BB/1. WE ARE BACK
Dear readers, viewers, visitors, and everyone else who is at Borštnik, will be at Borštnik, or has simply found their way to this website, a warm welcome to you all!
Welcome to the portal we call BB. Our loyal readers will know that this is our abbreviation for “Borštnik’s Blog.” We’re glad to have you back with us, and we invite everyone here for the first time to follow our attempt to document the festival experience.
A year later, our paths crossed again in Maribor. This year, it was the 61st Borštnik Festival.
Last year, Lana, Manca, and Nika observed and reflected on the festival. This time, we’re back in greater numbers. Doroteja is joining us for this new edition, bringing an extra pair of eyes and ears. So, as four professional hunters of festival moments, we’re setting out to explore performances, events, discussions, applause, the back rows of auditoriums, packed lobbies, morning drowsiness, and evening euphoria. This year’s festival program is once again very diverse and features a wide variety of events, so we’ll do our best to cover as many of them as possible—and, above all, to capture the festival atmosphere and share it in our own unique ways with those of you who may not be able to attend.
On the blog, you’ll find a wide variety of content. Everything from reviews and reflections to interviews, lists, reports, theoretical explorations, and more—in all sorts of lengths and formats. Some posts will be serious. Others less so. Some will push the boundaries of their form. Others will be more conventional. Some will be written immediately after a performance, when my head is still full of impressions. Others will mature over a third cup of coffee and a fifth conversation about the same scene. But none will attempt to be a definitive interpretation of what was seen.
If you’re interested in performances, behind-the-scenes action, the people involved, casual conversations, cultural hot takes, caffeine stats, and everything that happens between two festival dates, then you’ve come to the right place.
Last year, we got you used to the “coffee count of the day” column, which we’ll try to spice up this year and find (or invent) different ways to systematically—perhaps even mathematically—archive our experience in Maribor. Since the BB team is still slowly gathering in Maribor, we thought the section “Distance to the Maribor SNG at the time of writing” would be a fitting choice for our first post:
Doroteja: 2 km
Manca: 135 km
Lana: 956 km
Nika: 30 km
*prevedeno z DeepL AI/translated with DeepL AI. This text was translated from Slovenian using AI tools solely to ensure international accessibility. As a festival that deeply values human creativity and authorship, we thank you for your understanding regarding any linguistic or contextual imperfections.