An account of an experience of Munkanon by Charlie Fox:
Becoming Munkanite – Two hours of Dynamite
Slightly displaced, alone and certainly searching for a purpose, I have traveled far, to a festival
in Austria, here to experience Munkanon.... As the publicity describes it:
Lost? Confused? Searching for something?
I'm in a Park in the centre of Krems, a sleepy picture postcard town that snakes along the Danube,
Northwest of Vienna. There are three or four benches with tables to sit at, some orange balloons
with a black M in a circle strung from the trees (The Munkanon logo) and a shrunken wooden hut
where a tall man with glasses, wearing funny ears and a plastic bear nose, sits huddled up, serving
Jasmine or Earl Grey Tea. He offers the Munkanon experience in a matter of fact way – not the
hard sell – but in a gently persuasive manner with his nose twitching as he offers the bargain
of free tea. I've just spent a couple of euros on tea from the temporary pavilion café. But as we
know nothing is free in this world and the slightly skeptical group of Festival Goers waiting to
enter the experience need to fill out an extensive A4 questionnaire with questions like – do
chipmunks eat nuts – its infuriating and faintly menacing, signing away your rights for two
hours in Munkanon. I have to help a group of three young Austrian men with the questions. It reminds
me of filling out immigration documents for the United States of America. Forms are returned and we
sit in the evening sun.
Then the moment arrives and I'm called forward into a line facing the tent. Under the miniaturised
hut is a flap of cloth, and one by one we are invited to crawl through into the tented space beyond.
It's suddenly very dark. Blinded by the change of light.
Then Edd (that's the chipmunk's name) speaks to each one of us separately. Some reassuring nonsense
– I remember this ends in the bold statement – "in 2 hours you will return in a
completely different state than before, (pause) changed." In the dark, fumbling forward we clamber
un-protesting into the back of a car. Someone is instructing us, the driver, put your seat belts on.
I can't find one in the dark, feeling to the side, nothing. Hold on to the roof. Thinking Terry
Waite meets Chris Evans.
The car starts and draws out of the tent. The windows covered in blackout cloth are speckled with
tiny shafts of light that penetrate from the outside. I'm just settling into the experience when a
mobile phone rings. Driver – "Charlie please pick up the phone in the pocket to the right." I
have to speak to the mobile, it's a strangely disembodied alienating experience. There's no chance
to chat, just some questions to confuse and followed up by some firm instructions, which I'm asked
to repeat back. Its not at all terrifying but you are feeling a small part of what it might be like
to be kidnapped, disorientated, someone else entirely in control of your destiny. The car seems to
reverse and stop and turn back on itself a number of times. The three young Austrians seem unfazed,
chatting away, so I ask them what they usually do in Krems on a Friday night. They laugh. Drinking.
They seem to have done that before entering Munkanon.
Suddenly the car stops and the driver open's the sliding passenger door. Light streams in and the
air enters, blissfully fresh. What a beautiful panoramic view. We are up on the hills above Krems,
looking down on the town and across the valley over the Danube. The sun is low and the grass and
buildings below are bathed in a warm golden hue. Everyone's disappeared, up a track, and someone's
calling. I scramble up the bank of grass and find our small group looking at a bush covered in bags
of monkey nuts. More instructions – "Come on get a move on, only one bag allowed, we're late".
Scrambling down the hill, I notice the car has moved. I'm the last to clamber in clutching our bag
of monkey nuts. We might need these nuts later. Then we're off again, reversing and turning and ten
minutes later the car pulls to a stop. Once again the doors are opened but this time just a grey
darkness. Has the sun set? Behind I can make out some garage doors. But no time to think. We're
ordered into line and told that we are to follow the instructions. The shutter door heaves open,
and there in front of us, four individuals wearing ill-fitting overalls start repeating a Munkanon
mantra which we are exhorted to repeat. Lights flash on and off. Where are we? We repeat what we
are told in a slightly desultory fashion.
Then as soon as I seem to be getting used to standing here doing silly things, almost enjoying it,
we are dragged off into another partition area where there are more overalls, rubber hats and a pair
of electric clippers. Now we seem to be instructed by a small chipmunk operator who waves a stick.
Everything's become a bit frantic, there doesn't seem to be enough time to tell us what to do. But
we all seem happy to find some overalls that fit us and put them on. There's an air of faint chaos,
of anarchy but that's soon squashed by the return of our chipmunk leader. He escorts us out into the
corridor space and through into another space for a video induction.
By now we seem to have the hang of this Munkanon experience. The question now is how far should we
go along with it. Though not one individual seems to know exactly where we are going in the
labyrinth of rooms and corridors created in this temporary holding pen. I'm musing on this question
– of just how far we're all expected to go – playing with belief and faith, with
mindgames and tasks. Thinking how different this might seem for the Austrians' with its overtone of
National Socialism, but resistance is impossible, after all it's only a game! I signed up for it and
I was only following the instructions! Time passes. I play along as best as I can, sometimes
seriously, sometimes stupidly. More activity, more partitioned spaces. Finally it feels we have all
played are part, some more enthusiastically than others. And I'm suddenly feeling very tired.
Now I find myself sitting alone in a small pen with headphones on listening to a strange fairytale,
an unwinding shaggydog story – somewhere in here, amongst the jumble of words is enlightenment
– is it in the woods or the house with no end or in the farside over there? I'm imagining the
world I've been invited to enter, the dark wood and the empty house, this fairytale therapy. While
the real everyday action of Munkanon carries on around me; its uncanny logic, its games and tasks,
its dynamic of irrectitude: playing a simple ball game, teaching games to others with a strange
unyielding logic, making badges, being called out, taken away to another room. But we follow the
tasks right down to the initiate ritual for the next Munkanon participants. If there was a hint of
insurrection or subversion it has simply been dismissed with a certain hurried weariness. Then we're
in the back of the car, in the dark with a bag of monkey nuts, returning to whence we came. Some of
us, only the chosen few, charged with our new mission, reenter the world as full initiates. The
reward of enlightenment – a slow burn dynamite – being Munkanite! In a mild bemusement,
slightly befuddled I have returned to the outside world a true believer. I will never view
chipmunks in quite the same way again and, having heard the shocking revelations of Otto Muehl, I'll
not believe a thing I see in Austria.
Charlie F.
Be a part of something special, join the experience that will change your life forever: Munkanon!
2008
