At the Impakt office, the imminent start of the festival can already be felt. The enthusiasm, the hectic life of the pre-festival moments, the arrival of the artists, the transformation of the office into a beautiful mediatheque... everything is in place for the start of the 20th edition of Impakt. These are a few of the highlights of the week(end) before the festival, that might give you and idea of the things to come:

The panorama preview get-together

On Tuesday, we invited our the whole Impakt team (about 40 people consisting of volunteers, interns, organizers and enthusiasts) to enjoy with us a selection of the best from the Panorama program. After the screenings, I asked everyone for their favorite work(s). Most people mentioned Camile Verbunt's Beautiful, Marco Brambilla's Civilization and Clorinde Durand's Naufrage among their top choices. Be sure not to miss these works during the festival.

The office is now a mediatheque

On Friday, the mediatheque was installed in our office. In a blink of an eye, this year's Impakt colors were rolled over the office and a stunning mediatheque was constructed. During the festival week, anyone can make use of it and request to see any work featured within the Panorama program. So if you miss something due to the overlapping of the programs, or if you have a special interest in some of the artists, you are always welcomed at the mediatheque. Your requests will be screened for you upon request, for free. You can find this at Lauwerecht 10.

The artists have arrived

During the weekend, the arrivals began. The first person to be welcomed in the city of Utrecht was Sebastian Schumacher, Julieta Aranda's assistant, who is now busy trying to find dry fish and enough bricks to build Julieta's impressive installation You had no ninth of may, which can be visited after the 14th at the AcademieGalerie. And yesterday, Dirk de Bruyn and Joel Stern flew in all the way from Australia. After their long journey, they still had the energy to join us for dinner and share with us their unique insights about the differences and similarities between the experimental music/film scenes in Australia and Europe. If you want to see them perform live, be sure not to miss Dopes to Infinity on Thursday October 15, where de Bruyn will use three projectors to recreate an experience of trauma and cultural displacement, with Joel Stern's live soundtrack. And yesterday night the duo of Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead and Guy Sherwin also arrived and joined the second Impakt dinner. Besides performing, Thomson&Craighead and de Bruyn will also take part in the conference, which is free of charge.

The rest of the artists are expected to arrive sometime between today and tomorrow. We will keep you up to date.

Posted by Miguel Escobar