There’s much that can be written about the festival, as well as about the artists who have taken part in its individual editions over the past twenty years. Although words, summaries or accounts of various contexts related to the industrial scene, counterculture or the broadly defined and presented alternative movement can encourage you or bring you closer to the phenomenon of both Wrocław Industrial Festival itself and the spectrum of artistic expression presented there, they can by no means replace your presence and everything it entails. The WIF organisers, Maciek Frett and Arkadiusz Bagiński, embarked on an undertaking that can change the meaning of one’s life in the same way as it can become a space where this meaning can be developed. Wrocław Industrial Festival is born out of the same rationale as the industrial avant-garde, which came into being in the 1970s, and it can be said that since the festival’s first edition, Maciek Frett and Arkadiusz Bagiński have been undertaking to deliver a commentary on similar problems. It’s also about the content of statements voicing criticism of totalitarianism, war, capitalism, limitation, proclaiming the annihilation of the civilisation, or dehumanization in the face of technological development.
WIF has seen alternative projects hailing from all over the world, including Psychic TV, Lustmord, Test Dept, Boyd Rice, Wire, The Klinik, Carter Tutti, DAF, Lustmord, Nurse with Wound, Blixa Bargeld, Merzbow, The Young Gods and many other ones. Making a list of these artists and attempting to place some of them as leaders compared to others would be tantamount to evaluating them, and thus assuming a subjective position, which is not the point here. It’s, therefore, safer to say that the few hundred musicians who have appeared at the festival since 2001 have enabled the audience to come into contact with many dimensions of the broadly defined alternative movement – from classical industrial, all the way through harsh noise, power electronics, synth-pop, new wave, dark ambient, martial industrial, and post-punk, to layers of the avant-garde that escape classification. Over the years, WIF has managed to establish itself as one of the most important festivals in Europe and undoubtedly as one of its kind, as apart from its substantial artistic dimension, the festival has become a link for an extraordinary community of regular guests. Some of them would later on become artists themselves, performing on the festival’s stages, while some other ones, driven by its impact, developed or found musical passions, in many cases making them an outlet for either contemplation or dissent in the spirit of avant-garde.
With counterculture as its foundation, Wrocław Industrial Festival began with a series of early music events entitled Youths Side with Machines, organised by none other than Maciek Frett. In the spirit of the ethos of organising artistic events with one’s own means, the artists operating as the audio-visual group Job Karma set up the first edition of the festival in a derelict bunker. In the basement of the now-defunct La Fete club was the command centre of Festung Breslau, which evokes an interesting reflection on the possible intention behind the choice of venue, bearing in mind the anti-fascist and anti-totalitarian views that can be attributed to both the organisers of Wrocław Industrial Festival and the community that grew around the event. It should be maintained, however, that this is a plausible intention, but it’s a fact that the international dimension of the event has become a milestone in the context of regularly showcasing outstanding and creative alternative artists well known, in the past and now, in the community. Dark ambient, as well as martial and post industrial music, heard during the first edition of the festival in circumstances of isolation paradoxically meant openness, heralding the birth of an uncanny bond between people, who perhaps feel the need to run away from a world that is becoming increasingly dehumanised.
It’s extremely important and has to be emphasised that the target group of Wrocław Industrial Festival are not only enthusiasts of industrial aesthetics, for whom the primary language of expression is provocation through noise or using taboo subjects, evoking shock, or fascination with controversy. These are, above all, people with an open artistic and aesthetic sensitivity who seem to be fully aware that through artistic practice and expression, one can tackle or signal problems related to civilisation, exclusion, the breakdown of social strata, or the condition of man himself in today’s world.
Finally, it should be said that the second edition meant for the first time entering the Gothic Hall, which is probably most strongly associated with the festival itself as a venue. On the one hand, the organisational and logistic features of the Hall stemming from its acoustics and capacity and, on the other hand, the very architecture as fuel for the peculiar sacrum became what made it possible for the festival to settle there permanently. Generally speaking, industrial culture is a phenomenon which, apart from experimenting with sound, also includes the domain of image – and in this context, it seems justified to claim that the Gothic Hall has become an unprecedented and most characteristic gallery (who knows if not worldwide), where one could come into contact with multimedia and art forms pertaining to this field. The Gothic Hall and Wrocław Industrial Festival are something special in the eyes of the audience and artists performing at the festival; certainly, many of them would agree that one could not exist without the other. Similarly, one could hazard a guess that, for a huge part of the guests and performers coming to the festival periodically from abroad, there is no Wrocław itself without WIF. It was in the Gothic Hall that one could come across artists responsible for the creation of the global industrial culture who, apart from their musical dimension, are icons of contemporary art exhibited in European museums as classics of the avant-garde alongside artists such as John Cage, Hermann Nitsch, Nam June Paik, or Fluxus. It mainly concerns Throbbing Gristle; admittedly, they have never performed at the festival together due to the break-up of the group, but all the members came to WIF in different years with their own projects – Genesis P Orridge and Psychic TV (twice), Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson as Soisong, and Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti as the duo Carter Tutti. In addition to the artists from TG, we saw performances by Boyd Rice/NON and Nurse With Wound during the eleventh WIF, while Test Dept performed at the fourteenth. Mentioning these artists may give the false impression that a great many equally, or depending on subjective preferences, more important artists who performed at WIF aren’t remembered. These particular names, however, are cited here just to highlight the presence of the protagonists of the scene at the festival. Wrocław Industrial Festival undoubtedly develops the tradition they initiated in terms of opening up to the community not only in the context of a growing music festival, where ties and new acquaintances develop.
