venues. We picked up artists at the airport, cooked for them, hung the lights – simply everything for which festivals today have entire teams. We started out sharing an office with the Bohnice Theatre Company and the mamapapa association. In 1997, when a Dutch foundation donated a fax (that’s a big telephone that spits out black-and-white letters), we celebrated until morning. Most of the time, we went into our projects headfirst, firmly convinced that there was a purpose to it, that it would speak to others, and that they would enjoy it even more than us.

How and when did visual art first appear at the festival?

It’s been there since the beginning, although hidden. Site-specific projects evolved from the choice of venue, from the lighting design… The participants were often students of art or scenography. Grifftheater and mamapapa in the underground spaces at the sewage treatment plant – that was an artistic theater performance. Theater Silo at the Agricultural Museum, too. Tomáš Žižka’s fermentation room at the Holešovice brewery was a visual treat. And so you could find art throughout our history. Last but not least, in the design of our festival bars. The creative minds of Jednotka/Unit and Krištof Kintera have transformed our festival meeting point into a place that people talk about.

And then there was the turning point when Krištof Kintera and Denisa Václavová invited young artists to come up with festival exhibitions and an accompanying program, thus making art a completely natural part of the festival.

In addition to presenting theater projects, exhibitions, discussions, and other cultural activities, the festival has always been focused on breathing new life into abandoned places, on inhabiting abandoned industrial buildings with cultural activities. Why have you focused on this urban or site-specific activism since the very beginning?

The flight to the Bubeneč sewage treatment plant in 1998 was provoked by scenographer Tomáš Žižka and architect Benjamin Frágner. They convinced us that our program would work well in a non-theatrical setting. And they were absolutely right, although their “flight of fancy” at first filled us with great uncertainty. The success of the event – which was similar to semi-legal activities like Stalin, Azyl, or the projects of Petr Bergmann and Děrevo – gave us new energy and faith. And it gave the festival a new direction. Nobody had to try to convince us anymore. It was decided!

How do you find and choose the festival venues?

Amazingly enough, in the 1990s property owners would still contact us with an interest in holding the festival there. With privatization and the changing social situation around the turn of the millennium, however, the generosity of art lovers and building owners died down. It was an important turning point. We realized that if we wanted to continue to find inspirational places, we would have to partially transform our little non-profit into a real estate agency.

Trying to find a new venue for an event as huge as a festival is like a student trying to find a two-bedroom apartment with a balcony in Prague 6 for 100 crowns. Finding a building, factory or abandoned site – and then the owner – is often a superhuman task. We offer no more than short-term cultural use, not much money, and pretty insignificant advertising for the owner. At the same time, they – the owners – take a chance with their entire property and often even their reputation. Many times, they prefer to remain anonymous. More than activism, it is a passion and a fanaticism for getting into places where had never been made before we got there.

What difficulties have you encountered in trying to find festival venues?

There are obstacles all the time and everywhere. Most of the time, when we enter a building we immediately see all kinds of dangers for visitors. For instance, poor layout, missing electrical wiring, water and so on. But these places also offer a challenge. Today we know how to deal with them, and by being in these places and delving into their history we learn the stories of these temporarily abandoned sites, and our audiences do as well.

Perhaps I am moving away from the question here, but I just have to say that if anyone had told us back when we moved the festival to the Bubeneč sewage treatment plant in 1998, that one day we would be in the National Theater, then I would have thought they were joking. I think we were so different back then that we must have looked like the absolute underground – if not a band of maniacs – even for the Archa Theater. But a few years ago, one of our projects was shown at the National Theater, where they – fortunately or unfortunately – accepted us without question. By this I mean to say that we are attracted not only by abandoned places, but also by inhabited, strange and perhaps all too well-defined or institutionalized ones. To summarize, we would most prefer to be in the desert or on the roof of a skyscraper, but we won’t turn down dinner in a hotel if the host is a kindred spirit.

