2015 Festival Returns to Fort Mason — Save the Dates

THE FORT MASON CENTER AND EYES AND EARS FOUNDATION PRESENT

Support SFIAF with a Tax Deductible Donation on Giving Tuesday Dec. 2.

May 20 – June 7    2015

 

150 Performances, 60 Ensembles from 10 Countries

 

$12 EARLY BIRD TICKETS

ON SALE MARCH 1, 2015

The San Francisco International Arts Festival is thrilled to announce that in 2015 we will be moving back to the Fort Mason Center and will be co-presented by Fort Mason as part of its FMC Presents Series. The relationship gives SFIAF access to seven different venues on the Fort Mason campus and the ability to present over 150 ticketed performances by artists from the Bay Area and ten countries in the space of three action packed weeks. The Festival will also feature a major arts exhibition titled Bearing Witness: Surveillance in the Drone Age compiled by curators Matt McKinley and Hanna Regev as well as multiple educational, residency and outreach activities. 

Put us in your 2015 calendars now: March 1 to buy your tickets, May 20 Opening Night. Also, tomorrow December 2 is Giving Tuesday, please consider making a year-end tax deductible donation to the Festival. It all goes to support performances by the amazing list of artists below.

The lineup of performance artists confirmed to date for the 2015 Festival is as follows: Abada Capoeria, Abhinaya Dance Company, Āine Ryan, Allison Lovejoy, Alma del Tango, Alyce Finwall Dance Theater, Anne Bluethenthal & Dancers with MezoAmerica, Ariel Luckey, Bill Kalinkos, Bob Ernst, Cali & Co., Charline Formenty, Christine Bonansea, Compagnie Artara, Concerto Club with Gabriel Urgell Reyes, Croi Glan Integrated Dance Company, Dancing Earth, Deborah Slater Dance Theatre, devorah major with Brian Freeman and the Destiny Mohammed Trio, Diana Gameros, Eth-noh-Tec, Fogo na Roupa, Francis Wong & Tatsu Aoki with Lenora Lee, Grupo de Rompe y Raja, Horse Dance Theatre, Inferno Theatre, James Cousins Company, Jesper Arin, Kiandanda Dance Theater, Kitka Women's Vocal Ensemble, Krista DeNio Productions, La Misa Negra, La Peche, Laura Inserra, Loco Bloco, Łowiczanie Polish Folk Ensemble, Maboiuch, Madan Oak, Maria Jose Montijo, Mary Armentrout Dance Theater, Matt EL, Melody of China & Shih-yang Lee, Olga Kosterina, Project Agora, Punkkico, Sarah Cahill, The Foundry, Theatre of Yugen, tinypistol, Voodoo Cabaret and ZiRu Dance.

Open submissions for Alwan 3rd i Film Awards extended to December 31, 2014

Open Submissions for Alwan 3rd i Film Awards Extended to Dec. 31, 2014  

Wednesday, December 10th, 7:00pm at Alwan

Artists Talk: Henry Chalfant in Discussion with Ganzeer on Engaged Art  

This series of conversations is an occasion that aims to bring attention to the work of Middle Eastern artists.

In this event, the participants Henry Chalfant and Egyptian artist Mohamed Fahmy, known as "Ganzeer" (the Chain), will address art as an engaged practice, as a way of being and thinking aesthetically, outside of the studio, and responding creatively to quotidian events. Art seen through these lenses and practiced by the brush of lived-experience is particularly pertinent to the volatility of the urban environment, an environment that by its nature and on general principle is marked by social upheaval, economic transcience and political unease.

The Middle East is, to put it mildly, an interesting place, constantly in the air-waves, eliciting curiosity, response and offering spectacular ground for artistic commentary and intervention.

Artist, archivist, videographer, and author of several publications, including Big Subway Archive – an interactive photographic anthology of graffiti found predominantly in the subways of New York City – HENRY CHALFANT will deliver expert insight into the history of graffiti and street art, and their powerful nature as an effective form of communication and political artistic expression.

Politically-engaged artist GANZEER, Alwan's 2014-15 Artist in Residence, who has been an active participant in events in Egypt over the last few years and is embroiled in a conflict with the authority of the military coup, will reflect on his engagement and provide a presentation of samples of his work. This conversation with Henry Chalfant launches his residency at Alwan and provides an opportunity for contemplating the larger implications of cultural productions, their relevance to a world that is restless, saturated with crises and brewing with simmering conflict, but also hope. 

Suggested Contribution:  General Admission $10 | Students and Seniors $5  

Doors open at 6:30pm +more info

On the Move Newsletter – November 2014

More news will be shared next month regarding the future development of On the Move. However we can already inform you that, thanks to the support of the French Embassy in the USA, On the Move will be represented at the Cultural Mobility Symposium in New York on 7 January 2015which is coordinated and hosted by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Centre in cooperation with Theatre Without Borders. This free and open symposium, also supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism-Korea and Korea Arts Management Service, will not only be the occasion to launch the first US Cultural Mobility Funding Guide but also a great opportunity to discuss key issues related to cultural mobility in a global perspective.

As for every month, we invite you to check OTM current and most updated news and opportunities, all with travels at least partially funded.

