STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
these mediaeval practices was still embryonic and they were more impersonation than real
acting. As far as the connection with festivals is concerned, the commonly held view is
obviously far from the truth. Although they were an opportunity to let one’s hair down and
reverse the social hierarchy, they were also supervised, manipulated and even orchestrated by
the rulers, who used them as a form of social control. Machiavelli advises, ‘The prince should
arrange festivals and games for the people at certain times of year. Popular festivals can be used
and diverted for other social or political purposes, to assert one’s position and thereby maintain
the established order’ 91 .
This use of festivals for other purposes is similar to modern problems with street festivals. They
are an opportunity to watch performances, stay out in the streets until late, wander about eating
and drinking, but, directly or indirectly, they are always under the supervision of the local
council that organises them or provides the venue. The authorities ‘lend’ the streets and public
spaces for the festival, but they never relinquish control. To a certain extent, street arts in their
current form in France are akin to those mediaeval festivals they are said to resemble, but the
similarity is more in social regulation and crowd control.
Finally, the claim that street arts follow in the tradition of jugglers, barkers, puppeteers and
clowns is perhaps an attempt to give them a historical identity by making them part of the long
tradition of live shows. But the researcher Philippe Chaudoir believes that the analogy is
misleading; an important difference is the type of public space in which the artists from those
different periods perform. The public spaces in which the Feast of Unreason, Carnival and
travelling shows took place were nothing like the public spaces that street artists have chosen to
work in since 1968. The public spaces these ‘interventionists’ have tried to revive are seen as a
medium of communication for exchanging and forming opinions. This contemporary trend is an
attempt to foster togetherness. For those performers, the street is a space to be transformed into a
public gathering place. Their aim is for the community to reclaim the public space. This concept
of a public space can often be abstract, but in street performance it is a very physical concept.
Furthermore, street entertainers choose to perform in the street. That might seem so obvious that
it does not need to be pointed out, but it is fundamental: street entertainers are an urban and antiestablishment
phenomenon. They go ‘outdoors’ because they refuse to stay ‘indoors’. They do
not want to be hidebound by institutions; they want to reach out to the public, seek new artistic
experiences, go back to their community roots. In that respect, street artists have very little in
common with the mediaeval travelling showmen; in fact, they are deeply rooted in their time.
On the other hand, they revive the old traditions from which they claim to take their inspiration,
not nostalgically or with the idea of going back to them, but in a syncretic approach that seeks to
draw on the past in order to move forward.
2. Framework
2.1. Definitions
At the moment it is hard to find a definition that everyone in Europe agrees on. Different
countries, different festivals, and different artists use different terms, and these can only be seen
as indicators: street arts and street theatre (France), travelling theatre and arts (Belgium), theatre
in situ (Netherlands), new forms of artistic expression (Spain), animation (Germany),
entertainment (Britain), urban culture or communication, street shows, open air shows, shows in
91 Summary from Gonon, Anne, Qu’est ce que le théâtre de rue, study by the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Lyon,
2001.
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PE 375.307