FRESH STREET#4

FRESH STREET CAME BACK IN 2020 FOR A 4TH EDITION!

Circostrada and ARTCENA, in partnership with FNAS – Federazione Nazionale delle Arti in Strada – were delighted to invite you to FRESH STREET#4 – International Seminar for the Development of Street Arts. The flagship event of Circostrada brings together professional artists, programmers, researchers, pedagogues, journalists, and policy makers from all over Europe and beyond for a key focus on street arts and creation in public space.

 

THE THEME

In 2020, FRESH STREET#4 invited you to reflect on the "Space In Between", where art draws its inspiration from, to build bridges between people, imaginaries and cultures.

The physical distancing has created a breakdown in human and social relations, an emotional vacuum, whose effects we do not fully grasp yet. If this transitional period may be regarded as a chance for reconstruction, then arts in the public space have a key role to play in the cohesion processes and well-being of the communities.

This Space In Between gives us the opportunity to pause and investigate the social role of arts, take a step back to reflect on our practices, our professional and individual realities, before rushing to return to the “world as we knew it before”, without even so much as asking ourselves the question: what matters now?

This fourth edition featured a rich programme combining discussions and reflections, thematic sessions, projects presentations, artistic pitches, and many other surprises! The recording of each session will soon be available online!

The recording of each session is now available in the tabs below and on our VIMEO CHANNEL

© Be Flat Company - Photograph by Yngwie Scheerlinck

Opening session and general keynote - Behind the mask: up from the mouth or down from the eyes

Stay home, they said, but which home is mine? We loved to think we were on a never-ending journey, where each destination was a springboard for the next. Instead we remained closed. In that space in between that we learnt to call “distance”. And we started talking about ethics of relationships, dignity of the individual, psychophysical well-being, evolution of communities, human rights, freedoms, sociality and true nature of the human being. All ancient words that have become heavy heavy words, full of new meanings and values.

Speaker: Vida Cerkvenik Bren

Vida Cerkvenik Bren is a theatre director, graduate of the Slovenian academy of performing arts (AGRFT). As an artistic director of Ljud group she has directed and coordinated over 25 artistic projects in the public space. She has taught and lectured at the National Theatre University in Iran as well as in South Korea, Israel, Russia, Belarus and across the EU. In 2019 she wrote a book Why don’t we do it in the road – a personal guide to outdoor interactive theater. She is as spokesman and lecturer regularly participating and being inviteted to international conferences, symposia and events.

Artistic Presentations

• Chilowatt, Rex

What if Nikola Tesla had been a juggler? Or a musician?! 

What if you could...
*Juggle with high pressure water?
*transform humans into musical instruments?
*manipulate wood & talco powder?
*create Fluo liquid explosions?
Electric atmosphere, crazy experiments and a lot of talc powder...Rex is a circus show inspired by one of the greatest scientists who ever lived: Nikola Tesla.

• Cikale-Pem habitat teatrali, Hostress

A comic musical trio.
Three wonderful hostesses, wandering around the city, smiling and ready to give instructions about how to enjoy a show or a festival, being a perfect public.
Their mission is to make your trip unforgettable, funny and above all musical.
They have a soundtrack for every occasion and strictly a cappella.
They are perfect as masks or to manage the reception, to open a show and relax the atmosphere, to animate a street singing.

• Circo all'inCirca & Zeroidee, Audiobus

Audiobus is a multidisciplinary performance, a literary journey, an unexpected path, a bundle of circus, sounds and visual suggestions. Everything happens at the same time, inside and outside the bus. The audience steps into the bus wearing headphones, behind the bus a director sends audio suggestions into their headset depending on where the bus is; in the meanwhile, outside the bus, several circus artists perform producing alternative worlds together with other visual inputs.

