STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
discover performances. Of the total, 77% lived in the Comminges area. These findings confirm
the success of Pronomade(s) residency work in inducing the local population to appropriate an
artistic and cultural project.
4.2.2. Audience inclusion in performances
New audiences are likely to be reached by the development of art projects that involve the
people in the very act of creation. Such enterprises are precarious and complex. The artists have
to be very clear about the status and function they allocate to the inhabitants involved. There are
a great many methods of involving local people in performances, from conversations used as the
basis for writing to theatre workshops where games that are played form the heart of the
creation. Although some of those methods are not specific to street arts, the publicising of
performances in the public space gives that act a particularly strong and symbolic significance
for those concerned.
This principle of inclusion is the ultimate step in the encounter between the artist and the
population he seeks to address. The mobility of artists in Europe therefore seems as important as
the mobility of the audiences themselves. The confrontation with others, through the medium of
art, may have as much effect on the artists as on the population concerned. Cutting across
frontiers and languages, common issues emerge, evidence of the cross-border nature of Europe
and the concerns of its inhabitants.
For five years Square Télévision, a local street project, has been broadcast in 25 towns, in
France, Belgium, Austria and Portugal: ‘The broadcasting context is the neighbourhood. We go
out and meet people and capture their stories: we project their words and pictures on the basis of
an oral declaration of trust. From one country to the next, we find common themes, concerned
with the regeneration of a neighbourhood, the transformation of public space … and still a few
differences in everyday urban life’ 362 .
The example of the KompleXKapharnaüm collective illustrates this, whilst not being the only
striking example of that encounter between artists and the people which lies at the heart of
artistic creation. All artists who have had the opportunity to encounter audiences from other
countries tell of that interchange and of the benefits it brings them and their art.
Conclusions
• The fundamental issue for art and culture, in every European country, is how to enable
the largest possible number to experience cultural works. Without being Messianic, we
can say that street arts are pointing the way to new methods of engaging with the people,
underlining the fact that attendance at a performance cannot be a kind of pause in the
process of the discovery of art.
• In France, as in other countries, the desire to move away from festivals responds to the
artists’ fundamental desire to engage with people who have not been reached by culture.
Within that dynamic, and with the prospect of a Europe of regions and neighbourhoods,
the development of alternative promotional projects based on working in a particular
neighbourhood over a long period of time is evidence of the capacity of street arts to be
an instrument of local development and of uniting audiences.
362 Duforeau Pierre, quoted in, Martin-Lahmani Sylvie, ‘La ville: médium et message’, in Rue européenne, op. cit.
(no page numbers).
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PE 375.307