FAUNA x REWIRE

There is a new initiative in town! With its first event during Rewire Festival The Hague (1&2 May 2015) Fauna started with a bang. The event, FAUNA x REWIRE, took place in HOOP and was a mixture of art and music, with music by Stoka Ensemble, Fetter, de Tuinen, 96wrld, Casperelectronics, Sima Kim, Yes ..PinkPink and Klankman, and work by Gaby Felten, Leslie Nagel, Sara Pape García en Yara van der Velden. Simultaneously with the performance by de Tuinen there were visuals made by Adriaan Bon.

Being unfamiliar with Fauna or their plans, I decided to ask them some questions.

Who is Fauna?

Fauna in its core consists of An3 van de Kuit, Áron Birtalan, Moritz Geremus and Ronald Schelfhout. Besides this we also work with a loose group of friends – the Hungarian graphic designer Márton Kabai for example, who is responsible for the visual identity of Fauna.

FETTER – photo by Rixt de Boer

Why did you decide to collaborate?

We are friends who share a taste and interest towards new and exciting art and music. We work together because we like doing things together, just as friends do. Plus we all have a background with the Den Haag Art & Music scene and/or Kabk.

Why the name, Fauna?

Fauna is a term from biology, where it is used to describe the diversity of animals in a certain area. We like how that draws a parallel to our outlook on the mixture of our programs, while still suggesting a sort of uniform kinship.

Leslie Nagel – photo by Rixt de Boer

Stoka Ensemble – photo by Rixt de Boer

What were your activities during Rewire?

We had our 1st edition of Fauna planned one week before, when suddenly we were in conversation with Rewire festival, who were hoping to collaborate with a local & upcoming initiative. We were really glad to launch our 1st event during Rewire. Being based in The Hague, it’s important for us to keep the collaboration with local initiatives and festivals, rather than go into competition for audience. The turnout was amazing, despite the big misfortune of Rewire not getting night permits for HOOP at the last minute. The energy of both the acts as well as the audience was super.

What is the relationship between visual art and music within your organization?

Fauna’s main goal is to have all elements – its visual identity, our ideas, the performing and exhibiting artists – working together in order to create an experience with a clear message and ambiance. Again, despite the diversity, we aim to provide an experience that is truly ours (the organiser’s, the participant’s and the audience’s) to share. Exciting for us too is to see how this will all work out, and morph between editions, since we just started.

Sara Pape García – photo by Rixt de Boer

What’s next?

Well.. we still have to evaluate the FAUNA X REWIRE thing, but we are aiming for a big edition (like the Rewire one) every 2,5 months, a small one every month plus continue to collaborate with other platforms in Den Haag.

We are also talking with Hoop about a residency night, the big BUT in this whole picture is: money. It is all great and inspiring to organize, but the energy we have put in the 1st edition, together with the artists, is worth some Euries. So the 1st edition we ran with some Broedplaatsen subsidy, hardly being able to give a decent pay to anyone. We would like to actually be able to do that in future editions.

Yara van der Velden – photo by Rixt de Boer

Are your plans focused on The Hague?

We are taking our time to make the best editions we can make. Definitely this will happen in The Hague area at first, with Fauna we would like to provide an international platform in a town known for its rich cultural life. Make sure to check our sites : ))

https://www.facebook.com/faunalive http://faunalive.com/ https://soundcloud.com/faunalive https://twitter.com/faunalive

FAUNA