EXIT 2012 – Serbia, are you ready for the past?

This is not the way they say the future’s meant to feel

EXIT 2012 marked ten years from my first visit to the festival on a fortress in Novi Sad, Serbia – I’m a veteran, though I can’t claim to have been there for EXIT 01, the first time it was held in (more or less) its current incarnation at the fortress – nor for the legendary 100-day EXIT that was held on a Danube beach until the Milosevic regime fell in October 2000.

This is a festival inextricably tied into the modern history of its country, Serbia. A festival which has represented Serbia’s moving on from the sad, bad times of the 1990s.

When I first went, to the nine-day extravaganza in 2002, the festival had adopted as its slogan a phrase coined the previous year by headliner Roni Size: “Serbia, are you ready for the future?” Whether throwaway comment or scripted line, it captured the feeling surrounding EXIT in those days perfectly.

Now though, 11 years on, it feels like the festival’s come full circle – asking, “Serbia – are you ready for the past?”

It’s not so much the retro line-up, this year headlined by Duran Duran, New Order, and Guns ‘n’ Roses – EXIT has always featured big bands past their peak, a reflection as much of the festival’s budget as of local tastes. But this year’s edition had a distinct feeling of going through the motions.

Of all the years I’ve been to EXIT, this year’s seemed to have a peculiar lack of buzz to it. No one I spoke to was enthused about the performers – they were going in the faith that it would be a fun time, because EXIT is always fun. And yeah, it was OK. Better than staying at home. But a long, long way from the excitement that surrounded it in 2001-2.

Perhaps there’s a positive spin to put on that. EXIT can’t replicate those conditions of emerging from international sanctions and pariah status, all of a sudden to have some of the world’s biggest acts playing in the spectacularly re-imagined fortress that the locals knew and loved as a staid historical monument. Being able to see a band of the calibre of Guns ‘n’ Roses in Serbia no longer has the once-in-a-lifetime feel that it did then. It’s debatable whether EXIT is even the best music festival in Serbia now – Belgrade has a rival that’s attracting big-name bands, too. These facts reflect the positive steps toward normality that Serbia has made since EXIT was first conceived.

That does mean, though, that EXIT needs to evolve. If it’s lost its raison d’etre as the one place where Serbs can see the big-name acts they idolised in their youth, it risks becoming a second-tier European festival with very little to distinguish it from the many now springing up in Poland, Hungary, and elsewhere in the region.

That’s a shame, as EXIT used to be exciting and innovative – away from the main stage there were political discussions, films, theatre, world music.. Perhaps the festival should go back to that, and become a kind of Balkan Latitude. The fortress is the ideal location for an interesting, thoughtful festival – leave the kids on E’s and wizz to where there’s just 20,000 people standing in a field.

If EXIT 2012 had a more depressed mood to it, though, perhaps that’s reflective of the political backdrop in Serbia – just as the buzz in the first years of the millennium reflected the contemporary politics then. Presidential and parliamentary elections in Serbia took place shortly before the festival this year, and wranglings over the shape of new government were ongoing even as New Order played on the main stage.

What Serbia did know by then, though, is that it had elected an overtly nationalist President – its first since Milosevic was overthrown. One could, then, draw a parallel and say Serbia is ready for the past – ready to undo the good work that, in fits and starts at least, has been done since Milosevic was overthrown 12 years ago.

I hope that’s not the case, though. Rather, my fear for EXIT is that it has become the fulfilment of the wishes of Vojislav Kostunica, the President swept to power by the October Revolution in the year 2000, where the very first EXIT played such a key role. His ambition, he said, was for Serbia to become a boring, unremarkable country. Serbia may not have achieved that. I fear that EXIT has.