F.N.A.F. = Festival of Naked Forms - !extreme bareness!

September three-day educational event with a bare program. Besides classical Hellenic, pagan, and modern festivals of nudity the program’s attractions also include dark anonymity of a tactile darkroom and the as-yet undiscovered art form of natural bodyrot.

Some people believe that performance art is a synonym for nudity. Our festival cleverly confirms this belief.

Festival of Naked Forms (FNAF) is a mono-thematic multi-genre festival with a predictable and yet inconceivable subject matter. The title alone reveals the aim of the various events and perhaps liberates us from being overly fixated on the subject matter. We can overcome our shame at home and then experience the other meanings that nudity may have in different contexts and interpretations.

I began with an ambitious challenge: “Dear artists, please classify your naked art action as either ‘Day of Critical Nudity’ or ‘Day of Hedonic Nudity!’” This curatorial idea didn’t quite work out – the first day was empty, the second overflowing! Christ, I hope they didn’t take it personally! I really didn’t want them to think that THEIR nudity was critical... Basically, I and the “Sexist Pig” contest both identify with the critical approach, and so what I wanted to say and to hint at was that nudity reveals not just itself, but by taking off my clothes in a corner of the room, I can call attention to the wrongs happening in the opposite corner! It’s enough to get everyone to spontaneously turn away from my nudity.

So most artists declared their affinity to the hedonic aspects of nudity within the meaning of hedonism and pleasure, with a focus on the pleasures and delights of life while actively avoiding unpleasantness. This optimism makes me happy, although I know that in many cases it is mere hypocrisy and the artists in question will not be capable of maintaining this carnally elemental line, instead filling their works and presentations with original, intense, and sophisticated content.

The festival’s aim is to bring together as many live art actions or social events related to nudity as possible. This first year is a test, a survey aimed at both artists and audiences. The festival’s preparations alone have left us with many unrealized ideas and untapped artists and groups for next year.

The festival hopes to differentiate itself from artistic performance festivals by trying to include non-artistic performers and apostles of various forms of nudity. We do not want the festival to be seen as a mere spectacle. Audience participation is very important, both in the form of workshop attendance and through the openly accessible spatial events in Perla’s wonderful industrial environment, which will beautifully emphasize the naked bodies – critically as well as hedonically.

Lenka Klodová (for the entire team)