Extreme Point | Manofim Festival 2025
We are living in a moment where routine itself has become extreme. What was once unusual is now the air we breathe. Boundaries are blurring. What previously signified an exceptional disruption has turned into a prolonged state; the world is losing stability – not through a sudden crash, but through a slow yet persistent shift. We move through a space that is unfamiliar to us, between the buzzing of anxiety which fills the nights and surprising flashes of inner peace.
At the edge, everything becomes sharper, more exposed. The extreme moments do not only bring difficulty: – they sharpen the vision, reveal the structure of things and the fragility of what we thought was stable. Perhaps the extreme point is not just a disturbance, but a condition that allows for new thinking, new action, new life.
In such a space, art is not a luxury. It does not seek to bring us back to balance, but rather proposes to remain exactly where it was lost. It asks the questions we would prefer to avoid, touches on places we may have grown accustomed to dulling, and continues to touch on what has been shoved aside yet still holds us from within. When the world teeters between extremes, art becomes a space where contradictions are not negated but rather contained: fear and hope, anger and compassion, silence and storm, a sense of collapse but also an awareness that something new is emerging.
The extreme point is therefore not just a moment of fracture. It is the place where conventions unravel, and identity opens up for redefinition. The 2025 Manofim Festival seeks to hold this tension and invite you inside it. With dozens of performances, exhibitions, and events spread throughout the city, we will dwell together in what is not always easy to digest or understand, and we will examine the possibility of meeting precisely there, in the gap between what is cracking and what is growing. Perhaps from the fracture a new language will emerge – and with it the ability to start anew, precisely at the edge.
