9th International Street Artists Festival - BONDS OF CULTURE
2 - 5 JULY, 2008 - SZCZECIN
There are different kinds of journeys. Some are brave, challenging, baldly annexing places and landscapes. Some are careful, calmly penetrating the delicate structure of matter. There are inner journeys and those undertaken against the linear nature of time. A journey is always an unstable tension between the beginning and the distant and rather arbitrary goal, a mental trace of the uncertainty principle, almost an alchemical process, canonical feedback of a traveler and his route. A fascination with the journey and the traveller as someone 'on his way' has become the basic element, or rather the main bond of the this year's 9th International Street Artists' Festival. However, while considering the issue in a wider sense, in its symbolic dimension, we have tried to invite conscious artists, engaged, with passion, determination, and the kind of steadfastness, visible in the honesty of action, and a skill that is reflected in the quality of performance.
The energy of such an artist permanently damages static structures, draws in even an accidental, surprised spectator, regardless of the place and form of presentation. That is why we intentionally do not limit ourselves to traditional street art; we understand that a Street Artist looks for an intensive relationship with a spectator, for a message devoid of the artificial, received in a dangerously close contact in the street, having the courage to exhibit themselves and their work in public. Hence the Festival includes also classical musicians, studio actors, and ensembles specializing in avantgarde outdoor performances, and artists referring to traditional conventions, albeit often in a perverse manner.
The intriguing nature of a journey provoked us to invite groups drawing from the traditions of wandering theaters: from Greece (HOROS Theater Company), Central Europe (Teatro Tatro), Italy (Due Mondi) or the medieval market theater (Stella Polaris). We will also present the Hungarian BUDA FOLK BAND, (a second generation of travellers to the lands saturated with the most traditional of Hungarian music, that is... Transylvania, and Mitsoura), an outstanding Roma singer, known from the films as Tony Gatlif, which in her latest performance sings traditional songs with ultramodern arrangements, and an unusually original group of Indian musicians from Rajasthan, with the much-saying name MUSAFIR (Wanderer).
The festival does not avoid local tracks in Szczecin. A Polish-Israeli spectacle Salto Mortale alludes to the story of pianos left by Soviet soldiers in the area of Dąbie Lake, where 'in the sun and rain, forgotten, opening warped cases, became more and more similar to rotten coffins...'. Willem Schulz, discovering the traces of his father's home town, has composed a piece especially for the festival, which will be performed in the performance-musical Orion - the music of the city. The next Szczecin path will be the performance by BALTIC NEOPOLIS ORCHESTRA - a concert of string chamber orchestra, by the best young musicians in the area. The meandering inner journey, in a search for the essence of human nature will be the subject matter of the spectacles by Teatro Do Mar from Portugal, the AMT Theater Company from Russia and premiere performance at the Kana Theater, "Where to?!"
The idea of a journey will be complemented by the wandering form of the festival - artistic incursion into the the Folklore Art Festival in Strzelewo.
It will be intense. Classical. Traditional. Ethical. Avantgarde. And international, just like a intense journey.
Maybe a some kind of atavism, and maybe a peculiar emanation makes us stay longer by the tranvellers. Then it may happen that the intensity of the meeting will nullify the host-guest dychotomy, the division into a participant and observer. Roads starts to tangle, time alters, and the visible does not compete with the barely sensed. It happens...
Teatr Kana
