AKTO 6

contemporary arts festival

AKTO6 THEME/WORK(NE) TRAVAILEZZ (JAMAIS)! / (NEVER) WORK! / PAБOTИ (НИKOГAШ)!

The aim of past five editions of the Akto festival was to embody the relationship between two subjects and their relation with the outer world. Topics such as Speed, Generations, Weddings were oriented to the personal attitude of the authors as motivation/provocation for their artworks. Too intellectual, somehow, at moments, there was an attempt to ask questions and to give answers using a topic which is not artistic at all (as Weddings, the topic of Akto 5). It was more of a philosophical point of view than pragmatical and very often it was not understood well what we wanted to do and say with certain topics, but on the other hand the artworks emotionally communicated with the audience,so that it was a kind of a recoup.

After the first 5-year cycle of the Akto festival starting as of this year’s edition of the festival we decided to have topics directly connected to the social context we live in. The topic should be used as a tool to communicate with the context, to provoke, annoy and ask. It was directly inspired by the Guy Debord’s graphite from the 1950’s in Paris: Ne travaillez jamais/ NEVER WORK! We intervened into the topic WORK (NEVER) as we would like to estimate the attitude towards work in the current context, things have changed, the attitude towards labour, its material and intellectual value. More concretely, in the context of Bitola the idea of work makes a lot of sense, not to work is a lifestyle, not working has been transferred from generation to generation in the family which is a very important aspect for the authors dealing in this context.

Filip Jovanovski / Artistic Director of the Festival