Beyond OTM facebook and twitter pages, do not forget to check ourFunding pages, particularly forEurope (with 29 cultural mobility funding guides) and the Arab World (focus on 13 Arab countries).

On the Move’s own news

Cultural Mobility: Symposium + International Funding Guide (New York, USA)

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center is creating, in collaboration with On The Move and the U.S.-based grass-roots international network Theatre Without Borders, a free and user-friendly guide to funding for international exchange for artists traveling from and to the USA. Register for free as soon as possible for the 7 January 2015 launching event and symposium in New York!

Engage in policy

Status of the Artist: the review of UNESCO recommendation needs your inputs!

UNESCO is undertaking an important review of the implementation of the UNESCO 1980 Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist, through a survey that will feed a report to be presented to the UNESCO General Conference in 2015. UNESCO Member States, Non-Governmental Organizations and other civil society organizations are invited to fill in this survey by 15 January 2015.

Raise funding

CEC-ArtLinks: Independent Projects Awards 2015 for Artists & Arts Managers from Eligible Countries

Project grants enable artists and arts managers from eligible countries (Eastern/Central Europe, Middle East etc.) to carry out self-directed projects in the US. Applicants must have a letter of invitation from a non-profit organization or individual in the US to apply. Deadline: 3 December.

Festival Belluard Bollwerk International & Migros Culture Percentage (Switzerland) > Call for projects "Fortress Europe"

Applications can be sent in by artists or practitioners from other fields working interdisciplinary; from Fribourg or the rest of the world; individuals or groups; with performative or installative projects or interventions connected to the thematic. Deadline: 15 December.

British Council: ELEVATE Startwell™ Challenge > Open call for applications (UK and East Asia)

The ELEVATE StartWell™ Challenge, presented by the British Council in partnership with the Lien Foundation, is focused on developing innovative new concepts to improve early childhood (0-8 years) play. Deadline: 5 January 2015.

COAL Prize 2015: Art and Environment

This sixth edition of the COAL Prize Art and Environment is part of ArtCOP21: an exceptional cultural festival initiated by COAL and its UK partner Cape Farewell, that will take place in France during COP21 (International Conference on Climate Change). Deadline: 30 January 2015.

For more funding opportunities (in particular in Europe, Africa, Asia, the USA), please click here.

React to a call

ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival (Finland)

ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival is an international contemporary arts festival presenting site-specific works made for public space
. ANTI Festival presents live, sonic, visual and text-based art from today’s most exciting and innovative artists in the Finnish town of Kuopio. Deadline for applications: 16 December.

The Public Domain: Season 2 > Open call by the Delfina Foundation (UK)

Over the last 25 years, the World Wide Web has expanded our concept of the public sphere from the physical to the virtual. For the second chapter of its recurring programme The Public Domain, Delfina Foundation is interested in exploring the collapse between these two realms through the use of technology. Deadline for applications: 18 December.

La Bécquée: European Contemporary Dance Festival > Call for applications

Check the conditions carefully but basically minimum payment are possible as well as travel cost and possibilities of residencies. Deadline: 31 December.

Cultural Fellowships in Russia

The Likhachev Foundation will accept applications from professionals in the field of culture and history or arts from foreign countries who are currently working on creative projects related to Russian culture or history. Command of the Russian language is very helpful but not required. Deadline: 1 February 2015.

For more calls (on photography, art and environmental issues, dance, theatre, art history and criticism etc.), please click here.

Get training

Swedish Institute: Young Leaders Visitors Programme

The Swedish Institute’s Young Leaders Visitors Programme (YLVP) is an intercultural leadership programme that aims to lay a foundation for dialogue and knowledge sharing among young leaders from the Middle East, North Africa and Sweden. Deadline: 12 December.

21st European Baroque Academy > Call for young musicians

The 21st European Baroque Academy will be placed under the artistic and pedagogical direction of Enrico Onofri. Renowned violinist and conductor, Enrico Onofri is also recognised throughout Europe for his teaching skills. He has imagined a summer program revolving around 3 violin concertos that enhance this instrument's virtuosity. Deadline for young musicians: 15 December.

European Diploma in Cultural Project Management 2015/2016

The European Diploma in Cultural Project Management, coordinated by the Marcel Hicter Foundation, is a pan-European training programme arising from the will to foster cultural diversity as well as trans-regional and transnational cultural exchanges. Deadline: 15 January 2015.

For more training (in Asia, France etc.), please click here.

Discover a residency

PACT Zollverein (Germany) > Call for residents

Open to professional artists who work in the areas of dance, performance, media arts or music and closely linked to PACT’s two other core strands of activity in presenting work and facilitating research and development, the programme is a key element in PACT Zollverein’s profile as an Artists’ House supporting lively exchange between practice and theory. Deadline: 4 December.

Centre international d’art et du paysage, Vassivière island, Limousin Region (France) > Residencies

The residencies are open to three artists and/or researchers applying separately or as a group to submit a research and creation project linked to the landscape of Vassivière and/or its history in various domains including visual arts, writing, philosophy, architecture, choreography etc. Deadline: 8 December.

