About Festival of Fantastics
The Festival of Fantastics took place in Roskilde, Denmark, in 1985. Ten international artists all closely associated with the Fluxus movement presented a series of works, events, performances, concerts and actions all over Roskilde and the surrounding area; on the streets, at the Viking Ship Museum, the library, the courthouse, the culture centre, the Roskilde Convention Centre, in taxis, in the town’s parks and on board the ship Skjelskør on Roskilde Fjord. Gallery St. Agnes, the town’s only gallery for experimental art, was the official organizer of the festival and arranged a small exhibition of Fluxus works and installations in the gallery and the nearby Husarstaldene (the hussar stables).
For 10 days, the festival turned Roskilde upside down, with 21 events and performances as well as an exhibition. Numerous international academics, journalists and visitors observed the festival closely from the arrival of the artists, the press conference, and the many different events until the day the artists left Roskilde and its people in a state of relief and wonder. What had hit Roskilde? And was it really art?
This website is an updated version of the original from 2009 celebrating the festival’s 40-year anniversary by securing its continuous commemoration in a new design and at the same time fixing some of its malfunctions over time.
In 1986, one year after the festival, an exhibition was organized to gather the vast and dispersed memories of the festival. The exhibition established an archive including video documentation, audio recordings, slides, photographs and a variety of written material: letters, lists of materials, staging sketches, performance scripts, scores, instructions, artist biographies, press releases, interviews, press coverage, etc. Museet for Samtidskunst Roskilde (The Museum of Contemporary Art Roskilde) opened in 1991 and ‘inherited’ this Fluxus archive, which was to lay the foundation for the Museum’s continued focus on documentation and registration of ephemeral art forms.
Even though 40 years have passed since the festival was realized in 1985, the online archive and documentation still resonates with a lot of people, as well as the city of Roskilde and especially with the museum, that grew out of it.
The website seeks to commemorate Festival of Fantastics through written, visual and aural documentation. Based on the Fluxus archive, the website also tries to grasp the personal memory and attestation of the festival. Artists and audience from the festival have contributed with their recollections of events, adding layers of memories, anecdotes and personal meditations moulded by the time passed.
Many Fluxus works – like other ephemeral works of art – tend to slip through our fingers. If we are lucky, we are left with careful documentation of the events perpetuated in the form of photographs or videos. This documentation helps us to recall what happened, but how do we recall the sensation of the event? Is this experience forever lost? This website gives room to our imperfect memory and the subjective experience of the Festival of Fantastics.
