Editorial
How to start writing an editorial with all that is non-stop going on and the current situation that takes your breath away. The totalitarian populist regime has started to mow down Slovenia at top speed. The ongoing genocide, which we also involuntarily finance. The battle for digital control of unimaginable proportions. The battle for supremacy - which of the sociopaths will steal the largest fortune. The untaxed wealth of the richest people on earth and corporations, due to which a large part of the world lives in severe deprivation and modern slavery, and is also fueled by war profiteering and genocide.
And as if all of that wasn’t enough - the absurd imbalance of power, the growing totalitarianism and fascism offering "easy solutions" and a false sense of security and the numbed pain of helplessness due to all the wars and the genocide in Palestine - there is also the ecological crisis.
Yes, remember the ecological crisis? Climate change, global warming, CO2 emissions, yes, the crisis has not gone away. We are so preoccupied with the everyday struggle for survival and the urgent terrors that attack us from everywhere that we only think about the ecological catastrophe when it is absolutely necessary, e.g. when our apartment gets flooded or the wind blows off the roof from above our heads.
Staring at our smart devices, we lose focus even faster. At this time when we struggle to stay up to date with everything and democracy is at stake and the risk is so great, we are all so overwhelmed and preoccupied that we forget to live together, to live with nature, to live.
At this time, more than ever, we need events that unite us beyond capitalist frameworks. We need oases of safety, associations, creativity, reflection, unburdened socializing, spaces of freedom and temporary communities that open up new collaborations and connections.
For the 12th year in a row, the Reciklart Festival has been slowly weaving itself into the local space of AKC Metelkova mesto, occupying outdoor areas and mixing up different genres of art. This year's festival theme is Scarcity and Abundance, and the workshops are focused more specifically on Food Consciousness. It is the second year since the main organising function has passed to the Matafir Association with the invaluable co-production role of KUD Meže, making the festival the only performance festival on Metelkova and perhaps the only festival that strongly connects creative and artistic workshops for young people, visual arts, performance art and other events. This year’s festival establishes the Reciklart Art Colony as a permanent feature of the festival, which also sets the time frame of the festival with the group exhibition in the Alkatraz Gallery: this year it will expand even further and last from July 31 to August 28 2026. This year the art colony connects students from Slovenia and Slovakia, which together with the feature of the TanC dance collective represent a planned connection and support for Slovak artists who have had a long-standing struggle with a totalitarian regime, in the hope that we can learn something from them.
We do not surrender to numbness and passivity, but through socializing, creativity, and resilience, we create communities that become pillars of rebellion. Neoliberal capitalism must fall!
Danijela Zajc