The Backslash Festival 2024

Dear visitors to the Gessnerallee, dear culture enthusiasts, dear artists

Last weekend was wonderful. For days, the smell of good food permeated every last corner of the building. The completely sold-out 'Kitchen Battle Zurich' offered the finest culinary delights in the hall. Two rooms further down, the queer collective DIVAS invited guests to the north wing, which was transformed with video projections, curtains and inviting seating. In between pole dancing, collective singing, lyrics and movement, the hundred or so visitors made themselves comfortable.

Now it's time to gather strength. In just two days, on November 22 and 23, the Backslash Festival will take place again at Gessnerallee. Our anticipation is great.

The Backslash Festival has been showcasing works that move between and beyond performing arts, club culture and visual arts since 2016. The festival is organized by the non-profit association Tokyo Data Collective and since 2018 it has been held in co-production and on the premises of Gessnerallee.

Carefully selected live electronic acts, art performances, DJ sets and visual art interventions will be presented in four rooms. There will be dancing until just before sunrise. Over the weekend More than 30 artists from the international, national and local scene will take over the entire Gessnerallee complex.

Or in the words of Isi!, organizer of the RHIZOM Festival, Summer Camp and Clubbüro and a DJ at Backslash: 'The Backslash Festival offers established artists and newcomers from the fields of music, performance and installation art a shared playground for experimentation. Visitors are immersed in an inspiring multidisciplinary world where everyone feels welcome and safe. A rare diamond in the Swiss festival landscape.'

You can find the complete program on our website. Here's a sneak peek at discoveries and stars of the music and performance scene:

Rrose, the latest incarnation of Seth Horvitz, creates a sensual and hallucinogenic form of techno that challenges mind and body in equal measure. Listen on Soundcloud

The three-hour dance performance 'This resting, patience' by and with Ewa Dziarnowska and Leah Marojević is simultaneously a ghostly archive of fallow sensuality, an installative kinetic fade-out and a somatic (strip) tease.

GAEL, DJ/producer from Dagestan, has redefined electronic music, combining remarkable energy, style and attitude on the edges of techno and experimental electronic music, wowing audiences at venues like Berghain, K41 and festivals like CTM. Soundcloud

Vanessa Sin aka Chienne de Garde creates hybrid mixtures of music production, text, movement and installations. Soundcloud

In the performance ‘What goes unfelt’ by Natasza Gerlach with Elie Autin, Pierre Piton, Jacqueline Sobiszewski, Sandar Tun Tun, an intricate web of connections crumbles and endlessly rebuilds itself, oscillating between intimacy and distance, familiarity and strangeness. Instagram

Musician Christian Coiffure has an insatiable appetite for sonic exploration and the blurring of boundaries between genres. Soundcloud

And in the performance ‘KOPANIMA’ by Xenia Koghilaki, four dancers headbang and mosh and let their bodies collide non-stop. In the process, they ignite an intoxicating energy between togetherness and individual trance.

And that's not all.

So: come by, take a look, listen, and dance along!

Now for the weekly overview of programme items, newspaper articles, news and everything we want to share with you:

Programme recommendations for this and the coming week

22 to 23 November

Backslash Festival

Two nights of performances, live electronic music and club culture.

28 to 30 November

Porny Days Festival

Warm up at the Backslash Festival, party on at Porny Days. This year, the hottest festival in town will not only be showing lots of sex on the big screen but also some real love stories. As well as all kinds of performances, including some hands-on ones. And Gessnerallee is the centre of its events.

Newspaper

We published our first printed newspaper at the end of September. This has attracted attention at various levels. Last week, we had a long and stimulating discussion with journalist Nick Lüthi from the industry magazine ‘persoenlich.com’. This is what transpired: to the article

Have you already bought the first printed edition of the new Gessnerallee newspaper? Write to Rahel Bains and order it now for CHF 5 (plus CHF 2 postage) direct to your home. E-mail to: zeitung@gessnerallee.ch

The second issue went to print yesterday. We are looking forward to the publication date of 29 November.

We wish you a good second half of the week.

The Gessnerallee team

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