The festival’s week-long line-up is always a culmination of a lasting gathering practice: the research, recommendations, and connection-making are a years-long process. The main Thursday-to-Sunday programme of Lunchmeat Festival takes place in the brutalist amphitheatre of the National Gallery of Prague’s Veletržní Palác, with the usual Monday addition of CAMP, the Centre for Architecture and Metropolitan Planning, where fabulous state-of-the-art AV showcases happen; the legendary Prague’s Ankali also hosts an allied club night on Wednesday. This year, however, there are brand new venue additions as the festival is branching out format-wise: the little haunt-slash-clothes-shop Never Enough with DJ sets, the Lucerna Cinema with a rave-themed screening and discussion, both on Tuesday, and the most stellar (literally) new stage – the newly reconstructed 24-metre full-dome of Prague’s Planetarium with two custom-made recurring installations on Saturday and Sunday.
Since its founding in 2010, Lunchmeat has amassed a veritable village of collaborators, co-creators, colleagues, and associated artists who appear, orbit, come back or visit with irregular frequency. Thanks to this deepening, consistency, and by basically becoming a peerless phenomenon rather than an institution, in the upcoming week, we can all enjoy commissioned shows and/or world-premieres of live AV sets from St Abdullah, Eomac & Rebecca Salvadori, Mun Sing, estoc, Slikback & maltdisney & Tasya, Aitcher Clark & OXOO, Lucas Gutierrez, mʊdʌki & Phonon, Ursula Sereghy & nismo & realitycongress, Yan Higa, and much more. A strong suit of Lunchmeat has also always been developing their existing connections, and this year, this happens predominantly with the exemplary label SVBKVLT and the celebrated contemporary art festival MUTEK Montreal, with whom they collaborated on many acts.
The range and variety the programme occupies is hard to succinctly summarise: you can stumble upon anything from a Japanese “death metal supergroup of sonic devastation” to “a bed of plush ambient.” We, as in Swarm’s editorial board, usually tend to just spend the whole night each festival day, drifting between stages, open to discovery – a tactic that has never failed us, as Lunchmeat Festival rarely misses.
We also mustn’t forget their focus on sharing and freely distributing various industry knowledge through seminars, panel talks, and workshops: the accompanying Symposium programme is to be held in the Korzo open area, adjacent to the main festival venue.
One more incredibly amazing thing about the Lunchmeat Festival is their fierce commitment to making “the discovery of new audio and visual projects as accessible as possible,” no matter one’s social standing and earnings. For the second consecutive year, they have pushed the price of their Festival Pass, which entitles the holder to see the whole programme of the four main nights, as low as possible, given all economic, production, and fair wages aspects. Therefore, if you’re still on the fence about going, this might persuade you not to miss THE event on the Central European AV and electronic music scene.
