STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

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Street Artists in Europe
Today, in the context of globalisation and the end of the welfare state, cultural policies have
become destabilised and the European countries must re-establish them by decentralising them
and engaging more with all cultural actors, be they local authorities or associations and
networks. Anne-Marie Autissier also calls for support for and wider dissemination of such
initiatives in order to help ‘national cultural policies to acquire the tools for closer multilateral
cooperation’, and for ‘greater account to be taken of new specific art forms and a better
approach to relations with audiences 153 .’
Whilst the approaches to cultural policy of the various European countries reflect certain
common denominators and similar priorities, profoundly rooted in the spirit of democracy, their
differences and the way they developed were to affect the instruments and quality of that
‘multilateral cooperation’, the recognition of ‘new specific art forms’ and ‘the approach to
relations with audiences’. Those three aspects have a close bearing on the question of the
political and intellectual legitimation of street arts.
1.4. Street arts in the context of live performance
Although policies of support for live performances exist in most European countries, they do not
always relate to the same areas of art. Street arts are very often relegated to the fluctuating limits
of a certain concept of culture and of live performance. Live performance can be characterised
by its universal dimension in that ‘it is, in the west, a unique feature of civilisation’ 154 , which
has made a profound contribution to ‘forming a common European area’ 155 . Moreover, live
performance gives prominence to ‘an ephemeral moment that is shared in common’ 156 , unlike
the individual relationship that is established with a work of the plastic arts. It is deeply rooted
in a social, political and cultural environment. That means its definition can change, ‘given that
the integration of what are known as minor arts (operetta, jazz, circus, puppets) has been
followed by the inclusion of new expressions of popular culture (e.g. rock music, chanson, street
arts, electronic music)’ 157 .
That is the crux of the matter: as ‘new expressions of popular culture’, street arts face a real
problem of political awareness and recognition in Europe. In the review Mouvement, Jean-Marc
Adolphe and Pierre Sauvageot write: ‘At European level, definitions of “street arts” are
proliferating’ 158 . Various expressions are used, from one country to another, one festival to
another, one artist to another: 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 public spaces, in open spaces, outside the walls, urban arts… That plethora of
terms raises questions, on the one hand, about the concept of art, which in its contemporary
form tends to flirt with if not be mistaken for the everyday, and on the other hand about the
concept of the street, which varies from northern to southern Europe (here it is largely the
climate that shapes habits and customs as well as cultural practices) and from western to eastern
Europe.
153
Ibid., p. 2.
154
Lacombe, Robert, Le spectacle vivant en Europe: modèle d’organisation et politiques de soutien, op. cit., p. 32.
155
Ibid.
156
Ibid.
157
Ibid., p. 33.
158
Adolphe, Jean-Marc, Sauvageot, Pierre, A la rue, op. cit., p. 97.
PE 375.307