STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

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Street Artists in Europe
An unambiguously positive feature is that the second most used type of space is that of brownfield
areas: abandoned and run down industrial sites that constitute one of the major problems
for urban policies. The majority of cases in the frame of the present list of street art companies
and events are issued from France, but also from Germany, the United Kingdom and Latvia. The
latter is one of the most interesting cases representing the aim for saving social and urban values
in Latvian cities but also in other rural areas: ‘The location usually depends on the topic. We
organise events all over the city, but most often in the city-centre. But we are also investigating
new territories. As there are only 5-6 theatres in Riga, which is a very small number, we are
forced to look for new locations. We discovered several post-industrial spaces where we
organise events, mostly site-specific projects. These spaces in industrial areas allow us to
develop new concepts and involve people and architecture in different ways. We also organise
specific programs on the beach, in the streets and in the fortress. We often focus on site-specific
projects: we develop coproductions with resident artists‘ 311 .
Within spaces with dense or relatively dense urban construction the less prevalent types of
location are the ones that are mostly exempt of social and urban problems, such as regenerated
or new housing areas. These areas have but limited interests for street art events as generally
they are less open for the sometimes ‘disturbing’ noisy events in the streets. That is the reason
why residential areas are in general less frequented by street art events as areas with complex
functions (economic, commercial AND residential). Some events take place in green-field or
even in rural-type areas within the suburbs or the intermediate neighbourhoods of cities.
3.2.3. The choice of location
This point has only been figuring between questions asked in the telephone interviews, and as a
result these answers are less representative as the previous ones. It is interesting however to see
what were the typical choices (table 5):
Table 5 - The choice of the area
ORGANIZATION COUNTRY CHOICE OF AREA
area-based event-based external reason
2r2c, la coopérative de rue et de
cirque
Festival internacional de artes
France 0 1 0
de rua
Parc et Grande Halle de la
Portugal 0 1 0
Villette France X X X
Cest is D'Best Festival Croatia 1 0 0
New Theatre Institute of Latvia Latvia 1 0 0
Sziget Hungary 0 1 0
TOTAL 2 3 0
There is almost an equal partition between two alternatives. The first is when the venue of the
event is determined even before the conception of the event. As it was the case of Cest is DBest
festival in Zagreb: ‘We chose the City Center without any research done because it has
functional spaces for stages and it is in the most visited part of Zagreb.’ 312 However is still
seems to be less characteristic as the other possibility when the location is chosen considering
311 Interview, New Theatre Institute of Latvia.
312 Interview with a member of Cest is D’Best.
PE 375.307