Festival 4+4 Days in Motion celebrating 20 years of existence

The 20the edition of the international festival of contemporary art 4+4 Days in motion will take place from 2 to 10 October 2015. The artistic showcase, which started to make use of deserted, deteriorating or ready-for-demolition objects and complexes in the 1990s, is still faithful to its original vision. It shows artists in places where they have never been seen before. The festival’s core idea is to focus on contemporary, provocative artistic projects across genres – from dance to theatre and including exhibitions, audio-visual projects or discussions and commented tours – and as a present for its jubilee, entirely in the spirit of its tradition of reviving the neglected buildings of Prague, the festival was given a new location: Desfours Palace at 21 Na Florenci Street, Prague 1. Besides this venue, the 20th 4+4 Days in Motion will be hosted by the nearby theatres Archa, Ponec and Jatka78.
“Desfours palace was built in 1845 on profitable grounds close to Těšnov railway station. During the festival, within the project called Crime scene, we want to revive that part of the palace which hides beautiful wall paintings, pargets and large palace chambers“, says the curator Denisa Václavová.
The two storeys will house an exhibition entitled How To Want Nothing? featuring 60 Czech and foreign artists, curated by the personalities of the Czech visual art scene such as Krištof Kintera, Radek Wohlmut, Jiří Ptáček, Tomáš Svoboda, Marianna Serranová and others. The exposition will be again accompanied by discussions and lectures on architecture, contemporary art, public space and the subject: “How To Want Nothing”. “We can also look forward to some Czech premieres. Halka Třešňáková is preparing a new play exclusively for the space of the palace and the VOSTO5 theatre is this time focusing on the journey to Mars”, adds Denisa Václavová. Since its beginnings, the festival 4+4 Days in Motion has presented foreign performances selected from the contemporary European scene – dance, theatre and visual art. “This year we’re going to focus on productions where performance overlaps with music and also vice versa – music projects overlapping with theatrical performance,” says Pavel Štorek, dramaturgist of the foreign section of the festival programme.
The festival will open on 2 October with the music project Nothing That Is Everything which is the result of the collaboration of the Belgian band Zota Swoon and Flamish Need Company. The main foreign programme further features the French musician and performer, originally from Rwanda, Dorothée Munyaneza. Other guests of this year’s edition include the French musician and performer Jonathan Campdeville, Norwegian performer Amund Sjølie Sveen, Swiss director and musician Marco Berrenttini, Norwegian musical-dance project of the choreographer Kristin RygHelgebostad and Ingrid Fisdal who will work on her performance with a Czech choir. Then we will see the Slovenian artist Mala Kline or Flamish performer Pietre Ampe.
“Exclusively for the 20^th anniversary of the festival, the leading Czech and Slovak dance and theatre ensembles have prepared a unique project Plug & Play on the theme of music – dance – theatre,” adds Pavel Štorek. Within this “hard-to-define and unreproducible event“, taking place on 10 October in the Archa Theatre, the audience will welcome e.g. 420PEOPLE with the Please the Trees band, VerTeDance with Zrní band, Petr Váša, Farma v jeskyni, VOSTO5, Spirfire Company, Handa Gote, Debris Company, Lenka Vágnerová and many other personalities who  have collaborated with 4+4 Days In Motion in the last twenty years of its existence.
The festival 4+4 Days in Motion was founded in 1996 by Pavel Štorek, Denisa Václavová, Markéta Černá a Nikola Böhmová who organise the festival till these days. Over the 20 years, the festival has presented more than 400 foreign and Czech companies from all spheres of contemporary art (theatre, dance, music, fine art, film, video art). It has brought cultural projects into such places as the old sewerage purification plant in Prague-Bubeneč, deserted factory halls of ČKD Karlín, former municipal brewery in Holešovice, former brickyard in Šárecké Valley, hockey stadium HC Hvězda in Vokovice, former Casino in Pařížská street, gyms of the Tyrš house, Nostic Halls, the building of former Czechoslovak Federal Assembly, building of former ÚLUV in the Národní třída and U Stýblů Palace on the Wenceslas Square. The festival has also initiated many premieres of site-specific projects of Czech companies, it organises group exhibitions of contemporary visual artists and curators and collaborates with leading art historians and architects on guided tours and lectures. It sustains long-term relations with cultural organisations such as Kruh, Jednotka/Unit, Science and Research Centre AVU, Start Vršovice and others.

More info on www.ctyridny.cz.

Source: ArtsMarketing.CZ