MEMBRANA – Residency For Artistic Interface Criticism at Hangar (Barcelona, Spain)

The programme aims to provide support to a visual artist interested in developing an artwork based on the concept of interface. The artist will develop his/her project during a six weeks residency at Hangar (Barcelona). He/she will also be invited to participate in the on-going investigation of the PIPES_BCN research group which involves the drafting of a Critical Interface Manifesto. Deadline: 10 January 2015

Camargo Foundation (Cassis, France) > Core Fellowship Program For Fall 2015 and Spring 2016

Located in a smal
l town of the South of France, facing the Mediterranean Sea, the Foundation offers an exceptional environment to think, reflect, and create. The residency experience is enhanced by the quiet campus and the surrounding natural beauty of Cap Canaille and the Calanques national park. Deadline: 13 January 2015.

For more residencies (in Québec, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, France, Japan etc.), please click here.

Meet others

Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs

Erasmus for Young Entrepreneurs is a cross-border exchange programme which gives new or aspiring entrepreneurs the chance to learn from experienced entrepreneurs running small businesses in other Participating Countries. Apply now!

For more meeting opportunities, please click here.

Collaborate with

89plus Project > Open call

89plus is calling for artists, writers, architects, filmmakers, musicians, designers, scientists and technologists. Please submit as soon as possible to be considered for the various upcoming events and projects.

For more collaboration opportunities, please click here.

Look for a job

The Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden> Five Artistic Professors needed!

The three Academies of artistic practice at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts – the Academy of Music and Drama, the Valand Academy and the HDK-School of Design and Crafts – are recruiting five new professors to further develop their unique artistic research environments. Deadline: 8 December.

For more job opportunities, please click here.

Library

The Guide to international artist residencies in Luxembourg

The Agence luxembourgeoise d’action culturelle a.s.b.l. (Agence culturelle) is publishing the first edition of the « Guide to international artist residencies in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg » in close cooperation with institutions hosting residency programs. Check it out soon!

Creative Carbon Scotland: Creating and Updating a Travel Policy

Creating and maintaining an up-to-date travel policy can help your organisation reduce its carbon footprint, and embed sustainability within the core behaviour of your business. Check the travel policy by Creative Carbon Scotland for inspiration!

Announcing Fluid States events

EVENT NAME and LOCATION

Sa Tagilid na Yuta: On Tilted Earth: Performance in Archipelagic Space

Manila, Philippines and other locations 

DATES

RoRo Journeys and Island Events: April – September 2015

Manila Gathering – November 5-8, 2015

 

KEYWORDS

Performance in archipelagic space, performance as inter/connection, identification and belonging, performing risk/performing at risk, performance as intervention for survival and restoration, performance in unstable sites

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Resilience—the term has been used by government and aid organizations and the media to describe the ability of Filipinos to survive disasters and rebuild their communities. But it has also become a sinister discourse of victimhood and vulnerability.  What does it really mean in concrete terms?

A core team of artists and scholars will be traveling to various localities by bus and by boat, ‘rolling on and rolling off’ from one site to the next, to investigate resilience and in the process learning local practices, conceptions, and lexicons of performance in the archipelago. Designed in response to recent calamities in the country, the project addresses a key theme–what living ‘on tilted earth’ often ravaged by disaster means and entails for various communities in the archipelago, why and how are they resilient, and what this might mean in terms of performance, that is, actual doing in all its creative/expressive forms and manifestations. ‘Disaster’ is understood not only as a calamity like Yolanda/Haiyan but also as strife and dehumanization experienced in war or caused by dire poverty and their effects as well as by the blight of history.

1. RoRo Journey and Island Events

The ‘roro’ journey across the archipelago will connect various sites, from communities to universities, from the auditorium to the streets, plazas, and seafronts. The journey will immerse in or connect to performances and practices organically, as much as possible, that is, what there is at the site at the time of the visit, e.g., harvesting and Hudhud in Ifugao.

Proposals by Local and Visiting Correspondents .are welcome. If interested, please respond to the Call for Local and Visiting Correspondents available here.

1.1. Luzon: Imaginative flows and mobility across plains and mountains

The main island of Luzon is host to sharply contrasting cultures and performance practices of the people of the lowlands and the people of the mountains. This is not unique to Luzon and can be said of all of the islands, but such contrast is the focus of the Luzon journey in terms of performance conceived as ‘dap-ayan’, gathering, ‘haraya’, imagination, and ‘pagbaklay’, walking. Performances are works of the imagination occasioned by and striving towards a gathering, but, in order to gather, people must walk– not within familiar realms but across oftentimes dangerous divides.

