We just got back from our first Yaga Gathering off the map, deep in the Dzukija forests in Lithuania. We were greeted with heavy rains and friendly people, who told us this was a magical healing forest, inviting us to immerse ourselves in a sensory universe. It’s not often that you go to a music festival and a couple of minutes in ask yourself if you accidentally joined a pagan cult where the magical energy of the gathering has such an effect.
Major music festivals have less and less of an identity, to the extent that we expect festival homogeneity. We have become disconnected from a profound reconnection with oneself and the natural world. A curated adventure through diverse programming, including trance, progressive, techno, alternative electronica, art, and workshops, is at the beating heart of the gathering. Yaga Gathering is valued as both a vibrant community and a festival. There are no advertisers or corporate sponsors; it is run on ticket sales and volunteers. You can tell how passionate they are because many of them helped to keep the forest clean for five days, and everyone was more than peaceful.
No, it wasn’t a pagan cult, although there were some pagans there; I just forgot what it felt like to be somewhere that valued people over profits, in addition to some old-fashioned camping and the unapologetic eradication of hype culture, which will probably be tomorrow’s new counterculture. By day two, you will feel looser, day three you will find yourself bathing in the stream, day four walking around barefoot, and by day five glowing from the forest.
Amazon Maximus
Open the festival under the rain, Amazon Maximus led a group of artists bringing cables, sound, building a performance from scratch reminiscent of holistic practices from a different plane in the past, present, or future.
Death of The Box by Ella Skinner
For two consecutive nights at 1 am, we met deep in the dark forest for Death of the Box, an evolution of Skinner’s 2021 work, The Box. Skinner worked with rapper and producer Algernon Cornelius to create a soundscape that conflates the psychological and physical aspects of enclosure for its 2025 version at Yaga Gathering. The soundscape, which was created using audio captured in a Catholic confession box, separates the sounds of dread, humiliation, and secrecy. The piece uses just sensation to address its audience; there is no wall text or narrative cues. The latex-based sound installation and performance sees choreographers Alina Pilecka and Inga Zybailaitė react to the claustrophobic pressure and the invisible audience, yearning for freedom while being paralyzed by its impossibility as the movements change from controlled to frantic to desperate. We are presented with the emotional architecture of pain as a communal ritual rather than a spectacle.
BOUNDLESS by Barbara Kowa
Throughout the gathering, performance artist Barbara Kowa gathered plants throughout the forest, later inviting gatherers to plant them in her bright green fishnet body suit, becoming a living sculpture, reminding us that we are all in constant metamorphosis. “The boundaries we use to separate our inner from our outer are purely subjective and illusory. For the air that we share with all life on this earth, the water that flows through our bodies again and again, the plants that we eat, that pass through our bodies to become earth again, from which new plants grow – all of this is an organism on an elemental level.” Kowa stated.
Nancie Naive
Nancie Naïve is a drag-like character from artist Emilė Skolevičiūtė, a meticulously precarious superego structure of a faux celebrity. Through a pop song performance, she focuses on identity and gender politics, womanhood and femininity, the violence of social power structures, and the questions of what it means to be a woman in today’s world while flaunting fashion items as fetishized merchandise.
Claywoman
A stone’s throw from the firepit, we were introduced to a being who has lived for half a billion years from another galaxy through a monologue enmeshed in satire, drag, and philosophical comedy. Claywoman invited us to consider suffering, evolution, and the ridiculousness of human history through her tender wit and cosmic detachment. The character was created by a writer and actor from New York who has experience in theater, movies, and club performances. With her unusual wisdom and melancholy humor, Claywoman continues to be a cult figure who subtly disarms audiences.
We asked around the gatherers what not to miss, and many replied that their favourite part of the gathering is the experiences through the workshops. For many, this is their first time trying yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises. We got to experience the sauna as a communal ritual with a steam guide next to our bathing stream. Another day, we participated a cacao ceremony led by Miško Perlai with music by Asta Treine. Other highlights included upcycling with Monika Matukaitė and the Eco-Art Lab with Radvilė where she invited participants to explore the art of transforming so-called trash into unique artsy treasures in a sustainable and inventive way.
