FESTIVALS AS GENERATORS NAD CIRCULATORS OF NEW IDEAS, PROFESSIONAL, LABORATORIAL AND COMMUNITY EVENTS
Results of the Round table at the International Vilnius Theatre Festival SIRENOS 2005
October 1 st, 2005, 11.00-14.30 at the Vilnius State Small Theatre
::: SHORT CUTS OF THE DISCUSSION
Rose Fenton (FIT moderator, London):
F.I.T. is an initiative of eight different festivals. This is a third F.I.T. discussion. And these eight festivals from across the Central and Eastern Europe: the Baltic’s, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia are meeting over the next year to really explore the impact and the potential both the present and the future of festivals in building a new sense and understanding of the emerging Europe through the arts. In fact the key characteristics of these festivals are presenting and producing a contemporary work, engaging with new, exploring new forms. It is always quite difficult, because this work is often going off the map of peoples understanding what the theatre is. and engaging people in very challenging, provocative and interesting way. But in fact through this work there is a kind of sense. that we can both be celebrating our communality across the Europe and also investigating and acknowledging our differences. This notion of F.I.T. as a way of building a network and showing ideas in practice is very important.
The European Union does not have cultural policy. We have an economic policy and a lot of discussions, but culture has not featured so highly in the European Union as a kind of strategy, as a sense of building the Europe. There have been no serious efforts to invest in an understanding of the feelings, the emotions and indeed the imaginations of people and individuals to provoke somehow a true interest for their future existence in Europe in its widest sense. And it’s most fundamental sense that’s of culture.
And of course the EU is supporting this F.I.T. project and a number of other European cultural initiatives. and are waiting of the results of these conversations with great interest. We will be presenting a report at the end of the year, but also as the discussions evolve they will be posted on the website of F.I.T. So this is the opportunity for all of you here to have your voice, to be heard by the European Union.
The festival is a generator and circulator of the new ideas and also has very strong notion of educational, training role. What are the pressures here and what are the pleasures? There are always these two conflicting sides. And also the sense of society: what is the civic role of the festival beyond that is often perceived as the closed artistic world. How do we open into a larger conversation? How do festivals realize this role? What are their strategies? What are the pressures? So, these are some of the issues we will be looking at for next couple of hours.
Elona Bajorinienė (artistic director of the festival Sirens, Vilnius):
In the philosophy of our festival for me, the most difficult is a permanent investigation of the triangle, which stands as a basement for every event: first, new reality, which will always be new, second, the reflections of an artists to that new reality, to its challenges and third corner, which is extremely important for us, is the audience, because we would like to be open to an audience as broad as possible or to the various segments of society. This festival is focused not only on experimental or investigating performances but also we think that the dialogue with let’s say the general audiences is very important in the Lithuanian context.
It is our position that we are trying to fill in the ‘white spots’ of the cultural or theatrical landscape of Lithuania when we design the program me of the festival. When we make a seminar we are filing the gap that we feel in theatre education or management education, when we make an international discussion we again are filing a gap of this kind of international discussions that we do not have in our regular cultural life, when we are doing the Lithuanian theatre showcase we are providing the only opportunity for Lithuanian theatre makers to meet international partners, because our theatres do not organize national festival or special showcase by themselves. So, this festival is a really good opportunity to make complex impulses on different sides of theatre or cultural life and we never know in advance which side will be the strongest one. You can experience it only during the festival.
I would say that other festivals have more experience and better results then we in this field of investing, commissioning into Lithuanian local productions. I would say that it is a longer perspective indeed, in the future maybe we would like to make co productions, but not in that sense that different organizations are putting money together and then one theatre is touring to those countries which has invested into there piece. For me much more difficult and much more interesting would be a real collaboration between artists, but I am afraid of this way, because it seems a bit artificial. Artists have to find each other in their own way and the only things we can do is to provide a framework, create a favorable situation and have luxury money. I would prefer this way even though it does not bring quick results.
Rūta Prusevičienė (executive manager of Vilnius Festival, Vilnius):
In Lithuania it is impossible for arts and culture manage rs to have just one job, you should occupy much more. I occupy two and I am in so many committees on culture in the Municipality and the Ministry of Culture, because you have to be very creative in order to get good relationships, to lobby and to build social economic and other partnerships.
Audronis Imbrasas (director of the festival New Baltic Dance, Vilnius):
I would not say that we cooperate among the festivals. I would say that we cooperate as people, as personalities. We know each other and we cooperate on other projects.
It is unfortunate that I have to repeat it for 10 years, but contemporary dance does not have its own place in Lithuania. That was the first and initial idea to start the festival, to promote contemporary dance as such and to implement this art form in Lithuania and in all the Baltic region. Finally, we have very interesting results, for example we impacted on contemporary dance in Kazakhstan of course as well as in Vilnius. We also impacted on the development of satellite festival in Kaliningrad and so on. So, yes, we have partnership, but mostly with dance institutions and dance festivals in, I would say, all over the world.