The journey will take us across to major gatherings in the Christian lowlands—a community dance, a wedding, various fiestas—and in the mountains of the Sierra Madre and Cordillera—commemorations such as the Cordillera Day and a memory trek with the Aetas from Zambales to Aurora and up the Pinatubo. We will see how far apart the people of the mountains and those of the lowlands are from each other and what possibilities there are for connections. We will follow the paths of disaster, not only of typhoons and floods and volcanic eruptions that have radically changed the landscape or killed thousands of people, but also of impending threats to waterways in urban industrial zones.  We will come face to face with violence and its traces, both real and imagined, from the Lenten crucifixion practices in Cutud, Pampanga or the ‘beheading of Longinus’ in the moriones of Marinduque, the ‘battles’ of moros y cristianos in the tibag of Nueva Ecija, to the displacement of the Aetas from their ancestral lands and the killing of Macliing Dulag over a rift on the Chico River and his people’s ancestral domain. The journey is an encounter with a militant joy present in the many celebrations and devotions of the people; it is an engagement with ideas and memories of revolution and resistance against tyranny; it is an immersion in the poetic expressions of hope and love of ‘kapwa’, the brethren or other that is also always a part of the self. Not to be disregarded as interlacing themes of the journey are heritage, tourism, and practices of recreation.

Itinerary includes: Ifugao, Tadian and Bontoc in Mt. Province, with participation in the Macliing Dulag Memorial; Baguio City, with a symposium and interaction with artists based there; Angono, Rizal; Calamba, Sta Cruz, and Santa Rosa in Laguna; Naga, Legazpi, Sorsogon in Bicol; Pampanga, Zambales, Tarlac, Aurora, with a trek to Mt. Pinatubo; Pangasinan, Batanes, and Palawan.

Dates: April 22 – last week of May, 2015 (journey is cut up into segments with each one lasting 5-7 days)
1.2. Visayas: Flows of past present memories of land and sea and the bells in between

We live in a continuing past and that is not anywhere more apparent than in the islands of the Visayas where there are places like Balangiga whose people still want to have their bells back. Taken by the American soldiers more than a hundred years ago in the assault on Balangiga town during the bloody Philippine-American War, the bells are still in the United States, displayed as war booty and evidence of American ‘valor’ against the Filipinos.

The V
isayas journey will explore the theme of contesting memories of and contesting claims to—the bells of Balangiga; accounts of who to blame or how to explain the grave toll on lives and properties during and in the aftermath of typhoons like Haiyan; the stories of progress and wealth of the islands such as Negros, land of the sugar barons and the sacadas who work the land; and discourses of development seen in contrasting images, rhythms, and styles of daily living in Boracay’s ‘world class’ resorts and the villages of the Panay Bukidnon indigenous community. The journey will be a peregrinasyon, a pilgrimage ‘from routes to roots’ in which artists and cultural workers will try to learn/relearn what wisdom this tracing of routes taken and listening to the land and sea and the missing bells hold for us and how to be coeval with our indigenous roots, which are not of the past, dead, but very much alive and contemporaneous, albeit pushed to the margins of both the geography and our consciousness.

Itinerary includes: Palapag, Calbayog, Balangiga, and Basey in Eastern Samar; Tacloban and Palo in Leyte; Inabanga and Talibon in North Bohol; Bulukabok and Suwac and Bantayan Island in Cebu with a symposium at the School of the Seas; Escalante and Victorias Sugar Central, Silay, and Bacolod in Negros; Iloilo and Capiz and the community of the Panay Bukidnon in Panay.

Dates: April 1 – 15, 2015 (cut up into segments, but one continuous journey)
1.3. Mindanao: Flows of resilience in the land of promise and ferment

There are three big groups in the region: the original non-Muslim inhabitants called Lumad, the Muslim population, and Christian settler communities from central and northern Philippines. How the land which used to be controlled by the Lumads in 17 out of the present 24 provinces became the property of the settlers from Luzon and Visayas and by multinational corporations, with the Lumads now comprising only 6% of the population, is the story of Mindanao as a ‘land of promise’. How the region which was never vanquished by the Spanish colonizers became a playing field for American forces in the ‘global war against terror’ is the story of Mindanao as a land of continuous war waged by the ‘Moros’ for a separate Bangsamoro or Islamic state and concomitant aggressions by armed vigilantes protecting Christian property owners as well as attacks by the Philippine state forces. The land of promise has become a land of ferment and death, and recently also a land devastated by horrible landslides and floods, the years of rape of the forests taking their toll on human communities.

But surely these are not the only stories and images of Mindanao. There are more and different stories, perhaps inevitably linked to these, but we are determined to go beyond what the media and books say and have a face to face meeting with the rich and colourful cultures of the Lumads, Muslims, and settler groups in the region. There will be three simultaneous journeys, each following a theme: (1) history and heritage, (2) spirituality and religion, and (3) indigeneity and identity.

Itinerary includes: (1) Butuan and Camiguin; (2) Zamboanga, Ozamiz, Tubod, Iligan, Marawi, and El Salvador; (3) Cotabato, General Santos, Davao, and Bukidnon. All three journeys will converge in Cagayan de Oro for a conference.

