STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
these spaces represent culture? And which culture do they represent? What is the
measure of their accessibility? Can we still talk about the presence of the unpredictable
and the fortuitous in these spaces?
Although there are efforts to harmonise regulations concerning street arts and
cultural events taking place in public spaces, researches show that there is still a great
variety in the way arts occupy the street and the square. This variety is partly due to the
radically different traditions of the use of public space in the member states, and to the
heterogeneity of the organisations involved.
In order to see the problematic of diversity of the regulations concerning street
arts and cultural events in public spaces, I propose to imagine a street theatre production
that travels all through Europe, from France to Hungary, and thus faces different
administrative acts at each location, potentially detouring the original artistic concept.
The vague comparison of the French and Hungarian cases highlights the different
attitudes expressed by the authorities.
In France one witnesses an increasing specification of the public space, with a
regulation specialised to assure all details of the event. In Hungary, on the contrary, the
travelling theatre would find several legislational layers, coming into operation
according to the property and legal structure of the planned location. From an Eastern
European point of view (see the interview with the New Theatre Institute of Latvia), the
regulations in the West are very restricted, exaggerated indeed, aiming to cover all
possibilities. The same phenomenon from a theoretical perspective could be described as
a systematic overprotection of the public space that renders it predictable and
inaccessible for certain productions. In this view the permission of an event is given not
because of the artistic quality but because of the technical preparedness, where security
exigencies often function as pretexts for cultural and political censorship.
As José Rubio 305 states it, security issues occupy an increasing part of the work
of the street art organiser. While preparing an event, one has to contact both the
municipality and the prefecture, the former being responsible to assure the order and
security in the public domain. The applications for authorisation need to be handed to the
municipality long before the planned date of the event. This temporal distance depends
on the scale and importance of the event, but may even mean 4-5 months. A technical
dossier also has to be given to the municipality, and has to contain an inventory of the
potential dangers and the means of prevention at the organisers' disposal.
Another problem is the unsatisfactory accessibility of the regulations; they are
relatively unknown, or difficult to understand. Consequently, another task is to inform
the organisers and the street artists about the modifications regularly. The harmonisation
of the European Union law system leads to further complications, especially concerning
the decorations and pyrotechnics where there are new obligations and constraints
introduced.
In contrast to the standardising tendencies, the regulation of the street arts and
cultural events in public spaces is rather fragmented in the Eastern countries of Europe.
In Hungary, for instance, the disintegration of the public realm, including urban public
spaces reflects the conditions of the confusing structure of property and responsibilities.
To understand the features of the post-socialist urban space, one has to take into
consideration the tradition of its uses. In the eastern side of the iron curtain public spaces
were almost uniquely used for the official political representation parades, where
spontaneous use and civilian gatherings were practically suspended for decades. The fall
of communism thus brought along a vacuum of meaning in the public spaces, where a
305 Interview with technical director, La Villette, France.
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PE 375.307