MOMO Festival 2019
Motel Mozaique looks back with great satisfaction on a successful edition of the festival. The international festival for urgent music, performance and art used the city of Rotterdam as a stage and source of inspiration and has hospitality as its core value. From 18 to 20 April 2019, MOMO took the visitor on an adventure with concerts, parties, performances and tours in pop halls, clubs, churches, film houses and construction sites.
“What I find so special about Motel Mozaïque is that it has not lost any creativity after 19 years,” said Saïd Kasmi, Rotterdam’s alderman for Culture, Tourism and Education in his opening speech on Thursday 18 April in TR Schouwburg.
This year the festival program included more than 150 concerts, performances, tours and world premieres by (inter)national artists. About thirty guided tours introduced the festival visitors and artists to undiscovered stories and locations in the city. Highlights included performances by Apparat, Melanie De Biasio, Grandbrothers & Ensemble, KOKOROKO, Fontaines D.C., Georgia, 155, Helado Negro, RIMON, Grande Loge, Pom Poko and Yussef Dayes, as well as special performances by Outlet Drift and Altin Gün on a construction site, while musician Binkbeats improvised with dancer Gil the Grid. The latter had a prominent role during the festival, Gil the Grid, like Winne, Anne-Fay and Aileigh Awad/Bear Valour, among others, was part of the festival’s LIQUID program. In the premiere of Aileigh Awad’s performance with Bear Valour, this Rotterdam musician revealed his transition.
MOMO = LIQUID
With the LIQUID theme, MOMO breaks free from entrenched norms and traditions, in which artists and artists have the opportunity to present their search for their own identity, gender and roots during the festival in forms that blur the boundaries between art disciplines. From music and dance to ceremonies and an ART Motel. Meeting and inspiring each other, that’s what the festival is all about.
Naast artiesten, presenteerde MOMO op het festival meer dan vijftig makers, initiatieven en kunstenaars op diverse podia en bijzondere locaties verspreid over de binnenstad van Rotterdam. Nieuw waren de samenwerkingen met onder andere Roodkapje, BAR, Codarts, MAMA, Queer Rotterdam en HUNNA. Op het gratis toegankelijke Plaza Mozaïque, dat dit jaar terugkeerde op Schouwburgplein, presenteerde het festival een uitgebreid muziekprogramma in samenwerking met Codarts en het nieuwe Market Mozaïque. Op deze markt toonden jonge Rotterdamse makers en ondernemers nieuwe, duurzame manieren van consumeren, zoals het kleding swappen van Awearness Kollektif.
Social experiment
During the festival, MOMO conducted a social experiment with the introduction of a positive polluter tax: the green discount. Every visitor received a discount when they came to the festival by public transport, bicycle or on foot. Initial polls show that almost half of the visitors collected the green discount and consciously chose to come to the festival with sustainable means of transport. With an experiment such as the green discount, the festival wants to actively contribute to a more hospitable and sustainable Rotterdam.
Thank You MOMO for being such a great platform for artists like ourselves, to show our craft, way of life and share all that we are with a huge and loving audience” – Gil the Grid
MOMO Fabrique 2019
During MOMO Fabrique 2019, Motel Mozaique took its visitors to the most special places in the largest port in the Netherlands: from a concert in a huge warehouse where submarines used to be built to secret gardens in the middle of the industrial port.
What MOMO normally offers you during MOMO Festival and Concerts in the center of Rotterdam, during Fabrique we take you to the other core of the city: the port.
Including performances by the Flemish rock giants Triggerfinger (and support Anemone) in the Onderzeebootloods, and rapper Typhoon with his special project ‘Acoestic Veranda Sessions’ at the new hotspot Weelde. In addition, together with Parfum de BoemBoem, we organized inspiring discovery routes through the raw port area.