STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
On the other hand it was/is easy for business companies to hire a group of actors to perform
street theatre like JWT did at the National Beer Wholesalers Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada
to revitalize the image of the company in October 2005.
6. Living closer to street – living closer to European citizenship
Looking at the EU area and its single countries we are aware of comparing different territories,
climatic conditions, cultures, different speed of economic developments, organizations, all kinds
of attitudes etc. Within last 15 years, however, the political, economical and social changes in
newly EU incorporated countries are enormous including cultural integration and sharing. Both
"europeanization" and globalization processes are being woven together. They sometimes
combine rediscovered European elements which were abandoned and suppressed during the
communist totalitarian regimes, and non-European traditional and contemporary elements which
are new to all the EU countries. On the contrary, the art is a phenomenon, which is much more
socially and valuably stable than other features of a society and its culture. Art can be found
everywhere. It may have many levels of artistic value and could be understood and shared
across the ethnicities, language, behavior and other barriers. Especially arts that are independent
on spoken or written language, such as sculptures, paintings, instrumental music, dance, ballet,
cartoons, happenings, circus and combined forms of street theatre. There is one important and
approved principle derived from the historical sociology and art-history throughout the
centuries: There is no direct and linear ratio between the artistic creation and the wealth of a
given community, noble estates, religious entity, knighthood, kingdom, urban and semi-urban
areas, towns, cities and countries. The top valued and generations-addressing art was often born
in miserable social and/or materialistic conditions. Grotowski intentionally looked for such
conditions within his Poor Theatre. See the unavoidable conditions of Russian (non-conform)
artists before 1990 and economically paralyzed theatre in Russia after 1990. The other thing is,
that the possible reward and better social status always attracted and pushed talented artists to
look for culture centers, foreign countries, patrons, employing institutions, artistic commissions
and well paid positions – shortly for urban areas. Such a support later on enabled artists to
employ all their talents and creativity in order to reach higher artistic and social appreciation, to
win their public and to influence their followers. The bad side of this social ladder climbing is
the misuse of advertisement and business.
From these characteristics it is obvious that (1) generally the art itself is enough flexible and
enough communicative to become a regular tool for linking cultures and different nations in the
frame of EU (which is happening daily in Europe anyway). Even more, (2) the art which does
not need spoken or written language and which is ´closer to street´ has almost no limits in
addressing foreign (European) public, and foreigners can easily address the local inhabitants.
Among those (3) the street art forms have ambitions to become the universal and unlimited
speakers of different national cultures and of the united Europe at the same time. The main
topics, themes and civilization guidelines are the same or very similar as the result of the
common history, existence and experience in Europe such as: contacts with the Roman Empire,
ancient Greek inherited culture, “barbaric origin”, Christianity, Latin as the universal language,
united in crusades, wars, reformation, overseas discoveries and trade, crafts, money, arts, print,
politics etc.
We see in the history of Gypsies how their music and dance were never connected to a special
place and how this space-non-determined art survived for say eight centuries. They carried their
space along. The theatrical space is one of the 20 features of any theatre as stated by D. J.
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PE 375.307