How do you work together as a festival team? 

Over all these years, we have found our strengths as well as weaknesses and have learned to work with them creatively. It has always been important for me that, despite our mutual “unrest,” we can agree on basic things.

The duties have been split up more or less the same since the beginning. I put together the foreign program, Denisa Václavová curates the spaces and exhibitions, Markéta Černá is the producer, and Nikola Böhmová the production manager. We have a group of friends with whom we have been collaborating for a long time. Interior designers, technicians, runners, cashiers, attendants, cleaners, location managers… During the festival, we employ around 70 fans of our festival.

Where will this year’s festival take place?

Besides the Archa, Ponec and Jatka 78, this year we have decided to also inhabit the Desfours Palace at Na Florenci Street no. 21 in Prague 1. The palace was built in 1845 on a lucrative property in the immediate vicinity of Těšnov Station, which began operations in 1845. The train station’s final day of operations was 1 July 1972, and its demolition significantly changed the character of central Prague. It is one of the city’s largest urban tragedies, and so we are trying to bring the train station back to life, if only for a moment, through memories.

What special things should audiences get ready for?

The festival opens on 2 October with the outstanding Nothing That Is Everything, a collaborative music-and-dance project created by leading Belgian band Zita Swoon and the legendary Needcompany theater ensemble. The foreign program also features world-known French musician and performer from Rwanda, Dorothée Munyaneza, who composed and sang the soundtrack for the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda.

Other guests of this year’s festival include French musician and performer Jonathan Campdeville, Norwegian performer and percussionist Amund Sjølie Sveen, Swiss director and musician Marco Berrettini, Belgian performer Lisbeth Gruwez dancing to the songs of Bob Dylan, a Norwegian music-and-dance project by choreographer Kristin Ryg Helgebostad, and a project by Ingri Fiksdal featuring a Czech choir. Also appearing are Slovenian artist Mala Kline and Flemish performer Pieter Ampe.

Especially for the festival’s 20th anniversary, leading Czech and Slovak dance and theater ensembles have prepared a special project entitled Plug & Play, on the subject of music – dance – theater.

Don’t you ever feel that sometimes your inspirational program full of workshops, discussions, seminars, and new works created especially for the festival is overshadowed by the attractiveness of the venues adapted by the festival?

I’ll say something really honest here. During the opening party a few years ago, when there were maybe 500 guests present, I wanted to have a beer. I forced my way towards the bar from the side as had always been our agreement, and politely asked for a beer. The kid behind the bar said: Get in line, jerk. I wanted to get in a fight, but that evening I thought it better to just leave, really depressed, and get a beer at a pub. The next day we ironed everything out, but I seriously considered whether we had become first and foremost a spectacle. But the performances were all full, so my anger slowly turned to joy.

I don’t want to sound mean, but I can’t stand events that emphasize attractiveness and current trends. Here I can’t avoid mentioning Designblok and Signál. It’s great that they work with new technologies and new artistic strategies, but both these festivals work with space in a terribly simple and superficial way. Above all, they want to be “trendy.” We have worked with dozens of artists, who we got involved in the festival and practically lived with, listening to their ideas, arguing, debating, creating. This, I think, sets us apart from similar activities and trends in urban activism today.

We don’t go out looking for factory halls and other temporarily empty, raw and abandoned sites or buildings in order to shock visitors. We “merely” want to call attention to places that might soon be demolished. And one day, we will regret their demolition. These are places were life was harsh but also full and rich; places where life disappeared altogether. Any look inside these places, any study of them, is full of sadness. We discover and reflect upon the past, but we also know that we can almost certainly not affect the future. And so our festival at least documents these places with a simple aim: these places could be alive, but they are not. And we ask, why? We try to change the property owners’ view of art, and to inspire artists not to shy away from empty properties.

 Interview with Lukáš Jiřička

(The interview was made for Archanoviny – September/October 2015. Reprinted with the author’s permission.)