STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
Michel Simonot lists the specific characteristics identified by the street artists that the working
group on street arts spoke to. The list is as follows 105 :
‘- the street is first and foremost a spirit, and only then a place or a space:
- we are, above all, not in “conventional” settings;
- our work is interdisciplinary, a mixture of styles;
- there are special acting techniques;
- we experiment, we do not follow the rules;
- we are free, we have no institutional constraints;
- in our shows, we look at everyday life in an imaginative way;
- unlike stage performers, we have direct contact with the public;
- performances are inspired by the relationship with the audience, we work directly with them;
- our relationship is with a crowd, passers-by, in other words a non-selected, non-elitist
audience;
- the whole population is our audience, since we are in their midst;
- our productions are designed to be adaptable to different situations (venues, commissions,
etc.);
- solidarity is a fundamental value, both in life and in the troupe, and between troupes;
- with us, there is no separation, no hierarchy of roles: acting, building, setting up and taking
down …;
- we are directly involved with the materials, the production;
- and also with the weather, the climate, street life;
- we travel from place to place, we are not confined’.
Just by bursting on to the scene, street artists transform any venue into a performance space.
Actors suddenly appear and, by drawing a virtual circle, establish a performance space. A
distance is created between actors and passers-by, who thus become spectators. That is the
strength of street arts: the distance creates a parallel world that we know claims to be real.
5. Artistic techniques
Here we shall continue to investigate certain fields of research in order to define artistic forms of
street arts in more detail. The aim will be to describe the modes of expression, and the diversity
of this field, by attempting to classify the art forms.
105 Simonot, M.,’L’art de la rue: scène urbaine, scène commune’, op. cit.
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PE 375.307