Dates: July 2015 (dates to follow)

Sample details of the journey (Leg 2):
We will begin our journey in Zamboanga where the 2013 clash of rebel Muslim forces and government troops killed 154 and displaced thousands of families from 14 villages, many of them indigenous Muslim Sama-Badjaos. We will visit their relocation sites and join local teams of volunteers who are helping them. From Zamboanga we will travel to Ozamis and there experience a 270 year old Christian pilgrimage. Also in Misamis Occidental we will have a ‘food trip’ to sample the local cuisine and visit the Aquamarine Park. We will cross to Mukas, Lanao del Norte by ferry boat and visit the Dapit-Alim Meditation Site in Tubod, then travel to Iligan for a performance evening and interaction with local artists (IPAG). The next day we travel to Marawi and experience the welcome rite of Pagana Maranao, a walk through Padian Market, and a performance by local artists (Kambayoka). From Marawi we travel to El Salvador which is another Christian pilgrimage city, and later in the day end up in Cagayan de Oro. In Cagayan de Oro, there will be visits to resettlement sites for victims of the 2012 flood, and a conference to talk about the entire journey. An additional site to visit after the conference is the community of the Talaandig indigenous group in Malaybalay, Bukidnon. The journey will last seven days at most.

2. Manila Gathering

Dates: November 5 – 8, 2015

The Fluid States Philippine Cluster events will culminate in an international conference in Manila set for November 5 – 8, 2015. The conference will feature roundtables and panels and papers on the roro journeys and the main themes of the conference. A unique part of the program is a roro journey in the city on the second day, with the participants having a choice of three itineraries. The journeys will include visits to a maritime museum, a Buddhist temple, Intramuros the old city of Manila, interactions with community theatre groups and artist communities, a food and theatre tour, and a ferry ride on the Pasig River. The conference plenaries and panels will be in two venues: De La Salle University-Manila and the University of the Philippines-Diliman.

Proposals for individual papers and panels are welcome. Deadline is on September 30, 2014; notifications of acceptance on October 30, 2014. Email proposals toperform_philippines@yahoo.com.

Themes

We live on tilted earth, where soil merges with sea, behind us the slope of mountains, located at what seems to be the edge of the world, at the beginning of the great expanse of the Pacific and what lies beneath and above it, the ring of fire and raging storms, the ring of disaster. The water surges in from the sea or rampages down from the slopes of mountains. The tilting is a constant and we have never perfected the balancing act it requires. Living on tilted earth, here we are, once again, after the strong earthquake and Yolanda, the image of victimhood, crying out for compassion to the rest of the world, who have come in droves to help. We are grateful. But then again we tilt to find another sense of balance, a sense of agency and self-possession, of self-responsibility. We strive to find our own feet, however wobbly. What might all these mean in terms of performance?

Keywords:
Performance in archipelagic space, performance as inter/connection, identification and belonging, performing risk/performing at risk, performanc
e as intervention for survival and restoration, performance in unstable sites, resilience, theatre and climate change

Key questions that might be taken up by papers, panels, exhibitions, and performances (in addition to the roro journey themes):

What and how is it to live (and die) on tilted earth, in the ring of disaster? How does this life and the experiences of death and devastation in disaster prone areas translate to views of the world and notions of human development, safety, and risk?

How may performance and performance research contribute to an awareness of viewpoints and
sensibilities that are often unacknowledged or invisible in discussions on the development of communities and disaster-preparedness? How can performance help mitigate disaster and its effects? How can performance help save and protect lives? How can performance revivify creativity and spur a reimagination of the future?
Corollarily: What are the costs—cultural, economic, and political— of connecting and traversing distances? Who bear these costs the most? How are these borne or negotiated? What are the productive uses of performance for living with and through the traumas and terrors caused by disasters like Yolanda/Haiyan or by calamities of crossing the seas (to study, work, visit, or relax)? How does performance narrate stories of hardship or victory, especially for people living on the coasts or on the plains, or pushed to inhabit the mountains?

What is it to live in an archipelago? What does it mean for people to live in a country with 7,100 islands beyond the simple (or complex) fact that the cultures in these islands differ one from the other? Is there such a thing as an archipelagic consciousness? What might this mean in terms of an awareness of difference and similarity, division and connection, fragmentation and belonging? How might ‘regionalism’ or ‘nationalism’ be located within or in relation to the archipelagic? How might conflicts and animosities be understood? How are all these informed or shaped by history and discourses of nationality? And how might performance help in thinking about these things?

TEH Newsletter 2014 No. 7

Dear artists, activists, squatters and dreamers, 

In this new issue of the TEH Newsletter we bring you lots of references to independent cultural centres: we welcome the six new TEH members and thanks to a collaboration with 2ème Lieu we present fourcultural centres from Colombia.

Secretary General Birgitta Persson was invited as speaker by the Foundation Center for Contemporary Art (CSM) to Kiev, Ukraine. There she met the team of Izolyatsia in exile and brought some fresh news about their current situation.

Finally, if you are looking for an interesting reading for this Christmas, check the new publications of the Spaces Project: "The status and challenges of the Independent Cultural Actors in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine" (also available at TEH Resource) and "Cultural Public Sphere".

We hope you enjoy it all.

Best regards,

José Luis Rodríguez and Birgitta Persson.

Trans Europe Halles Coordination Office.

Lund, Sweden. 

TEH COORDINATION OFFICE RECENT ACTIVITIES 

TEH Lecture at Foundation Center for Contemporary Art (CSM)

TEH Secretary General Birgitta Persson was invited to hold a lecture called “Factories of Imagination – Do It Yourself” to an audience of invited cultural operators, architects and urbanists in Kiev last week. The lecture was organised as part of the Spaces project about art and public space in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The case studies of a selected number of TEH members and their stories proved inspiring for the participants who wondered what to do with the many abandoned factory buildings in the countryside in Ukraine. 

