19–23/12/2008

Student Centre (Zagreb)

The topic of this festival edition is related to the imperatives of happiness, pleasure and hedonism in contemporary society - society in which issues of stability and control have been diverted from the area of power and repression to the area of happiness and fun.

This year’s festival has a name with connotations of pleasure − Feel Better!. Touch Me Festival is still testing out how the individual can be bound into the network of mechanical, electro-mechanical, electronic and cybernetic aids and biotechnology, and the non-critical attitude of society towards ethical issues that the changes in contemporary technological reality open up. The topic of this edition of the international festival is related to the imperatives of happiness, pleasure and hedonism, and draws upon paradigms that explain how in the contemporary social and political system the issue of stability and control has been diverted from the area of power and repression to the area of happiness and fun. It starts off from the proposition that being down, gloomy, depressive, uninterested is equivalent to being socially unacceptable. Some of the pieces in the festival thus attempt to cheer the visitors up, to shift them into a state of short-lasting hedonism, provide them with all kinds of sensual and sensory pleasures, known and unknown.