STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
spectators do not finance any special health assurance (or they just realise the obligatory
minimum), in Hungary festival organisers tend always to perform above the obligatory
minimum. The reason of this is very simple. Accidents and cases of death may result in the
formation of a very negative image on festivals. While in Europe, two or three cases of grave
accidents is an acceptable minimum, in Hungary even one case would put in danger the income
related to ticket selling’ 310 .
Well, an oppressing statement of a proud and self-confident doctor from Budapest, that is hard
to accept entirely. However, it shows that security and health assurance is a basic preoccupation
of festivals’ and large art events’ organisers. Without being too cynical, one may say that
marketing and also economic interests of organiser companies are in this case in the service of
consumers, and tend to ameliorate, year by year the precautionary measures…
3.2. The choice of area
In the second group of questions, interviews and questionnaires queried how artists had
positioned and integrated their event in the urban space. Questions have been formulated
concerning the localisation of the event. The objective was not only to see which part of the city
has been in the hart of the event – centre, peripheries or territories in-between the two - but also
to get information concerning the type of neighbourhood where the spectacles went on.
Questionnaires gave occasion for closed answers: artists had to choose between certain types of
locations proposed in the questionnaire. In the same time, interviews permitted more detailed
and more extended questions: they did not only propose a largest choice in the types of spaces
occupied within the city, but also highlighted the reasons for the choice of a given locality.
310 ’Napi online news’: http://www.napi.hu/default.asp?cCenter=article.asp&nID=303133 (translated by author).
188
PE 375.307