EXIT-Festival - I hate him the most in the world and I love him the most in the world. To most people, this statement might sound completely contradictory, but this is exactly the emotion that permeates me when I am asked what I feel when I think of EXIT, July 1st and September 1st.
On July 1, a few days before the start of, I'm really in a special psychophysical state and I always wonder why I need all that in my life. Two months later, when I come to my senses and have a good rest, forget about stress and nervousness - or just suppress them - I realize that the festival still "works" for me so much, and that the adrenaline still makes my body bleed when I think about it and all those festival events, so I want to experience all those challenges again, again and again.
So far, September 1st has always won, but July 1st has been "breathing down his neck" more and more in recent years, as I have also started to "increase" my life and festival mileage.
photo: nemanja jovanović / tanjug...
EXIT IS MUCH MORE THAN THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT
I've been in EXIT since the beginning, I've never left it for a single day, I was the closest part of the team in the most beautiful years, but also in the turbulent ones, of which there was no shortage. From the very beginning, I did different jobs, because when the festival started, none of the people who worked on it were festival-educated, there were no schools in Serbia that would provide the necessary knowledge in the field of the event industry, and we were all kids who "jumped" into this incredible festival venture during our studies.
As a result, people naturally found themselves in some jobs or not, they left, became part of the team, changed roles and functions, disappeared or came into being, some were short, some had serious experience, so that over the years, slowly but surely, a serious group of people and professionals would build up, making more and more complex and demanding editions of the festival.
I would never single out people individually, there were hundreds of them, and anyone who contributed to making the festival what it is, has every right to say that the festival is (somewhat) his too. Also, EXIT is mine. EXIT is much more than the people who made it, EXIT is an idea, EXIT is something that belongs to all those who came to it as visitors. That's exactly why EXIT managed to become one of the biggest brands in Novi Sad and Serbia, and something for which we became recognized and famous in the world - for good.
We have tried on several occasions to calculate how many foreigners have come to Novi Sad only because of EXIT, and the numbers are really impressive, unreal, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of people, of which a huge percentage of young people came to Serbia for the first time by visiting the EXIT festival. Here, I will not insert economic indicators into the equation at all, suffice it to say that hardly any Serbian brand has done so much on the topic of affirming its country - with very concrete and measurable results.
photo: jaroslav pap / tanjug...
SAFETY IS MOST IMPORTANT
As I said, I've done different jobs at the festival since the very beginning. So it is most natural to build knowledge and experience, step by step, learning from practice, my own and others' mistakes, slowly moving on to more and more serious functions and more complex responsibilities, so that from 2015 I take the position of someone who fully manages all services of the festival.
But that position brought a lot of stress and nervousness in my life. One might expect that I should feel pride or pride, but to be honest, if such feelings exist in rare calm phases, they are completely suppressed by these others who dominate me. The festival was constantly growing, year by year becoming more and more complex, production-wise and infrastructurally, which consequently demanded greater and greater requirements in terms of security.
I've always said, which everyone around me knows: the most important thing is that all visitors leave the festival alive and well, that is, that there should never be an oversight due to our fault, which would endanger someone's safety, health and life. We have absolutely the most beautiful festival venue in the world, and without any doubt - the most difficult.
This also applies to the construction process and the setting of the festival, but above all to the aforementioned safety of all people who come to the festival, regardless of their role. When the fortress was built, the creators' idea was to make it impregnable, and we "dared" to use its infinite beauty and bring tens of thousands of people to the fortress. It is clear that the first is in no way correlated with the second, and that is precisely why this is both the most beautiful and the most difficult festival space in the world. Also, EXIT can only and only take place in Novi Sad, on "Devil", and absolutely nowhere else.
photo: jaroslav pap / tanjug...
THE NEW USA WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AGAIN
Many times in those first days of July, during the hours of extreme rest and psychophysical exhaustion, I thought about what Novi Sad could be like if there were no festival. It was somewhat selfish because I didn't bid on the disappearance of the festival, as much as I thought that if this whole machinery is gone, then I guess my sufferings will end too...
Definitely pointless and selfish, but given the circumstances and extreme exposure to stress and physical exertion, it was probably some imaginary escape from it all. Objectively, I really never seriously thought that it could happen.
Here, we have experienced it. Novi Sad has not been the same since November 1, 2024. Novi Sad will certainly never be the same, no matter what happens in the future, and in this general degradation of culture, life and the prohibition of free thought in which we are currently forced to live, and during this horrifying revenge of bad students, Novi Sad was left not only without EXIT, but also without other cultural manifestations that, no matter how small, gave that stamp to the beauty, cultural diversity and uniqueness that Novi Sad Now always had.
photo: jaroslav pap / tanjugUNREGRETTED AND UNFORGOTTEN: Everything that made EXIT
ALWAYS WITH STUDENTS
The DNA of the festival is student. It started completely as a part of the student movement, as a rebellion against all the bad things that happened to us in the nineties, and there was no doubt whether the festival would publicly stand with the students even now. Any attempt to relativize the moment or intensity of the festival's reaction or bidding in that direction is completely pointless, because unlike many festivals that still happen regularly and without obstacles, there is no EXIT in July 2026, in his Novi Sad, in his Serbia.
I had a serious plan not to be in Novi Sad on those July dates because I didn't want to experience Novi Sad first hand without EXIT.
Of course, life can often be absurd, so everything was set up so that I would return to Novi Sad on Thursday, July 9, and spend the entire time of the "EXIT date" there. It's been a long time since I've felt such emptiness, grayness and depression like those days in the city, and I know that it's not just some personal perception caused by all that happened, especially since I had the opportunity to see the emotional reactions of people who truly lamented and suffered over the loss of their festival.
EXIT CANNOT DISAPPEAR
I followed the reactions of friends and famous people and complete strangers to me, but I'm really glad that so many people felt the need to publicly perform and show how important the festival is in their lives. It is only in such unfortunate circumstances that one truly realizes how much this festival truly means to the city and how much people considered it their own, and somehow a really important part of their lives. Eventually, EXIT became both a time and calendar marker. In the perception of a large number of people from Novi Sad, the year was divided into a part before and a part after EXIT, and the summer and vacation season only started when the EXIT festival ended.
I have no doubt whether EXIT will be in Novi Sad again; if it doesn't happen next year, it will happen next year, and it will be completely irrelevant who will do it, whether I will be in the same position again or, more realistically, I will finally watch from "festival retirement" as thousands of people from all over the world climb the Varadin Bridge again on their way to Tvđava.
EXIT cannot disappear because it is not a simple commercial event, but one of the events that completely marked the last 26 years of Novi Sad's life. It was literally a window to the world for many young people in Serbia while growing up, and it is much bigger than all those who thought that by obstructing and shutting down the festival, they would extinguish the free thought and idea that the festival had carried since its foundation.
The great Dule Vujošević knew how to say about various bad phenomena in society: "And this will be called last one day", and I deeply believe it myself.
Next year, or the year after that, again on "Djava", again in my own Novi Sad!
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