We Do Adventure

You'll spot maybe half a dozen umbrellas in this video, if you watch closely enough. What you won't see is any footage of the two enormous thunder storms that sought to disrupt last Thursday afternoon's performances. The first of these storms was freakishly heavy, with a healthy dose of hail mixed in with the torrential rain. It came on so hard and fast that, despite being under cover, our PA desk looked like it had just take a shower. The area where you see people dancing was a lake just half an hour before some of this footage was filmed. What this video does show is young people getting up to perform in front of their peers and their community, a few of them for the very first time. (All the musicians attend Novi Most music courses with me or Budo.) You'll also see some of the organisers, and the Director of Novi Most, enjoying a moment of madness as rain-stopped-play once again. The final performances happened inside, although in the rush of re-rigging the PA...

If you read our previous post you will know already that last Thursday was no ordinary day. While some of that was for reasons way beyond our control this video captures the part of the extraordinary that we planned. It's not exactly the video we thought we would make because many of the young people and the other adult organisers who had worked on preparing the project were not able to make the delayed start to deploying the art drop around Jajce. What you see is the work of more people than you see in the video. What you see is also only one part of what the project presented; this should soon be followed by a video highlighting the music and dance performances that happened during the afternoon. Part of the aim of Project Avant-Garde was to create art that the general public could take home and keep. Most of the art you see in this video will now be found in houses or apartments in and around Jajce. Some of it relocated to shops and cafe bars around the main street. Sadly ...

It is not every morning you are shaken from your sleep by the sound of a gun fight; nor that this is immediately followed by the sound of someone running under your bedroom window; nor that you get to take a photograph like this from the comfort of your own living room. But that was last Thursday in Jajce. It was a day that was supposed to have been all about Project Avant-Guarde, a street-art project Rowan has been part of organising for the past couple of months. However a rare armed robbery, or attempted robbery , got in there early in an apparent attempt to steal its thunder. Real thunder and lightening had a go at playing with the best laid plans too. Our PA equipment got caught in a freakishly fast and heavy hail storm. For a moment I thought our mixing desk might have shipped a little too much water to work again, but careful use of kitchen towel, with the aid of gravity and a hair dryer seemed to save the day. Going into details about the Project is best saved until ...