FESTIVALS AS A TOOL

Results of the Round table at the International Festival of Contemporary Theatre

HOMO NOVUS 2005 in Riga

September 16, 2005 , 10–13 at the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia

SHORT CUTS OF THE DISCUSSION

Rose Fenton (FIT moderator, London):

Eight festivals working with contemporary theatre and performance have come together to explore the present role, but also the potential future impact of contemporary performing art festivals in forging a new sense of Europe. Festivals are building a network of ideas sharing there experiences and practices, developing professional strategies and exploring new models of collaboration which are involving a whole range of partners across different sectors.

The European Union doesn’t have a culture policy. But actually, how can we forge the Europe today without having a very clear cultural policy? The work we will be doing in these meeting is important in getting the EU to think through what the implications are for a cultural policy.

What are the roles of festivals? First of all, festivals absolutely exist, for artistic reasons, for visions of artists and their practice and sharing that with the wide public. Festivals also can be seen as experimental zones of sociability. So how can we explore our differences as well as our commonalities through the spaces created by the festivals, locally, nationally and internationally: the role of the arts never was to change society but rather to n u r t u r e a changing society.

Zane Kreicberga (Festival director Homo Novus, Riga):

At Homo Novus every time we try to rethink what we would like to present as something new this time. That is why the festival is changing from year to year. Especially this year we thought not only to present good performances but more about the process (workshops, productions of very young actors)

Nowadays people apply this notion Festival to very many different events, there can be a beer festival and a music festival. This is why I ask to look under this notion and to see what are the functions, the programs or continuous effects it can bring. There are many levels: the local and international artists, the exchange happening, the ordinary audience who usually see this presentational level.

Daniels Pavļuts (State Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Riga):

It is the first time that such a group sits around the table to share ideas and this is important. In a sense from the sociological and ecological point of view festivals are an inevitable reaction in a changing arts world. The festivals really become an option, a possibility to explore new things, to mobilize the tension to a particular expression of an artistic creation. A counterforce to an institutionalised culture with an accumulative effect over time.

There is a limited amount of state money and the number of the festivals is increasing so it means that the search of segmentation of festivals will be inevitable. There are some festivals with major national importance which is the case with Homo Novus that is firmly embedded in the cultural scene of this country.

We have now added an international cultural dimension - , this is a very new thing to us too - as a component of external culture policy. But until now we haven’t discussed much, on the level of culture policy documents, of how we are actually doing externally outreaching cultural policy in this country.

Ojārs Pētersons (Board chairman of the Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia):

The Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia is built to have, in my opinion, the most democratic principles of making decisions in Latvia. The decision making mechanism is formed to be, of course, political but also professional. In fact, the only criteria to get money is quality acknowledged in professional circles. The festival Homo Novus receives this support which is due to the fact that this quality is shown.

Ieva Kalniņa (Fead of the Department of the Cultural Policy at the Cultural Department of the Riga City Council):

The reasons why the City supports the festival are very concrete: the festival encourages great creative potentials, another thing is that it is a regular event and the third reason is that Homo Novus is an open festival. The regularity helps to promote the image of the city in an international scale and that is how it brings values to the city. The open form of the festival means that Homo Novus corresponding to local necessities can variate. In my opinion it is a very effective and mobile instrument.

Sanita Rozenšteina (Furniture salon Grīvas mēbeles, supporter and sponsor of the festival, Riga):

In fact me with my husband are a mini-model of the society, because I am always coming to him with crazy ideas and he sees things more from the view of material profit. To get this particular project through to him Homo Novus helped my process a lot with their seriously prepared package. We don’t intend to offer our clients entertainment or campaigns because our policy is different. We want to offer them quality. It is also good advertising.

The association with the Homo Novus Festival has done a great deal in dispelling prejudice about contemporary artists and their audiences - the people who come to our events are humane and calm - and we are able to reach and interest them.

Zane Kreicberga:

I think this is a beginning of completely different kind of cooperation with partners from the private sector that they start to get this wider understanding of why to support cultural events. I think it’s important to be educated with these things. I think there is a change in minds of people in their sector. They are thinking wider of what art can give them and not only in this very direct way of recognising or advertising.

It is also important to have within arts organisations the language and the skills to negotiate with the private sector in order to reach a mutual and clear understanding.

Antti Hietala (Artistic director of Q-teatteri, Helsinki, Finland):

There are also questions when a theatre or a theatre festival is going to the sponsor business which may move you to a zone where you don’t want to be. As long as you want to do your work as independently as possible going into the business world inevitably changes things. To a certain point this is positive but when 20-30, even 50% of your annual income comes from these kinds of cooperations, suddenly you are not anymore a theatre but an agency for the companies.

Daniels Pavļuts

There is a need to balance income. The State has to be able to pay for risk – financial and creative. Yet the Festival has to be relevant to audiences and other funding partners.

Lolita Cauka (Director of the Baltic Contemporary Drama Festival VIEW, Riga):

I very well see what is the interest of the actors of the state theatre to these kinds of festivals and how actively they participate. And this participation in Homo Novus is very minimal. What is the target audience of this festival, who is it meant for? Also , the Festival can only be judged in the longer term by its aftertaste – what does it leave behind, and especially here in Riga.

