The biggest regional festival of creativity and innovation – Mikser Festival – was held from 25th May to 2nd June, 2012 at a new venue – a neglected industrial quarter at the very down town Belgrade in Savamala.

The festival was organized on 12 hectares, 40 facilities and 70 locations in the open. In the course of the nine festival days, 2,500 participants from 50 countries realised 120 projects. The festival was closed with the award ceremony for the international competition in industrial design – Ghost Project.

Mikser is a multidisciplinary platform dealing with the promotion of the regional cultural industry. This festival continues researching and reviewing the modern society phenomena, in particular the social role of creative disciplines.

It is certain that permanent search and incessant provocation are the only way to preserve a project’s vitality and strength which was provided by Mikser through choosing Savamala as the festival venue. This year was dominated by projects in architecture, town planning, visual arts and design with focus on interactivity, interventions in public space, workshops and performances.

The topic of this year’s Mikser Festival was to start the urban transformation process of Savamala. Despite many unfavourable circumstance distracting attention, and most of all despite motor vehicles poisoning, rumbling and polluting the environment, Savamala managed to carry out this project as a true victor. In cooperation with the people living and working in Savamala and with the present institutions, Mikser Festival uncovered the key points of this “small town”, while indicating to systemic problems (a Belgrade’s Cooperative better-known as Geozavod, Vucina house (Vučina kuća), etc.).

Savamala has no festival venue set up, it is a town of its own in some way, where contrast and illogic ARE the characteristic of the system and where chaos is the major catalyst of content. The purpose of Mikser is not to remove the urban unrest, but to be incorporated into the existing micro-system, to investigate it, to cooperate, to react and to analyse the social, architectural, economic and political levels as they are, as well as to add a novelty to produce new and different trends within the situation as is.
Savamala and Mikser Festival together create a single programme concept abandoning the editing model by zone. The entire festival programme is made of a network of projects by independent authors, where each consists of several segments such as exhibitions, workshops, lectures, concerts, etc.

Through its programme, the festival has always promoted the creative youth at the same time with renowned Serbian and international guests, and this year the festival has boosted the promotion of the creative youth through a series of open contests in architecture, design, music, visual arts (Ghost Project & YBD: GET REAL!, Urban Bundle/Gradska okupljališta, Garage Roll Call…).

The aim of the festival is for Savamala to regain its former status of the cultural and social city core. Some day, when trucks and other urban polluters leave, when the facades are redone and one of the most beautiful palaces in the city regains its former shine – the building of the Belgrade Cooperative from 1907 – Mikser will be able to move on, endeavouring to meet the next goal.

Some of the exhibitions that could be seen by the visitors of Mikser Festival in the building of the Belgrade Cooperative are: Open Space, The Most Beautiful Building, The good, the bad and the overhead, while Bristol Hotel was host to industrial design exhibitions such as: Ghost Project and Young Balkan Designers, while Mikser Expo Highlights were open to all interested people at Mikser House.

The opening of the international exhibition Open Space and Mikser Festival at Geozavod at the same time marked the launch of this year’s BELEF, which has become a festival within the festival.

The entire festival was, naturally, accompanied by an exuberant music programme present in several locations. Some of them were: Mikser Tuborg Stage (Warehouse, Mostarska 5), Mikser House Stage (Karađorđeva 46), Dis-patch: Three-Thirds (the yard in Mostarska Street), Garage fire! with hard guitar sound (the yard in Mostarska Street), Converse Steamboat Stage, presenting the current local performers, Red Bull Corner which featured a various-genre programme devised by the Jungle Tribe team.
In cooperation with the Tourist Organization of Belgrade, both festival weekends featured organized tours around Savamala. Mikser Tram Called Belgrade started from the loop of number 2 tram. There were also Savamala and Belgrade sightseeing tours organised on Lasta tourist coaches.

Mikser Festival ended leaving strong impressions all around. The festival was frequented by some 100,000 visitors enjoying exuberance of music, research and educational programmes all around Savamala, making Belgrade the Centre of European Creativity!

Moja Kravica – A young Serbian director, Miško Nećak made a very interesting video show at the festival. His work attracted the attention of many fellow Belgraders crossing Branko’s Bridge at the time, which is close to the building on which Nećak’s work was being presented. His show in Belgrade, entitled “Moja kravica” was sponsored by Imlek.

You can see his phenomenal show by clicking the link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCfZumjjK8Q

S.J.