EXIT Starlight in Egypt: festival claims 100% capacity
The organizer of the festival at the Giza pyramids answered headlines about a flop: its statement cites tens of thousands of visitors from 114 countries and full planned capacity.
According to the organizer, a single frame from the very start of the festival, shot while the crowd was still filing in, was enough to declare Starlight at the Great Pyramids in Giza a failure. In a statement issued on Wednesday, October 14, EXIT answered with figures of its own: tens of thousands of people from 114 countries and 100% capacity of what it had planned.
The trigger was two headlines, “EXIT busted in Egypt” and “The blockaders burst,” which, according to the statement, “certain pro-regime portals” published at the same moment, “on command.” The statement does not name those portals, so there is no reply from them for us to carry. One sentence EXIT aims at the headline authors captures the tone of its response:
“They figure, I suppose, that people will trust their headlines more than their own eyes.”
What does EXIT say about visitors and the lineup?
Starlight, according to the organizer, was the first edition of an electronic music festival at the Great Pyramids, held last weekend across several stages. EXIT describes it as the first multi-day festival of its kind at the site and as the biggest electronic music event in front of the pyramids since Jean-Michel Jarre’s concert in the last century. That is the statement’s own assessment, not a figure we could verify.
The lineup was led by Charlotte de Witte, Adriatique, Michael Bibi, Indira Paganotto, Enrico Sangiuliano, Vintage Culture and Pete Tong, along with about 60 more performers from around the world and the region. Among local acts the organizer mentions Lanna, Coeus, Reblok, Divolly & Markward and Tebra, and it singles out WhoMadeWho and Satori as the best live sets. The closing event on Sunday went to the duo Gioli & Assia.
The attendance figures come solely from the statement. EXIT writes that it had “100% of planned capacity” in Egypt, but it does not say how large that capacity was or how many tickets were sold, and the only number given is “tens of thousands.” We found no independently published figure for the number of visitors.
What came before the festival, according to EXIT?
EXIT places its reply to the portals in a wider story about a year in which its regular edition at the Petrovaradin Fortress did not take place. The organizer links this to pressure from the authorities after it backed the student protests. The statement says that from that moment the festival was denied funding, and that threats reached sponsors, suppliers and the festival director, Dusan Kovacevic, personally. EXIT says his brother was arrested and spent two months in detention. The statement ties this to the period after the support for students, not to Egypt, and does not specify who withheld the funding.
EXIT adds that it had to let people go, including some who have worked with the festival for more than twenty years, and sums up: “We have been through the hardest period in our history.”
How does the statement end?
The final paragraph moves from the festival to the elections. EXIT says it is returning from Egypt “in championship spirit, so that all of us in Serbia circle number 3,” and calls on people to vote on October 25 “for the victory of the students,” because that is exactly the turnout the organizer wants, like the one it claims to have had in Giza. The statement closes by saying that everyone together, “as a healed society,” should “bust” like EXIT in Egypt.
