here’s a quick mini blog about the inota festival i attended a few months ago in an abandoned power plant. and as you know, i love an abandoned power plant… and here…
i didn’t see a lot of english press about it, so i thought i would post some pics.
i’ve been wanting to sneak in for years and to be honest it’s way more fun, but i definitely couldn’t pass up the oppoprtunity to wander around freely as part of a festival. some truly lazy urbexing…
it was created in a joint project between two hungarian event collectives (nvc and centrum) as part of the european capital of culture program for the veszprém-balaton region.
it ws dubbed a “powerhouse of music and visial arts”, as it wasn’t simply a music festival, but also an installation of musical arts, installations and contemporary visual artwork.
the inota power plant itself formed part of the installation. the coal fire plant was originally built in the communist era as part of a large factory complex in the 1950’s and was shut down in 2001.
the shows were spread across a huge 200,000 square meter site and included the turbine hall, boiler room, old depots and the cooling towers themselves.
musical artists included daniel avery, ellen allien, nils frahm, oscar mulero, caterina barbieri, extrawelt and many others. while fuse, max cooper and weirdcore were some of the many of the visual artists attending. full details can be found here.
the site has also been used to film movies such as blade runner 2049, john wick and the red sparrow.
the highlight was attending the sound and light show inside one of the cooling towers.
sorry for the graininess – there was very little light in there.
while visiting the west of hungary, i was also able to finally visit the an abandoned soviet military ghost town that i’ve heard about. check it out my quick blog post here.
it was incredibly well organised and surprising for a first time festival to pull off something of this magnitude.
hopefully this won’t be just a one-off festival and will come back next year in 2024.
