Side Step 2016 | Ivo Dimchev: Fest

Fest tells the fictive story of Ivo Dimchev’s journey to present his solo work at a festival in Copenhagen. The story is born out of Dimchev’s actual boredom with the conventional way of his everyday professional communications. Fest brilliantly chronicles with satirical accuracy how the art world has become a communicational marketplace of cultural consumption.

In the story the character of the festival curator hires a performer with a radical reputation in order to acquire a radical reputation herself. The piece begins as a strange stage reading of power structures within the art world. The reality starts spiraling out of control, turning into weird entertainment. The performance explores and makes visible the subconscious connections between power and desire in any professional relations.

Fest portrays the contemporary art world as a disordered and estranged reality that has its own laws of sitcom-esque nature.  Its style is simultaneously hypnotically perverted and satirically accurate. The piece is a fantasy, which explores power plays driven by sexual desire. It is a Dadaistic absurd comedy in which the author searches for balance between form and content.

Read more about Ivo on Niko Hallikainen's Okulaari blog.

Listen to Ivo's review on Esitysradio (Performance Radio).