Zuzana-Markéta Macková's "Velvet Fair" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on July 29th, 2023 as one of 19 AEROPONIC ACTS of WHERE THE MOON IS UP curated by Elisa Giuliani.

Here you will find the documentation of Theresa Zwerschke's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Giulia Crispiani and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.

Velvet Fair

Zuzana-Markéta Macková's question: What is happening?

Zuzana-Markéta's introduction: Does music below 220 BPM still release dopamine for you? Come and join the Velvet Fair! Try your chances! Fake it till you make it! Prepare your tastebuds! Hurry up to enjoy!

Giulia's report: We’re in the garden at what’s called a “Velvet Fair”, peeps can get a leaflet and two coins at the entrance, and can roam around the garden where there are several stands, where people can get drinks and play games and win prices. The leaflet we’re given is colorful and full of fun facts—what is happening? Specific facts between 1989 and 2023. At the fuel station people can get a tea, and the person who’s giving it is playing a mouth party tromp in a melancholic way. Then a voice over starts repeating go inside to get your kick. Inside we’re given a paper tray with a poem and a performer awaits on stage, in a lit cloud of smoke, to sing the poem on the tray—“for the good of all of us, except the ones who are dead…when I look out there it makes glad I’m not you.”

Phanuel Antwi In this piece, my experience of it was challenging, my ability to move will inform my response. I had fun watching everybody, sitting. I am still alive, I was listening to the frequency and letting myself feel, rather than the lyrics. What is happening to be me? I think I am realizing how I have limits to what I can do as respondent. I am thinking stability, how can this become more accessible? 

Ayesha Hameed In the image of carnival, there’s something celebratory, but there’s a relationship with horror. Music and clowns, there’s always this flip side, how do you generate such a long cues? I was thinking of this binary of carnival, we’re supposed to be cheerful and I only hear chaos. Baktin’s notion, social stratification gets reversed. The song I couldn’t tell if it was a celebration or a lament. The protagonist is missing and that’s what bring confusion. It takes me away from the carnivalesque to the fantasmagoria, where the magician cut a body that’s not there. The extra token makes me think are we in a post capitalist situation? We’re obviously missing something.

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi I’ll try to recap: the structure of the piece is on two different connected levels, it made me think of an happy imprisonment, the way we should be happy in a certain context. A comment on our situation to watch the dystopic sense of being together. You were exaggerating your idea of community and its anti. What’s happening? The reply is “I’m still alive.” A more deep confession, which is about a sort of behind the scene of this lovely part. The very theatrical moment—still alive, but this still takes more meanings—could be stillness it’s a possibility of proudly be in a position.

What’s the feeling that moves us—I think about absences—a cake that is not a cake, try your best to have fun but not adjusting, dealing with the absence of means.

About Zuzana-Markéta Macková 

Zuzana's introduction to 'Velvet Fair' in italiano