40 Festivals

40 festivals in a year.

The Woodstock feeling in the 21st Century and the Web 2.0 

After 90 nights in other people’s beds, I decided to try living a “normal” life. Permanent residence, a solid job, regular income. My mother was proud of me. Exactly 90 days later, my ordinary life was history. I gave everything, but maybe that was the problem. The reason why I was fired from my full-time job: I was myself too much, too much of “Christine Neder” . It was a depressing start to the “normal” life. Could that happen again and again in the coming 40 years? No! Not more than 39 years. I decided to enjoy freedom for one more year and living the dream of so many others.

“People love this break from the ordinary,” says Andrew. Each year, he quits his regular life as a student and takes part in the world of festivals for three moths. During this time,  he is a different person and lives his second life. Dancing, roaring, jumping around and enjoying the company of happy, relaxed people. Festivals are a free zone without taboos and constraints. Life revolves around fast food, tents and stages. Being on a festival is being in another world and escaping from the ordinary. For how long is it fun to live like that? For three days, three months, for a year?

I do not only want the festivals to be an extraordinary experience. I would like to create a portrait of society and analyze patterns of behavior. I want to try answering the questions of how the ’68 festival shaped our culture and how the former and current principles of this movement affect our behavior in the Web 2.0. In order to find an answer, I will visit 40 different festivals in a year. I want to dive into in the Woodstock feeling of the 21st Century, get to know the participants and see how their behavior and their values coincide with their social media activities.

Therefore, I am willing to give up my regular life once again. I will travel through Europe with a tent and a car, visiting the various festivals, spending my life with the community, drinking beer and dancing through the night.

Metal or jazz. Hard rockers or cleaning ladies. Meadow or desert. I want to get to know all the visitors, no exceptions, no excuses. And I can’t wait to do so and to start my project.