In May of this year, a conversation about the ambient world was made, then we asked Cserepes Panni about the Cökxpon festival and the basics of ambient, now we can approach this particular cultural circle from another point of view. Szötske’s interview.
In the East (and towards us somewhere in the past), poetry didn’t just mean words.
Everything is present in you at the same time: music, pictures, theater, dance, and fine arts.
Cökxpon is a place where everyone experiences a similar thing, regardless of age or origin.
At least similarly, it becomes open to a feeling, an atmosphere, the performance itself, or even each other.
It is a community space, a stage of performances, a meeting place where you can mingle with anyone, intertwine with your love, and at the same time an environment that inspires contemplation and immersion in yourself, where you can relax and filter things through yourself.
A common “home” theater where anything can happen…
The word Cökxpon is actually a place in a fairy tale: the name of the confectionery in the imaginary world of the painter Lajos Gulácsy, Na’conxypan, where the strange inhabitants of the city meet.
You have to take off your shoes, so it’s all like you’re at home.
Yes, with shoe removal, something is changing in us that is shocking.
Being barefoot is like depriving us of our masks.
We pay more attention to each other and to ourselves.
We become more open, releasing everyday tension and cramps.
First, by the way, we dropped the shoes for purely practical reasons.
To keep the carpet from getting dirty and to keep the butts from being pushed into the carpet, but much more has happened on the way.
Can we talk about the Hungarian ambient movement?
If a movement is that there is an ever-changing, changing creative medium that, experimenting with different forms, condensing into different formations, creates something new, captivating audiences, who can’t wait to immerse themselves in the sounds and colors that surround them — then yes.
Now the stable place itself is missing to make it really happen.
I love sound cards for music production.
Best soundcard for daw https://bluebuzzmusic.com/best-sound-cards-music-production/
Who are you behind the Hungarian ambient movement?
It is behind everyone who creates – composers, dancers, theater people, artists – and who receives it – audience, critics, organizers, contributors – everyone influences it, shapes it all.
This is the movement in question.
And a narrower small group works on a daily basis to make it work at all.
A couple of people – everyone with a task that fits them, are struggling – for now, to keep things alive at all.
In Lajos Gulácsy’s dream, the “strange” people ran together in the confectionery. Who are you gathering?
I think we have “weird monks” coming together, too, in the sense that everyone is taking on their own and no one wants to be like the other.
These people are diverse, different.
That’s why – and for no other reason – they’re so weird.
What good is it to take off (our shoes and) our masks? The mainstream has always been to get yourself well and done.
It’s good to finally be yourself.
To finally have some peace of mind, have time to think, getaway, talk to each other.
Just to be contemplative.
I think a rampage is also an important tool for self-knowledge, but so is ours.
You’re talking about self-knowledge. People usually have it when it comes to parties, not the self-knowledge that comes to mind first. Yet, as if that were one of the cornerstones of Cökxpon.
I think partying, dancing together, but also potting and raging at a rock concert is all about honest, mutually experiential revelation, experiencing emotions, releasing tensions.
That is our absolute self-knowledge tool.
Ours is one such place, only otherwise it achieves the same goal.
Not by spinning, but on the contrary: by soothing.
Carpets, pillows, candlesticks. What is the story of this? Everyone on the Island went to your tents to sleep. Would it be a place to sleep – and nothing more?
Carpets, pillows, candlesticks are all tools that help create the atmosphere we are talking about.
At first glance, it may indeed seem like everyone is sleeping, but that’s not really quite the case.
To cite a nice example: DJ Marka, who was playing in the tent one morning, told me the story, even under the Island when we ran into each other.
While playing music, he thought everyone was asleep and it wasn’t so interesting what he was actually playing.
Waiting for a while, the guy sleeping motionless next to him got up, packed up to leave, but in front of him, he looked into his eyes with a definite gesture and showed that the music was king.
It’s about such simple, almost invisible, tiny gestures.
The audience here enjoys the music differently than we have been accustomed to so far.
Somehow like at home…
No alcohol, but there are many kinds of tea.
“No alcohol” is the expectation of the Island.
I’m not actually against it because I don’t feel like anything else would happen if we could have a glass or two of beer.
The festivals held throughout the year are not just about tea.
By the way, tea is the most important part of the buffet, because it goes very well with this mood, alcohol less.
I think if it were, it wouldn’t be the main number, but the chai. (Chai is an Indian, spicy, milky tea with a flavor of black tea, lots of delicious spices, and a delicate ratio and long blending of milk.)
How is the ambient tent set up on the Island different from the one (two or three times I know) From the Ambient Festival?
