The 10th edition of one and only Floating castle festival is back at Castle Snežnik!
From 4. until 7. August Castle Snežnik and its surroundings will be filled with over 150 musical and theater groups from Slovenia and all over the world. The stories about the castle and its people will come alive. The rich heritage that lies in the castle walls and the vast forests will get a new perspective and thus give the castle’s history a breath of fresh air.
In cooperation with 30 stage designers, with a helping hand of local residents and more than 100 volunteers, the Floating Festival team will transform the castle and its grounds into a magical performance venue with 20 stages, especially made for the festival. Traditionally the festival will follow ecological guidelines of sustainable living with the natural environment. The festival market place will offer visitors a variety of food and drinks as well as hand made craft. We will also launch a system of contributions meant for artists. This way every visitor will donate half of his entrance to their favorite performers. This will be achieved by the festival coins called “Kojn”. The programme is diverse and big. One can catch concerts of ethno, jazz, fusion, author and experimental music, as well as performance, puppet theater, contemporary dance, circus, intermedial shows, street, improvisational and drama theater. The participants of this year’s masterclasses, Huge puppets and Commedia dell’arte will get a chance to taste pre-festival vibes and will show their work at the festival itself. And we must not forget the world famous Etno Histeria World orchestra! This year it will encompass more than 100 musicians from nearly 20 countries.
This year’s theme of the festival is Castle and Time. How can contemporaneity of shows, in relation to speed and direction of the spectators, give the visitors a place in the castle’s history? And at the same time make space for a new story? We will travel back and forth in time, we will lose ourselves in between the stages, that will be thematically situated in the performance venue with design and performance.
You are more than welcome to join the Floating castle festival, that is more than just a festival, it is an artistic platform, and exchange of knowledge, it is an immersive experience, it is a bridge between local and urban, it is an international community and a place of meeting, that rises up like magic at full moon, it is a place of coming together and a cradle of new expressions, faces and performative shapes. It is a sleeping castle, that awakens at night, wor those who don’t sleep.
It is almost impossible to imagine the festival without the local communities, as they are instrumental in preparation and execution of the festival. They are also directly involved into transformation of the cultural landscape of their village, town, and city, as the Floating castle arrives in their corner of the world. The residents open their doors, invite us into their worlds so we can add color to them with concerts, shows, workshops and more.
The volunteers are the backbone of the festival. These individuals are those, that take care of the cleanliness of the festival venue, they help make the festival stages, they are your first contact at the info point, they slice and dice away at the festival kitchen, especially indispensable are all of those performing on stages.
The organizers are also, more or less, a coincidental group of volunteers, that have a joined interest in opening up a diverse cultural happening in spaces, where one does not expect that to happen. We believe in building artistic connections between Slovenia based and foreign artists, in the hope of creating an all encompassing community.
As the local Association of Snežnik Castle affectionados celebrates its 10th anniversary, we wish to return to the idea of revival of the castle and its grounds. Part of the castle ground is occupied by Grajske Pristave, a number of houses where the servants of the castle worked and lived. Pristave has been wasting away and its degradation is fast. Floating castle festival carries a warning, that the situation has reached a critical point and that something needs to be done yesterday.
Main organizer of the festival: Društvo Ljubiteljev Gradu Snežnik, who has been working on the renewal of the castle for many years. Programme of the festival is curated and organized by KD Matita, MCLU Koper, KD Plavajoči Grad. Festival is financially supported by Ministrstvo za kulturo in Mestna občina Koper.
The organizers would like to thank everyone who gives the festival their time, work and resources.