Rūta Prusevičienė:
From the side of the festival, we had seen and experienced that we really have educated governmental institutions, our private sponsors and the audience. They have changed.
I would say that the governmental institutions also lack general strategies for what are the key players in the arts and culture field. Lithuania has no real culture market. So, there should be governmental and political strategies in this area. Festivals are such strong tools for creating the image of the country and they did a lot for that. Two years ago we persuaded the Vilnius City Municipality to establish public institution Vilnius Festivals, which covers five different genres festivals in Vilnius city. It is a result of our lobbying that we persuaded the City Municipality to accept the idea that they should get involved very strongly.
Elona Bajorinienė:
I have to say that for Sirens festival the establishment of Vilnius Festivals was absolutely crucial, because it was a chance to start the new theatre festival in Lithuania.
Audronis Liuga (director of the festival New Drama Action, Vilnius):
We do not call ourselves a festival, I do not call myself a manager. In fact I am a theatre critic. I call our work a personal initiative. We have started with new plays, introducing new texts, but now we do not feel this necessity to continue working with the new play as a play. 10 years ago Harold Pinter was the most contemporary playwright, now theatres are doing readings, play presentations, and now we do not feel the necessity going this way anymore. Now we feel the necessity to go on this risky, maybe partisan research of theatre means for us nowadays together with the artists we know, that we personally appreciate, with whom we feel we have something like a common group of blood. I am really happy that artists as Kristian Smeds and Árpád Schilling would like to go to this journey here, in Vilnius.
Rose Fenton:
From what you have said I see big picture of landscape of international cultural collaboration. Vilnius is going to be the Cultural Capital in 2009 and I was wandering whether in fact one of the reasons for this successful proposal was because of this festivals organization too. I am getting the sense that there is
a very good sense of partnership in this city.
Jurgis Giedrys (head of Arts Department of Ministry of Culture, Vilnius):
We support the Sirens festival, because, as Elona mentioned, there was about five year’s gap when we did not have an international theatre festival in Lithuania at all. This festival makes impact on the development of our society, on the artistic education of our theatre professional, it gives an opportunity for our artists and creators to share experience with the colleagues from other countries. The main problem, as organizes of the festivals can confirm, is the amount in the budget line for the festivals. From the other side I can say that we are lucky because in the budget of the Ministry of Culture we have a separate special line for supporting international festivals here in Lithuania. We are trying to divide it according to the proportion of the artistic genres.
I cannot see this tension between artists, maybe because many of local artists are involved in the international festivals movement.
Elona Bajorinienė:
Recently in the cultural press I have read that literature people think that money committed to the international festivals is money that goes for nothing, because festivals are just fireworks. In their opinion guest theatre groups or musicians are coming to show one or two performances and that is it, that it is a matter of one group.
We have to be clear here, we really have very small money for culture. If we get the same amount every year, it means that every year we get less, because prices are growing. I think it is a political question. I do not have a big hope that the situation will change.
Audronis Imbrasas:
I have a short comment. I think there is a tension between festivals and local artists, because there is a part of artistic community, which thinks that it would be more reasonable to spend those resources on them rather than on foreign artists. But I also do not agree with Elona that there is not enough money for culture. I would say that we have proportion, which we have, and it is quite ok for Lithuania, but we do not have a cultural policy. The percentage of budget, which we have for culture, is spent not in the most reasonable way.
Dragan Klaic(Permanent Fellow, Felix Meritis Foundation, Amsterdam):
The fact is that Lithuanian cultural spending is among the lowest in Europe. And then there comes the question of inefficient spending on expensive and not very productive things. But it is a fact that you have wasted 15 years and have not reformed your cultural system or created a radical reform of cultural policy. 12 Ministers of Culture that you had did not do that. Perhaps it is not a nice to say that as a guest, but that is a fact.
Audronis Liuga:
It is not a question of amount of money; it is a question of collaboration. A collaboration based on sharing risk, because anyway if you want to find something you have to go on risk. Otherwise you can stay on routine. Never mind it is a state or private institution or how big it is sharing risk is just a question of collaboration and trust to the idea and the artists.
Jadwiga Oleradzka (director of the festival Kontakt, Torun):
There is just one problem that I am facing and it is related to the problems you were discussing in the firs t part. My problem is that we do not face all these difficulties you were talking here about. Our problems and things we are working with are quite different.
From now on the practice is that at the end of the year I have to apply for a grant for three years. That means that today I know how much money I will have for the coming three years. But this is a new practice, which came into being after the new minister came. Before that, the date when I knew how much money exactly I will have was the 2 nd of March and our festival takes place in the last week of May. So our work reminds of kamikaze: we invite people and then we wait and look what we can do. We hope that from now on it will be easier, because now we know about the situation for the three years ahead. But governments change…
Tilmann Broszat (artistic directorof the festival SPIELART, Munich) :
I am from Munich, from the SPIELART festival in Germany. In our terms it is a low budget festival. So for us it is a challenge to initiate or to co-produce projects. Our means are very restricted. Sometimes we get some additional funding from the City. Mainly we can do one or two projects for each festival when have some kind of co-production engagements.
