Since 2020, the artist group MFK Bochum has been moving along the edges of highways and formulating (in)harmonious responses to the sound of roads. The Ruhr region is the largest and loudest metropolitan area in Germany, thanks in part to its extensive road traffic network. After the site visit and performance Sonic Highway at Bochum's Westkreuz, the group moved their artistic research to the European route E50, which connects the west with the east and is part of the Slovakian highway D1.
For the site-specific performance in Bochum, they invited people directly to the highway, right in the middle of the red noise zone, between garbage and scattered plants, which are otherwise only observed for a few moments from the car. However, the situation on the D1 south of Žilina is completely different. The Lietavská Lúčka - Dubná skala section has been under construction for many years and is still not in service. It is quiet, no noise from cars echoes in bodies or the surroundings. Here, where the beeping of excavators, the bleating of sheep and the sound of material transports can be heard, mixing with the radio sound of workers from India, the final, so-called cosmetic adjustments are being made for the imminent commissioning of the line. The silent highway can still be experienced for a few more months, then everything will probably be different.
The group MFK Bochum invites visitors to the KioSK Festival to visit the highway construction site. Maybe eat a good sandwich, maybe drink a fizzy drink, enjoy the landscape and experience a highway that has not yet fulfilled its potential to become capital as a stream of different bodies and things.

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Concept, Performance, Costume: MFK Bochum (Katarína Marková, Marlene Ruther, Franziska Schneeberger)
Dramaturgy, Perfomance: Milo Juráni
Set Design, Perfomance: Lars Blum
Performance: Adam Samuel Marko

"Sonic Highway MOTOREST" is funded by the export promotion of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and supported by the research grant "Culture moves Europe" of the Goethe Institute and the Kultúrne centrum Stanica Žilina-Záriečie.

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