• Compagnia Claudio&Consuelo, La Cucina Errante - The Wandering Kitchen - a Travelling Show with Stops Stuffed with Surprises

Between clown and Commedia dell'Arte, two cooks travel around with their weird vehicle, a hybrid between a kitchen and a ship on wheels. They spread music and soap bubbles or offer story snacks on a tray. May stop here to sing a lyric piece while juggling with vegetables, thither to play music with kitchen tools, there to cook and eat a real omelette while singing Edit Piaf. A bizarre, anachronistic image, joining technique with the need to stop by to find miraculous in everyday life.

• eVenti Verticali, Wanted

Wanted is a virtual animation… live! A 2d cartoon with 3d heroes.

The videography portrays different landscapes with which the characters interact. In a constant succession of non-sense and coup de théâtre, the protagonists are tossed around between spy-story scenes and acrobatic combats. From Pac Man labyrinths to a risky ‘Mission Impossible', a show to be watched with bated breath! With the police running after them, the heroes go on an adventurous trip balanced between real world and fantasy

• Faber Teater, Il campione e la zanzara / The champion and the mosquito

Everyone is on a bicycle in this a-typical show, riding across space and time on the river of the Twentieth Century. The masks, Time Guides, take the spectators by the hand accompanying them through the life of Fausto Coppi, the Champion, and Anifele, the African mosquito that stung him. It is the parabola of a man gradually becoming that of each one. A story that is daily and heroic at the same time, ironically biting.

• Faber Teatro, Il Grande Piano

Il Grande Piano is a musical instrument that combines music and dance. We have entirely designed and built our Grande Piano in 2011, inspired by the movie "Big" with Tom Hanks. We perform on our Grande Piano dancing songs and interacting with the audience. We have performed in 15 countries all over the world, taking our music and dance everywhere without borders.

• Gianluca Gerlando Gentiluomo, Sale - spectacle de cirque, musique et cordes d'amour

A man and his briefcase; a conflict in the search for oneself; a spasmodic game made of awareness and illusion, tells us the deep love / hate towards pre-set roles and destinies already written. Knotted between the ropes of everyday life, in that case it hides the secret to return to the primitive instincts and fly with the body and heart, but then what?

• Il Teatro Viaggiante, O2/Oxygen 

Itinerant show for festivals, fairs, local festivals, events about environmental topics and earth reflections.

Five persons walk carrying breath mechanisms which take air from trees, under glas, with wheels, connected with a person through a tube.

The atmosphere of the performance is alternately slow (like post atomic) and grotesque and occasionally an actor/seller tries to sell to the public copies of breath mechanism’s catalogue.

• Lorenzo Baronchelli & Gianni Risola | Ambaradan & Otto Panzer, UnLockClowns - free connections in spaces

UnLockClowns - free connections in spaces is a project that consists of several multiple performances in public spaces, in real and virtual life, based on non-verbal actions that mix different artistic languages with the universal one of the clown. Born with the intention of creating new connections with spectators, it consists of several itinerant and fixed interventions aimed at generating a reaction in the public through positive stimuli that lead to a reflection on the physical distance between people today.

• Parade78, Parade78 - The Latest Side Show

Created with the precise will to explore the world of today's freaks, while maintaining a strong link with traditional side shows. Inspired by Vaporwave, it also relates to a futuristic past that never existed! Thus, in continuous movement through non-time, Parade 78 becomes the non-place where everything happens and can happen: performances, shows, games, visual art, dj-sets, lab. In this frame of wood and aluminum, lights and mirrors, every experience will be the Experience!

• Silence Teatro, FiguraAzione

Itinerant street theatre show conducted with the installation sculpture.

FiguraAzione is the historic show of Silence Teatro. Since 1990 it is continuously presented in the most important of all Europe street theatre festivals and beyond.

This amazing performance has kept its charm and originality stable over the time, so as to make Silence Teatro one of the groups for open spaces most popular and imitated in the International scene.

 

Keynote session 1 - Re-connecting with the livings: where do arts stand?

The issue of eco-responsibility and the place of art in this new global paradigm is one of the most urgent questions currently being raised. The global pandemic has already disrupted our reality as artists and cultural professionals and the need for "accountability" in our practices has never been higher. 