 

Birgitta also met with the Izolyatsia-team who operates in exile from Kiev and was guided around the premises as well as to other contemporary art centres in Kiev like Pintchuk Art Centre and theArsenale by Izolyatsia’s TEH-delegate Mykhailo Glubokyi.

 

Izolyatsia cultural centre in Donetsk is still occupied by the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) who has started to use the buildings – up to recently famous for presenting new and contemporary art exhibitions and film documentaries for a mixed audience – as a prison. Even though the Izolyatsia team of course dream of to being able to come back one day and run the centre again and also maybe be able to save some of the art pieces hopefully remaining in the building, the team has managed to build up an array of new and interesting artistic activities spread out in the streets and parks of Kiev.

 

The new “Izo” resides in a couple of rented spaces in a boat building factory just by the Dnepr river in the historic district Podil close to metro station Kontraktova Ploscha. Here they share the entrance with factory workers and the factory restaurant serves daily a nice selection of Ukrainian dishes for both factory workers and artists. Currently several spaces are being renovated and turned into exhibition halls and studios by the team. The Fab Lab of Izolytsia in Donetsk is about to resurrect in Izolytasia Kiev, despite the fact that only few parts of the machinery was rescued from Donetsk. Plans for a terrace by the river and a separate entrance for the audience are soon to be realised.

 

Despite an extreme situation of war and conflict with no immediate solution at hand, Izolyatsia has managed to adapt to an extremely turbulent situation. Within a few weeks of being forced out of their centre in Donetsk, they continued their work with supporting artists and producing artistic activities from Kiev. 

 

TRANS EUROPE HALLES NEW MEMBERS 

6 new members were approved during TEH Meeting 78

During TEH Meeting 78 hosted by JOHAN centrum (Pilsen, CZ), six cultural centres from three different countries –France, Denmark and Luxembourg– were approved as TEH Members. Welcome to the network! 

Den Ny Maltfabrik 

Ebeltoft, Denmark

Some years ago, the red industrial building –dating back from 1861– in Ebeltoft was to be torn down and replaced by a modern city mall, but a group of passionate local culture and business people raised money to buy the factory and start a cultural centre in it. 

Read more…

Le Confort Moderne 

Poitiers, France

Le Confort Moderne, under the management of the L'Oreille est Hardie association, has been engaged since 1985 in the creation, production and diffusion of original works of contemporary art, music and trans-disciplinary experimentation. 

Read more…

L'hybride 

Lille, France

L’hybride is a cultural and innovative venue located in the center of Lille in a former car repair shop. It stands out thanks to an eclectic programme that explores independent audiovisual creation: short films, animation, interdisciplinary forms and digital arts, independent full-length films, workshops 

Read more…

Le Plus Petit Cirque du Monde 

Centre des Arts du Cirque et des Cultures Emergentes. Bagneux, France

Le Plus Petit Cirque du Monde was established in 1992 in Bagneux (southern suburbs of Paris) by inhabitants who wanted to offer circus workshops to the kids of the area in order to improve their daily life. Currently a new wooden building is being constructed to host a big circus hall of 600 sqm and 28 meters high. 

Read more…

Prabbeli / Cooperations 

Wiltz, Luxembourg

The name "Prabbeli" was given to the cultural centre because of the spectacular pyramid roof construction of the building –an old brewery–, but its name also stands for the need to foster the broadest possible participation on the part of the inhabitants of the region. 

Read more…

Collectif Tomahawk 

Querrien, France

TOMAHAWK is a an artist's collective based on a 22 hectare farm in south Finistère (Britanny, France). Their core objectives include the diffusion and promotion of independent artists and the optimization of musicians' resources. 

Read more…

TRANS EUROPE HALLES MEMBERS' NEWS 

Bakelit (Budapest, HU) 

Bakelit Multi Art Center proudly presents the I. Hungarian Contemporary Dance Festival at DOCK 11 in Berlin from 15 to 21 December 2014.

The festival will internationally showcase outstanding Hungarian contemporary dance's great variety of genres whilst also strengthening cultural cooperation and mobility between Berlin and Budapest.

Read more…

Tomahawk Collective (France) 

Every year Tomahawk Collective organizes a festival that gathers popular music bands, street arts troops, an art and crafts market and a citizen's forum that brigs together around thirty associations to debate about sustainable development and ecology. 

Tomahawk Collective invites other TEH members to participate in the festival by sending artistic proposals (circus, visual arts, performance…). 

Contact Tomahawk

Pro Rodopi Art Centre (Bulgaria) 

In the summer of 2014 Pro Rodopi Art Centre has launched its first own studio in Bostina. Hip-hip-hoorey! The first project held there was the residential project: American Silence, a collaboration between North American (Philadelphia) and Bulgarian artists.

 

The main building of PRAC is still in very poor contidions and not in use, but activities in the centre are significantly increasing, including including the International Performing Arts Festival Adults Forbidden for kids and young audiences that took place in October. 

