The Mladi Levi festival has always appreciated the power of the individual story – an intimate insight can be a story of us all, it can touch upon the universal. This year, however, it seems as if the festival programme predominantly consists of performances transcending the individual, the intimate and the lyrical subjective utterance in their effort to tap into the collective arena, possibly reaching beyond the realm of human experience altogether. The performative drive to rise above our individual attempts and efforts pursues the intuitive quest for a solution, be it one that saves us from loneliness and isolation of the fast-paced world, or one that breaks free from the grinding system that keeps us captive in the seemingly impenetrable mill of injustice. These intuitive landscapes of potential solutions seem to lie within community engagement and cooperative action. More than ever before, this year’s edition of the Mladi Levi festival opens the stage to participatory projects and brings forward performances that both literally and symbolically give voice and space to those rarely taking stage or having their voice heard, highlighting artists that seek cooperation beyond the confinement of their subjective »bubbles«, beyond the human realm, as they look for ways of being together. There is a sense of care-ssing tenderness subtly penetrating the festival (invoking care as its etymological derivative), either in examining different registers of manhood, representing lamenting practices as they span from Mediterranean traditions to the present-day sadness of the sea, using acupuncture as an intervention to treat maladies of brick walls, tasting non-human holobionts or delving into stories of non-human animals. Care-ssing tenderness comes forth especially in its drive to articulate performative formats that would allow for aesthetic as well as other types of penetration into the communal without any use of force – merely by offering a hand, an opportunity, a gesture of kindness, and by promoting contextual conditions of gentleness.
It has been twenty-five times now that we have set the festival off on its journey with words of encouragement – the festival is, after all, a culminative manifestation of our work throughout the year, as well as an emanation of our aspirations, desires and convictions. It is a projection of a sort that not only carries our aesthetic imprint, but also a values-based orientation of Bunker in its utopian vision of the community. One that may well be temporary, but then again – so is life and we still take it extremely seriously.

Some while ago Bunker team attended a first aid course. Not to suggest that organising a festival is in any way comparable to saving a human life, but there is still a beautiful analogy one can draw here. The heart doesn’t suddenly stop functioning in the event of a cardiac arrest, but instead each of its fibres pulsates in its own rhythm. It is only by way of an external electric impulse that a synchronised rhythm can be restored again. Perhaps the 26th edition of the Mladi Levi festival can thus be seen as an opportunity and a possibility to allow for the impulses of art, socialising, interactions – and just about anything communal in nature – to bring our pulsating experiences into one synchronised utterance here and there.

We look forward to being with you!

Mladi Levi festival team