Music wasn’t the only thing being created during the Garáž festival. A young editorial team was also working right in the heart of the action. They interviewed bands, photographed concerts and wrote articles. The result is Garazine, a fanzine that captures both the atmosphere of the festival and the stories of bands at the beginning of their journey. You can browse it online directly in this article, while the physical edition of the zine will be officially launched on 5 September 2026 at the FestArt at Garáž event.
Capturing the Moment When It All Begins
There were several reasons for creating the fanzine, and they gradually came together into one fairly strong motivation that made us feel this “extra work” simply made sense. Garáž is primarily about supporting bands that are still at the beginning of their journey. For some, performing at Garáž may be their first major concert, their first festival or their first experience of playing to a larger audience. We therefore wanted not only to create this moment, but also to document it in some way. To give the bands what might be one of their first interviews, photograph them and capture what they are dealing with right now, how they think about music and where they are at this particular point in their journey. For us, it is a record of the festival, but for them, in a few years’ time, it may well become a memory of the period when it all began.
A Young Editorial Team in the Heart of the Action
But we didn’t want to support only the young people on stage. We thought we could offer the same kind of opportunity to young people who enjoy writing, photography or simply thinking about music. That is why our open call for the editorial team was aimed primarily at secondary school students. The festival could thus become a small, live newsroom where they could gain hands-on experience of interviewing a band, concert photography, writing articles and seeing how media work within the setting of a music festival. Our aim was not to simulate a professional newsroom, but to provide a genuine experience.
For the preparation and management of the festival’s editorial team, we collaborated with HMOTA magazine, which itself emerged from a community of young writers and contributors. Throughout the project, the editorial team was led by HMOTA’s editor-in-chief Laura Bilíková and creative manager Laura Dimová. They helped the young editors prepare and ultimately gave the entire zine its final editorial and visual form.
Before the festival, the editorial team also met music journalist Karel Veselý. He spoke to them about how he thinks about music, what he pays attention to when listening and how he then turns those thoughts into writing. Some of his words and ideas ultimately found their way into the editorial of the zine itself.
In the Tradition of Fanzines and DIY Culture
The fanzine format itself felt very natural for Garáž. Historically, music fanzines were part of scenes and subcultures that either did not want to or could not create their own conventional media outlets. Fans and people directly involved in these scenes therefore produced their own small magazines featuring interviews, photographs, reviews, opinions and information about concerts. In the punk culture of the 1970s, this developed into a distinctive DIY format: inexpensive, often photocopied, cut and pasted together, produced in small print runs and distributed among people at concerts, through independent shops or by post. It was precisely this philosophy that resonated with us – there is no need to wait for someone else to create a media platform for you or give you space. You can simply create it yourself.
This also corresponded very well with the visual and thematic character of Garáž. From the beginning, we tried to bring a certain rawness, a garage aesthetic and the feeling of a space that was not created to be perfectly polished, but simply because someone wanted to make it happen. We believe a fanzine has a similar quality. It does not demand perfection. What it requires above all is the desire to make something, curiosity and enthusiasm. That is precisely why it seemed like an appropriate way to connect bands with new audiences while also allowing the audience to be more than just passive spectators at the festival.
A Community You Could Feel
It was only during Garáž itself that another element emerged – something we perhaps could not have fully planned in advance. A genuinely pleasant group of people formed around the festival – from visitors and performers to the young editorial team, production staff, suppliers and volunteers. The word “community” is used a lot these days, but during those two days, you could truly feel that people had, for a while, embraced the space and the festival as their own.
After the festival, someone even started referring to the Bunky na Looke simply as the “Garáže”, and we received messages not only from performers and visitors, but also, for example, from the Municipal Services and Forest Administration of Trenčín. This is another reason why the zine makes sense to us as a physical trace of something that was, by its very nature, brief and fleeting – two days of concerts, encounters and the energy of people who came together in one place around new music.
Where to Find Garazine
You can browse and download the online version of Garazine here: Garazine
The physical edition of the zine will be officially launched on 5 September 2026 at the FestArt at Garáž event.
Garazine team:
Editor: Laura Bilíková
Graphic designer: Laura Dimová
Photographer: Šimon Letaši
Writers: Lucia Kúdelová, Teona Tea Mtibelašvili, Miriam Tuchyňová, Arya Yaghoubi