How can we propose political, symbolic and concrete actions that will engage the audience and ourselves in a fundamental reflection about our environment? How can humankind find a new ground to cohabit and reconnect with the living?

Our relationship to our personal, national and international “spaces” can be rethought and it is time to evolve our postures and our common imaginaries by taking into account the living as “otherness to be known and recognized” and looking at our space as not only made for Humans. This keynote session went from theory to practice in order to give some keys to cultural professionals to reflect on initiating long-term changes.  

Speakers: Rebecca Hazlewood & Jay Jordan

• Rebecca Hazlewood

Becky joined Julie’s Bicycle in July 2019 to work as an Environmental Sustainability Project Manager across the Creative Green, Arts Council England and Cities programmes. Becky has worked in the Sustainability and Environmental sector for over eight years, primarily in the social housing sector. Her long-term enthusiasm for biodiversity conservation led her to expand her work into ecological consultancy and field research, in the UK and abroad. She previously worked as a senior researcher for a small charity in Malawi where she specialised in bat biodiversity monitoring, leading volunteers, managing the community education and outreach programme and mitigating human-wildlife conflicts.

Becky holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences from the University of East Anglia and is an Associate member of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM). 

Photo: Sirli Raitma

• Jay Jordan

Labelled a "Domestic Extremist" by the UK police, and “a magician of rebellion” by the French press. Jay Jordan has spent 30 years balancing on the tightrope between art and activism. Co-founder of Reclaim the Streets and the Clown Army, and co-director writer of the book/film Les Sentiers de L'utopie. (La Découverte, 2011) He now co-facilitates the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii), with Isabelle Fremeaux. Infamous for fermenting direct action on bicycles during a climate summit, throwing snowballs at bankers, launching a rebel raft regatta to shut down a power station and refusing to be censored by the BP fossil fuel sponsored Tate Modern. The Labofii now inhabits the ZAD of Notre-dame-des-Landes, where an airport project was abandoned after 50 years of struggle.

Photo: Creative Commons

 

Project presentations

• Inis Oírr (Ireland)

Join Lucy Medlycott of the ISACS Network and Dara McGee of the Áras Éanna Ionad Ealaíne, Inis Oírr to learn about their joint project building a unique artistic residency for street and circus artists on the wild and beautiful island of Inis Oírr. This unique location hosts Europe’s most westerly arts centre, tossed and buffeted by the Atlantic ocean in a rare and wonderful environment. The objective of this particular residency is to give artists time and space to be in such a place exposed and shaped by the raw elements of nature, the native Irish language & people and by this singularly remote & distinct island.

Contact person: Lucy Medlycott, Director (ISACS)

Photo: FRESH STREET#3 © Declan Colohan

• Hivernem (Spain – Catalonia)

FiraTàrrega and the Ramon Llull Institute have founded the programme Hivernem in order to foster research in the writing of artistic creations linked
to performing arts and the public space.
The goal of this programme is to contribute
to the development of writing processes in the best conditions, facilitating research, knowledge sharing and mentoring from experts selected to ensure the excellence of the writing, investigation and creation.
Ada Vilaró Casals and Jordi Aspa are the two creators selected in the first edition of the program.
Ada Vilaró will develop a participatory artistic proposal in public space, community art and social impact, based on a research between science and art on global warming and climate change. Jordi Aspa’s research will analyze humour as a social indicator and as a tool for transformation and equality in order to create a theatrical narrative on a new
paradigm based on laughter.

Contact person: Mike Ribalta, Head of Professionnals Dept. (FiraTàrrega)

• XTRAX Global Conversations (UK)

The Global Conversations programme is a series
of online webinars targeted primarily at an International audience of arts professionals working in the field of Street Arts and Circus and looking
to keep their international relationships alive.
We want to facilitate information-sharing between nations and continents and spark a debate about
the future of our sector. For our third event (13/10) we are inviting a number of partners who are running some of the largest performing arts marketplace events across the world to reflect on the opportunities these events can offer. We continue offering support
and information on international touring post Brexit and will announce future sessions including
on sustainable models of touring.