Learn more about Pro Rodopi

Antic Teatre and Vyrsodepseio 

The two TEH members Antic Teatre (Barcelona, Spain) and Vyrsodepseio (Athens, Greece), are working together in a cross-border engagement and cultural co-operation programme, as part of the project cav_a, Catalan artists visiting Greek Artists. 

The project consists of two performances of the Catalan artist Pere Faura at Vyrsodepseio and other activities, like meetings with Greek artists and artists-audience after talks, which will be taking place from December 18th to 19th. The second part of the exchange will happen at Antic Teatre on February 2015. 

Read more…

2ème Lieu: INDEPENDENT CULTURAL CENTRES IN SOUTH AMERICA

Collaboration with 2ème Lieu 

Starting with this edition of the TEH Newsletter and until June 2015, Trans Europe Halles collaborates with the organization 2ème Lieu to present the experiences of independent cultural centers in South America. 

 

2ème Lieu is a French non-profit organization which believes that independent cultural centers are essential sources for individual imagination and collective prospects.

 

Read more..

FOCUS COUNTRY: COLOMBIA 

During 2013, 2ème Lieu visited 17 independent cultural spaces in South America and interviewed their managers and leaders about eleven different topics related to the management of their centres, paying special attention to issues such as sustainability, territorial integration, communication, etc. 

In this newsletter we are happy to bring you four independent cultural centres from Colombia. This country has a vibrant civil society that is playing a crucial role in strengthening democracy and encouraging peace after years of war and violence. Independent cultural initiatives have proliferated in Bogota and Medellin, and embody the "movida" that generates cultural alternatives to traditional folklore and inherited narco culture from last decades. 

La Redada 

Bogotá, Colombia

 

The name of the centre –"redada" means raid– is a reference to the activist spirit of the people managing it. “Do-it-yourself” and independence are the philosophy leading this collective experience in which several groups co-run the center without any legal status. 

 

Watch video

 

A Seis Manos 

Bogotá, Colombia

 

A seis manos brings together food and culture. Between tasty and reasonable menus mixing Colombian food with the French touch –2 of the 3 funding partners are French– , people are invited to enjoy a concert, a film or discover a photography exhibition in the art gallery. 

 

Watch the video

 

Proyecto Casa B 

Bogotá, Colombia

 

The “B” is for Belen. Indeed, the three young founders who established this cultural center have one single goal: revitalize the district of Belen, stuck on the symbolic border between rich northern districts of Bogota and the huge and poor southern districts of the 10 million inhabitants city. 

 

Watch the video

 

Corp. Cultural Nuestra Gente 

Medellín, Colombia

 

This multidisciplinary centre –located in a former brothel in a district undermined by poverty and violence– focuses its activities on community emancipation throu art and culture. With a more than 20 year history, Corporación Cultural Nuestra Gente is well known in Medellin.

Watch the video

PUBLICATIONS 

New publications by the SPACES Project 

SPACES has recently presented two publications: Imaging the Public is a policy paper that brings together experiences of independent cultural actors in Chisinau, Kyiv, Tbilisi and Yerevan. And Cultural Policy Sphere is a catalogue of the activities of the three-year project. Further read below.

SPACES is a three year project (2011-2014) that promotes artistic and cultural action in public spaceand the recuperation of public spaces for art and culture throu participatory art events in public spaces inArmenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Processes of networking, social research and policy debates accompany the in situ events.

In the frame of SPACES, the team of curators invited artists to develop interactive projects in Chisinau, Kyiv, Tbilisi and Yerevan, with the aim to enhance civil society processes, reconsidering public space as a place for free expression, social encounter, shared responsibilities. The SPACES interventions dealt with past, present and imagined futures of spaces and cities, succeeded to change the rhythm of the city, made private acts public, irritated – all against the background of the burning question: How far can the citizen get actively involved into current political discourses? 

The Status and Challenges of the Independent Cultural Actors in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine 

This cultural policy paper is the result of three 

years of policy research. It traces and maps independent cultural actors and emerging contemporary cultural and artistic practices in Chişinau, Kyiv, Tbilisi and Yerevan, and invites the reader to explore this new, dynamic cultural field. 

Download the book

Cultural Public Sphere 

This publication explores the development of a cultural public sphere in Eastern Europe. Framed by reflections on the past, it invites the reader to follow the contemporary experiences of the project SPACES – Sustainable Public Areas for Culture in Eastern Countries which were developed in Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine from 2011 to 2014. 

Buy the book

OPPORTUNITIES – Provided by On The Move 

Funding 

CEC-ArtLinks: Independent Projects Awards 2015 for Artists & Arts Managers from Eligible Countries

Festival Belluard Bollwerk International & Migros Culture Percentage (Switzerland) > Call for projects "Fortress Europe"

British Council: ELEVATE Startwell™ Challenge > Open call for applications (UK and East Asia)

COAL Prize 2015: Art and Environment

For more funding opportunities please visit On The Move website. 

Calls 

ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival (Finland)

The Public Domain: Season 2 > Open call by the Delfina Foundation (UK)

La Bécquée: European Contemporary Dance Festival > Call for applications

Cultural Fellowships in Russia

For more calls, please visit On The Move website. 