During the year, the festivals are organized with their own and tender money, taking great risks and often falling big on entrants.
We had to digest the fact that the audience can’t afford the cost of the festival and the tender money is not enough to create a festival like the one on the island.
Anyway, we always strived for the maximum, and that usually meant more locations at once.
In Fonó, for example (which I think was the most beautiful festival), there were five venues, all carpeted, padded, lit, and so on.
We lost a lot of money at these parties, so these days there are only two venues: a dancer and a tea chill (these have been merged into one venue on the Island).
Overall, they were all similar (carpet, pillows, music, dance, relax, tea room, lights, candlesticks, shoe store), but always different in detail, we enchanted the audience with the right venue.
It was never possible to predict where the next festival would be, what it would look like, or who would perform.
Unfortunately, we have to head in a different direction, paddling into economically profitable areas.
We bring the teahouse to existing and functional festivals and events, with an interior.
At the same time, we are looking for our own place that would really solve our problem.
What does it mean to be “ambient”?
The word ambient means the atmosphere and environment.
As a genre, he was born in 1972 in connection with Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, by critics.
Since then, ambient has been found in almost every branch of music, and even in every branch of art, which is not so much an effect on rationality as on a carpet-like effect, vision, and vision that affects emotions.
They have organized creative music workshops, movement workshops, courses, you have your own radio show in Forbidden. It seems to really sell out a place of its own. How long has the foundation existed and how did it come together?
The foundation was founded in May 1999.
Today, it has condensed into a new form, now a small business, because otherwise, we could not sustain it.
The organization organized the first festival in Trafó in October 1999.
At the time (1997), there was a band, ZUM, that produced experimental music that could not be squeezed into any existing club or event.
Tiny sounds, drums, objects of use, body sounds, excited, spiced with effects.
A kind of magic space, a special atmosphere was born.
As it turned out, we weren’t the first to experiment with that.
We had to realize that not only do we cultivate this genre and others are very interested.
We thought we might be able to forge something new with other like-minded artists.
This is how the Ambient Festival was born, with many composers, bands, dancers, DJs, with the participation of VJ and craftsman.
Then we found a place where we kept organizing classes – courses, rehearsals, studio work.
In the absence of permits, this place no longer exists today.
We are looking for something new.
We have had a show on Forbidden Radio this year, it is mainly about DJs, but we also inform our students about our promotions.
At the international level, what is the ambient movement like?
We are there to be able to invite one or two nearby bands from Central Europe to the Island (there were three Bulgarian, one Russian, one Romanian, two Slovak, and one Venezuelan-Hungarian orchestra again this year) – not from afar, not because of the financial means.
The festival has had many invitations already, but for the same reasons, we have not been able to meet them yet.
You are working on something similar in Bucharest with the Romanian band called ZUM (a special coincidence!). Would you possibly pitch an ambient tent on the Peninsula next year as well?
We invited the Romanian band ZUM to this year’s Sziget Festival, Cökxpon Ambient Tent Garden.
The ball is with them now, I hope it comes back again, and so on…
What is the feeling of life behind the ambient story, why is it worth stepping on this magic carpet?
In my own respect, the ambient is truly a sense of life: to be open to the world, to sincerely take on ourselves, and to fight.
The desire to know things while leaving, to let go of what is not going.
At the time, I longed for a place where I felt at home and the feeling that even though I didn’t know those around me, I had known everyone for a long time, and if we didn’t speak, we would understand each other.
And as a musician, I longed for a place where my art would be accepted, where they wouldn’t look like maximalist mentally ill because I would do it differently.
Anyway, I think everyone wants that.
Even if he doesn’t know about it, deep down in his soul, everyone thirsts for home, friends, acceptance, and knowledge.
To know the world – and the world is ourselves.
Honesty leads to self-knowledge, desire to know, and it is like a biological command.
Because we are built in the same biological way, the command to research and learn is also there in everyone, at most, we dare not take it because we are afraid.
We are afraid of the responsibility of freedom.
Because freedom comes at a price, and that’s what everyone who walks the path of warriors pays.
The ambient is a poppy seed that helps in this, a small little medium from which the roots start…
What kind of fight are you talking about?
As I said, this is my own explanation for things.
Not a jacket that can be pulled on everyone.
I have a belief that is mine.
And even if it sounds like something else, it’s the religion or philosophy of the other anyway.
A path I take and ambient is an integral part of that path.
A journey whose end is not essential, but what happens in the process.
Sometimes it’s easy, sometimes it’s hard, and when it’s hard because it’s sad or scary, then I’m the warrior who faces it. But that’s another story, my own story.