Contact person: Elena Cavallero, Project Manager & Digital Development (XTRAX)

Photo: Frock by Stopgap Dance Company at GDIF 2019 (c) D.Flynn

• CPSA - Is It a Specific Performing Art Genre and Discipline? (Slovenia)

When talking about the contents and curricula of educational processes for contemporary performing street art(s) (CPSA), the prevailing opinion is that it is not possible to teach them. Many think there are no specific skills to be transferred to students and that it can only be an add-on to other existing teaching and training programmes. But is it really so? The answers will be found during the first international conference on education for the CPSA, happening online at the end of March 2021. This presentation aims to open the debate on this theme and to invite organisations and individuals that would be interested to take part in the conference.

Contact person: Goro Osojnik, Head and Artistic Director (Ana Monro Theatre)

Photo: Bojan Okorn, Bridges - connection workshop (FAI-AR)

 

• Roundabout Europe (Netherlands)

Roundabout Europe is a collaboration of five European festivals who are joining forces to give outdoor theater a new impulse with a circuit of residencies and support for professional makers. The project is targeting ambitious outdoor artists who are either emerging or at a turning point in their professional career. The participating festivals offer selected artists two connected residencies in two different EU countries in combination with an extensive coaching programme. The project is co-funded by the European Union through the Creative Europe programme. The project wil be concluded in 2021.

Contact person: Alfred Konijnenbelt, Artistic Director (Festival Spoffin)

Photo: "Femmes de FEMMES by Léa Dant during Spoffin 2019", Henry Krul

Keynote 2 - Inclusion and diversity: how can we change our narratives?

The “Us” vs. “Them” dichotomy, like many frequently and quickly made oppositions such as Residents vs. Immigrants, Man vs. Woman, Black vs. White are deeply rooted in Western societies and keep skewing the way humans coexist, behave and interact. Today, one cannot fail to observe that these dichotomies are being revived and continue to be at the heart of power relations, creating a hierarchy of values, no matter in which part of the globe you live in. It’s there, in the air, and it does not seem to be going away any time soon. The idea is for our sectors to grasp and deal with the issues raised through the recent global social movements, to empower the players of the cultural field working in the public space. 

These questions allow us to take a constructive look at our sectors, to reflect on how we still reproduce these inequalities, and then imagine creating new imaginaries, new narratives that can contribute to deconstructing the symbolic violence still present in our public spaces.

• Speakers: Dounia Benslimane & Arundhati Ghosh

Dounia Benslimane is a Doctor in general medicine who became involved in the cultural sector in 2008. She holds an European Diploma of Administration of Cultural Projects (Marcel Hicter Association, Belgium, in 2014) and is the former Executive Director of the non-profit Racines for Culture and Development in Morocco and Africa.

Co-founder and president of the African Cultural Policy Network she now works as consultant, trainer, project evaluator and manager and has published several articles on cultural policies, freedom of expression and creation, arts education, performing arts. She is a consultant for the MENA region and Africa for Freemuse, an international organization based in Copenhagen (Denmark) defending artistic freedom.

Photo: © Safemuse

• Arundhati Ghosh

Arundhati Ghosh is the Executive Director at India Foundation for the Arts (IFA). She has 20 years of experience in arts philanthropy. She is a recipient of the Global Fundraiser Award from Resource Alliance, the Chevening Clore Leadership Award, and the Gurukul Scholarship for Leadership and Excellence at the London School of Economics. She speaks and writes on arts and philanthropy for leading Indian and international cultural networks including On the Move, The Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC), Kultura Nova Foundation, among others.

Photo: Darshana Dave

Keynote 3 - Health and safety: how far our freedom goes? 

Collective health comes first and now we know how the balance between human rights and freedoms can change suddenly and how the greater protection of one right may involve the deprivation of other freedoms. We may imagine new models of sustainability, pioneering ideas and new resistance practices that perhaps already exist and we don’t know about.