The compositional work on the roster of the various editions of WIF has always resulted from a method that departs from radical stylistic uniformity, which is a kind of paradox since eventually everyone could feel the peculiar magic of the event’s identity. In essence, every year a compilation of diverse line-ups were heard, the scope and scale of which have always concerned the common point of strong emotional impact. So as not to use high-flown expressions in excess, it suffices to say that the scope of the artistic offering can simply be felt strongly, and every member of the festival audience probably knows what kind of feeling it’s all about. The triggers of these inner experiences are experimentation and the search for alternative means of expression, solutions far from the obvious in terms of instrumentation, fascination with electronics, subtractive synthesis, sampling, or a whole range of instrument-related and performance-related concepts ample enough to be an inspiration for an encyclopaedia. The metaphysics of neoclassical In the Nursery versus the analogue rhythms of Dive, the nostalgic Ordo Rosarius Equilibro alongside the post-punk classics of Tuxedomoon, the raw energy of Esplendor Geometrico’s analogue oscillators and Spiritual Front’s ballad-like guitar riffs. The mentioned juxtapositions are just a small sample when it comes to both particular editions from which they are extracted and the gigantic bulk of all WIF’s rosters. This mosaic is a kind of journey, where one can drift away with the neo-folk current of Rome, in a moment immerse oneself in the atmosphere of the 90s with Portion Control, enter a ritual situation created by Sardh, and then dance to Dive’s electronic beat. The festival itself has brought a lot of surprises, as probably few people expected to be able to listen to the legendary Crisis repertoire; also, one of the big surprises was Einsturzende Neubauten leader Blixa Balgerd during the same festival edition, who performed a duet with Teho Teardo. Those who expected the martial outfit Der Blutharsch were probably surprised by its psychedelic guise Der Blutharsch and the Infinite Church of the Leading Hand. Who would have expected the dark ambient icon Lustmord to perform, considering the fact that so far this artist has shunned concert situations? The prospect of Lustmord turning up at one festival next to Legendary Pink Dots seemed impossible, but it came true, and what’s more, a few years later he performed again, this time next to Test Dept. The fact that post-punk legends such as Wire or Savage Republic were invited, as well as the fact that more mainstream groups such as Covenant came to play, is a testimony to the open formula of WIF. This only proves that the organisers avoid judging and pigeonholing artists.
It should be mentioned that at the same time WIF is a meeting platform for publishers and distributors hailing from the independent scenes in Poland and abroad. Thanks to this, Wrocław has become an important centre of promotion, and the festival itself has gained a status of an event worth taking part in. Since the very beginning of its existence, industrial culture has been defined as sovereign as far as publishing is concerned. The pioneers of the genre developed the formula of mailing art, sending demos and recordings to one other, as well as creating unconventional publications, monochromatic in form and tinged with controversial content, which incidentally themselves would become works of art. This is no different nowadays, as artists cooperating with independent labels make sure that their publications are unique in terms of the authenticity of concept and execution. The magic of Wrocław Industrial Festival also lies in the fact that after the concert, you can buy a record directly from the artist, talk to them like the way you talk to a family member, thus making a direct acquaintance with someone who has always been present in the room, on the shelf with the tapes, or about whom you have so far only read officially published interviews.
The organisers of the festival haven’t focused exclusively on strictly underground independent dimensions, as the dialogue they engaged in also concerns institutions and places that could highlight the attractiveness of the event. They started to organise a fair dedicated to small labels at the Foto Gen gallery, a daughter institution of the Centre of Culture and Art in Wrocław. Also, activities took place in the interiors of the House of Edith Stein, the White Stork Synagogue, or the BWA Gallery, the WRO seat, or the Entropia Gallery. The unforgettable quadraphonic performance by T.A.G.C. at the BWA Avant-garde Gallery or the experimental performance of Asmus Tietchens at the Old Mine in Wałbrzych will surely remain in the memory of the audiences. Almost since the beginning, Wrocław Industrial Festival has been held under the patronage of Wrocław – the City of Meetings, which means that it’s supported with the Wrocław Municipality funds. The inclusion of this event in the city’s development and promotion strategy undoubtedly helps a lot, at the same time securing the festival’s very existence. There is no doubt that the fact of long-term institutional patronage is probably due to the belief and awareness that WIF, to a large extent, means developing independent and avant-garde traditions, which very strongly define Wrocław culturally and artistically. Wrocław is the city where the founder of the Laboratory Theatre Jerzy Grotowski translated his artistic vision into reality, where the Orange Alternative came into being, and where eminent conceptualists such as Wanda Gołkowska, Jerzy Ludwiński and Stanisław Dróżdż were active. The growing punk rock scene and the related alternative movements brought together in this city people who fulfilled themselves in the visual dimensions of artistic expression, as exemplified by the cooperation of the LUXUS group with Mikki Mausoleum, Klaus Mitffoch, or Kormorany. A description of the cultural condition of Wrocław in this context is undoubtedly a challenge that deserves a separate article, but this one signals that Wrocław Industrial Festival is an event unique enough to be described as a culture-shaping phenomenon unprecedented for Wrocław and beyond. To conclude, it’s a good opportunity now to wish the organisers, fans and artists that they continue to side with machines and keep these unforgettable experiences alive. We look forward to taking part in the coming WIF editions!
Andrzej Mazur