What we are missing in Munich is this cooperation system with steady institutions, which are working all-year-round that you have here. In Munich we are fighting for years that there should be something like a performing arts center, which exists in other cities in Germany.
At the moment we have the situation, that in many countries culture is regarded the only sphere, which remains in the hands of local governments They try to keep “national identity” by supporting only local artists. I see a little danger in this. By making these artists some kind of representatives of the State, the funding center does not respond to the center of the artistic idea. I think there is a transnational, trans-boarder movement and artists often resists their government by finding their own identity in opposition to what is normal or common. I think there is a danger in peeling up a new idea of cultural identity, which I think does not fit in these times.
Kristian Smeds (playwright, theatre director, Kayani):
When you go to work abroad, the first question is why? There two good reasons for that: firsts is money and the second is fame. But if you do take these two points as priorities, then the problems will start.
If festivals are dealing with this kind of cooperation, as an artist I think that you need quite a lot of time. I have been working and rehearsing in Estonia for four months before the première. You need time because the cultures are different. The reason why I am coming to work here is that Lithuania has a very special place in my heart. That is the most honest answer I can give you. The salary I am getting when I come to the Baltic States is twice less than I would get in Finland. You have to find other values then that. For me sometimes it is going towards the unknown. In that travel to the unknown I am expecting support. I guess it should be more human and spiritual support than any other.
As an artist I think of course that the main thing is showing your work in the festival, but it is also important to see the works of other artists. That is why from the point of view of an artist it would be great that the schedule would give you a possibility to see the performances of the other artists and maybe even have a discussion with them during your stay in the festival. But usually when you come to a festival, you have a day for setting-up, one or two days of performing and then you leave. I think the festivals should find some funding which would allow the artists to stay for the whole festival and see its program and have chance for communication and discussions.
Tilmann Broszat:
I really like what you have said. We always try to find possibilities to invite the artists to stay not just for their own performance, but also longer. I must say that this is one of the reasons to make conferences about theatre performances. Usually it is not so much about the arts discourses, but we do it just to make a possibility for artists to stay longer, because it is easer to get money for a conference than for the invitation of theatre performances.
Dragan Klaic:
In my view it is one of the key functions of the festival. Not only to present art but to advance and stimulate reflection and discourse of the artistic community. To organize opportunities for the discourse for the artistic community within the frame of the festival gets together to talk which often does not happen otherwise. Also to have this discourse provoked, advanced, stimulated by the presents and engagement of artists and artistic intermediaries and experts from abroad. It sound very opportunistic when you say that, Tilmann. But actually what you are doing is not opportunistic. I think it is very essential and important for every festival. So many festivals had been crucial platforms where the artistic community was able to recognize its real common interests, to articulate them and then to advocate them at home and internationally. So, this reflective and analytical function of the festival I think is one of the key reasons to have all these festivals.
Audronis Liuga:
We are living in a time where there are famous artists whose performances are just jumping from one place to another. For the artists who want to do a research on their work and are looking for the collaboration it is crucial, because the collaboration cannot start just from some made programs, which are just schemes presented to the artist. This was the way in which we had collaborated with one international or let’s say intercultural program initiated by Chris Torch. There were successes and there were disadvantages. It was a research project called SEAS. It was a good example in what way this instrument could work and it what way it cannot. I think that it is very important that the State, which is supporting the festival, would be reasonable. It is important that this money could be allocated for artists to go on research: stay in a new place, to meet artists they want to collaborate with. We need to understand that we are living in a time in which there is a big demand from great artists to have a success, to make good selling productions, to make performances, which could be co-produced. Everybody in the society itself forces artists to be successful. I want to stress very clearly that big artists should have a possibility to not to go to this products making competition all the time.
Rose Fenton:
Is this a role that festivals could take on or maybe festivals in partnership with producing venues? I think you are right, it is very important. We always come back to this sense of the art work as a product, as opposed to nurturing the process of the making of the artwork. It is a tendency for many festivals to focus on. A product for constantly hungry and sometimes not so interested audience. I think many festivals are really grappling with this issue.
There are a lot of agencies such as Goethe Institute, British Council, French Institute who we work with very naturally as festivals. Do we feel that there is a pressure to present a particular view of other country through the recommendations of these international cultural institutes? Are we given a particular pallet to choose from?
Dasha Krijanskaia (scholar Roosevelt Academy, Middelburg):
I think that the problems with these international agencies in Eastern Europe go deeper than just the presenting. The question is whether this affects the artists who are involved in co-production? Everyone know that choosing the German play would give more financial opportunities for an artist than taking a play from Czech Republic for example. So the presence of these institutions in a way slip into involuntary censorship for an artist and in fact affect his or her choices.
Tilmann Broszat:
I totally agree with that. You have to be very aware of this process in programming. If you are the programmer and the budged director, as most of us are, you have to be very careful that you would not walk into these traps, which are of course there.
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