Trainings 

Swedish Institute: Young Leaders Visitors Programme

European Diploma in Cultural Project Management 2015/2016

For more training, please visit On The Move's website. 

Jobs 

The Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden> Five Artistic Professors needed!

For more job opportunities, please visit On The Move's website. 

Patricia Ariza’s Acceptance Speech – 2014 Gilder/Coigney Award

On October 27, 2014, Patricia Ariza (Colombia) received the 2014 Gilder/Coigney Award for excellence in theatre, presented by the League of Professional Theatre Women’s International Committee. Please look below for her acceptance speech, translated in both English and Spanish.

Learn more about the LPTW’s Gilder/Coigney Award

Learn more about the LPTW’s International Committee

Patricia Ariza Acceptance Speech
October 27, 2014
English Translation by Juanita Lara

This award holds a deep significance for me, for my company and for the Woman’s Peace Movement, of which I am a part.

It is significant because it comes from the U.S., an enormous and powerful place in the world, full of contradictions but also a place where there are lots of beautiful and democratic peoples like the artists and activists in the League of Professional Theater Women that through their art and activism, everyday invent new ways to communicate with the world.

I am honored to receive this award because it comes from the women who are, we are, a humanity that has launched a peaceful revolution and has challenged the world to doubt patriarchal dogmas that support neocapitalism and its cold and arrogant belief that money, war and arrogance can sustain an absolute power over this world.

This award is significant too because it is the first time that a woman from Latin America is its recipient, like me who has never hidden her ideology or my passion for transformation of this world through art and culture.

I have a profound belief that everything we humans have done or made, can be changed by us too, because we are doing it now.

We are returning to their rightful place, the overriding values of life and culture. It’s these values that need to return to the center of large utopias.

We must return to work on our most beautiful and ambitious humanitarian dreams, like those ideals of justice for all, much like the ethics of women who has taught us how to care for mankind.

We must convince ourselves and persuade others to believe a just and democratic world without invasions, wars and patriarchy is possible.

I also believe in art and theater, and through this art unlike any other, can contribute to changing the perception of the audience if the inalienable right to say the truth on stage is reclaimed.

A profound truth through beauty and art that is born from the depths of society and is emitted through the hearts of the performers.

Women have not had the best place in this world, nor in theater, for centuries, for millennia we have been denied a voice and a presence on stage, unless they were sewing the costumes onto the actors, who represented the powerful, the nobility, and at the same time, this was a drama in itself sentencing women to be courtesans and cinderellas. These roles do not end here, for we see them all too often in these same roles in commercial theater.

The time has come for us to reenter the stage but in a different way, to invent a new theater space large enough for our whole body and our entire history. Just as Virginia Wolf suggested in A Room of One’s Own, we need a stage of our own, large enough for our whole body.

Because it is not enough to reenter the stage and represent women, we need to be able to create a different kind of theater that contributes to the demolition of the patriarchy.

That is why some of us in Colombia have The Festival of Women on Stage, where we all fit and where our theater emerges with a devastating force a different relationship between the private and the political and the public with the intimate.

It is a privilege for someone who thinks this way to be honored with such an award, and I am grateful.

I know many of the nominees and I would like them to know that I am incredibly humbled because any of them would have deserved this.

But it is a good thing that a woman from Colombia has received it and I am here with all the dignity that 49 years of working in theater has bestowed on me, throughout everyday of my life, having founded La Candelaria theater company alongside Santiago García, and a theater movement that brought together some of the most vigorous and committed performers in Latin America.

I am Colombian to the marrow of my bones, and this means that I am from a country that has a name of a dove but that is not at peace, a country that continues to battle against an old social and armed conflict, accumulated though decades and never resolved and the ever present hope for peace. I am a political activist and this brings me incredible joy because I stand alongside my fellow laborers and students from my country who fight everyday for access to land and education. And I am part of the Women’s Social Movement, and Women for Peace.

I stand here before you on stage to petition all U.S. women to join us in our search for peace through theater and art.

Thank you to the League of Professional Theater Women here in U.S., a country home to patriarchs and warriors, is too the country Emily Dickenson and Silvia Plath called home, the country with an 8 hour work day and a country that has shown me the bright side of New York, the illuminated side.

Getting to know the members of the League has been for me the greatest gift of my life. To have recognize
d the immense effort we do in Colombia to keep the theater open, producing original works of drama and building a public following that has always accompanied us, this is not a solitary act, and this is known and understood around the world.

To work with victims like us, we work together with Carlos Satizábal (la Corporacion de Teatro), this is not an isolated act because women who create inhabit the heart of the empire, and they listen to the voices from those of use who live on the other side of the world. And who are, as García Márquez would say, listening so that we do not continue to condemn ourselves to live another hundred years of solitude.

I would like to dedicate this award to my theater company La Candelaria, The women laborers of my country who are a prime example of struggle and dignity and to my extended family, who are, in addition to my brothers and sisters, my theater colleagues, my colleagues at the CCT, my feminist friends and all who at this very moment, dialogue for peace.