Dzintars Zilgalvis (Director of the art projects NOASS and BETANOVUS, partner of the festival Homo Novus, Riga):

NOASS was in fact made as an experimental space and the basic idea was to look for new forms of expression. It was difficult enough to establish this in the environment of the city or the society because it demands pretty big resources. This year there was also a project Video Art Plus which means video art plus poetry, plus theatre, plus modern dance, plus cinema, plus music, and all these we tried to combine and present in the city. We also do a great deal in educating our colleagues in the contemporary art environment, including organising seminars. Modern people are renaissance people who are interested in and can operate across all art forms in the Arts.

Zane Kreicberga:

About the audience in general, in the last festival in 2003 some very big performances were successful also in the numbers of spectators and in average we had the audiences were filled 90 per cent. So there is interest but why there is so little of interest from the theatre people, this is a problem. But I see that the young generation is very open and they are coming also to our seminars and workshops and to guest performances during the year.

Ieva Kalniņa:

My first reaction to your comment was that those who love traditional theatre have every evening a possibility to attend to some event but experimental theatre there is only once in a few years. This is really a problem of directors and theatres where these directors are working if they are not interested in expanding their knowledge about creative experiments and possibilities to develop their own creations.

Priit Raud (Artistic director of the festival Baltoscandal, partner of FIT, Rakvere, Estonia):

About the previous theme, we have the same problem in Estonia. But I don’t understand what’s the rush in getting them to the performances. Do we want to do the festival for the theatre people? I don’t think so, I think we want to do it for some other audience. If the theatre people want to come and have time to come, then they’ll come.

Ginta Tropa (Cultural Adviser of the Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office in Latvia):

The Nordic Council of Ministers’ Office is a collabaration organisation between the governments of the Nordic countries. We are not only supporting arts but sometimes also initiating arts projects. According to our experience, it is very difficult for experimental things to get support. Only now they are starting to be acknowledged. This year it is the first time we are officially supporting Homo Novus. In general, we are looking for initiatives of local culture operators, really looking for new ideas, new languages of expression.

It is important not only to export recent ahievements of one country but also to create this meeting place, to create a dialogue so people can learn from each other and to create joing projects. Festivals can provide this extra value.

Daina Ostrovska (Manager of the Arts and Science Projects in the British Council, Riga):

The British Council in Latvia works mostly with partnerships with the major organisations and institutions of arts field. Our main task is to advance, develop and support links between arts professionals. Therefore I wouldn’t like to give up with the Latvian actors and directors working in big repertory theatres. It’s not only about exporting performances, but may be influencing different fields of art and collaboration between artists. The British Council is also a very bureaucratic organisation and we have a ticking box of impact, sustainability, how we measure it.

Tilmann Broszat (Artistic director of the festival SPIELART, initiator of FIT, Munich, Germany):

The notion experimental theatre is often used to describe non-dramatic forms of theatre , it is not really an accurate word: I can’t see any contemporary art not being an experiment. My impression is, that this word is often used to classify a certain theatre as second class or marginal theatre.

Our festival can be regarded as a sort of transfer institution. (transferring artists from the city to the outside world, from the outside to the city, transfer between the art genres, transfer of spaces etc.).We have a very appropriate structure of funding in this both local and international festival. We are funded by a cultural association which is funded partly by the City of Munich, and partly by the global player BMW Group.

I think there is a danger in the notion cultural identity. For the local cultural authorities it is of course important to support local art. But this is often legitimated with “we have to keep our cultural identity”. If you follow the artistic moves of an artist, you’ll find out, that he will not move along the centres of the power (state, cultural institutions etc.), but exocentric in relation to these. The artist moves around the borderlines and he is more interested in the fragmentary world than in the identity. And that’s why to me this trans-nationality is at the beginning of the arts and not a result of European arts management.

Priit Raud:

I’m an artistic director of the biannual festival Baltoscandal. It is an international festival that started already in 1990 but it is in the tiny town Rakvere, where basically nothing happens. The festival includes pretty much all you can think of under the name of performance arts. The festival is always taking over the town but at the same time the attendance of the local people to the festival is minimum, although it is getting bigger and bigger. Basically our audience comes from all over but not from Rakvere.

There is a great deal of discussion about the support we get from the city - taxpayers are of course asking why so much money is invested in Baltoscandal and not in new costumes for our folkdance group.

For these four days of the festival it is the main thing in Estonia, not only within art but really in the news as well. The tendency is that most of the people are talking about the festival and especially those who have never been there. It’s prestigious to talk about it.

And also the fact that it has existed for many years already so it’s easier to talk about it and quite fancy. It is hard to find a person who hasn’t heard about it. Also the people who have never been there think that they know what it is.

And we want to provoke, but provoke people to think thoughts they didn’t know they were having before. We are not provoking only with the program but also with the way we are showing it.

 

You can also follow the debate over the coming months on the FIT website, as the results of each discussion will be posted for all to read.

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