Speakers: Chiara Gusmeroli, Italy & Sepehr Sharifzadeh, Iran. 

 

• Chiara Gusmeroli

Lawyer at the Bar of Rome, Chiara Gusmeroli deals with civil and corporate law at national and international level and worked with Martino Lorusso, FNAS lawyer for copyright.
Her international background -she was born in Italy, has the Canadian citizenship, lived in South Africa, New York and China-  gives her a sharp and comprehensive point of view on what is at stake in our sectors regarding matters of freedom and safety.
 

• Sepehr Sharifzadeh

Sepehr Sharifzadeh is an independent creative producer, curator, festival maker and researcher. He started his career in performing arts as a creative writer, puppeteer, clown and mime. At the age of 24, he co-founded the first International Theatre agency in Iran, aiming to facilitate the cultural exchange between Iran and the International performing arts scene. He has been working as project coordinator, artistic adviser and curator with several festivals and organizations such as BOZAR, The Festival Academy, IETM, Tehran Contemporary Music Festival, Puppet Theater Festival of Tehran-Mobarak and Fadjr Theater Festival. He is alumni of The Festival Academy where he acts as a member of their alumni steering committee. He has co-founded two independent, alternative and artist-led festivals in Iran including Re-connect International online performance festival in light of the Covid19 global pandemic

Photo: The Festival Academy

Artistic Act followed by an artistic talk: #Fresh Market# or "The cultural background of tomato sauce”  

A bucolic corner in the urban heart, a bridge between the poetry of country life and the cultural offer of city life, a reflection on the work of a small agricultural producer and that of an independent actor. What if, in the era of Covid, it was easier to reach an audience through a food counter at the market than through a theatrical event? Can a tomato sauce recipe rival Shakespeare? The performance seeks to question the position of the independent artist during the current health crisis starting with a few questions: Artist? Work? Does the artist work? Artist it’s a job? The public space? The audience? No... we should perhaps say “the buyers”! What if the buyers were also an audience? The beauty will save the world? Maybe it's too late for that, but we can still live in dignity!

This session was the opportunity to meet the artist to talk about the concept of his performance and how his idea has been developed into the reflection on relationship with audience, social role of artists and that dignity value undermined by Covid-19 tsunami.

Speaker: Luigi Ciotta, artist (Italy)

 

Wrap Up Session 

This session aimed at highlighting and reflecting on the main contributions and insights of the past 4 days of the event. Ariane Bieou brought her own inputs on all the crosswise issues that has been raised up during this 4th edition.

Speakers Ariane Bieou (Italy)

Ariane Bieou is currently consultant and expert for European Capital of Culture (Candidate cities) and international cultural events. Until Spring 2020, she was the Cultural Manager of  Matera, European Capital of Culture in charge of the capacity building development and running the coordination and implementation of the cultural program of Matera 2019. 

From 2011 to 2017, as project manager she coordinated IN SITU, European Platform for artistic creation in public space, led by Lieux publics, European and National creation center in Marseille. Beforehand, she worked for 12 years in Italy as associated architect and then in the management of cultural projects.

ORGANISERS:

 

 

WITH THE SUPPORT OF:

 

 

 

 

 

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A BIG THANKS TO

• The FRESH STREET#4 Work Group: Bruno Costa & Daniel Vilar – Bússola (Portugal), Mike Ribalta – FiraTàrrega (Spain), Tanja Ruiter & Huub Heye – HH Producties (The Netherlands), Lucy Medlycott – ISACS (Ireland), Heba El Cheikh – Mahatat Arts (Egypt), Angus MacKechnie – OutdoorArtsUK (UK), Jens Frimann Hansen – Passagefestival (Denmark), Alfred Konijnenbelt – Spoffin (The Netherlands) and Maggie Clarke & Irene Segura – XTRAX (UK).

 

THE COORDINATION TEAM OF FRESH STREET#4

Federico Toso & Alessandra Lanciotti (FNAS), Stéphane Segreto-Aguilar, Laura Jude, Laura Gérard, Sophia Taouri (Circostrada).