STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

Street Artists in Europe
• Whilst many studies show the need to involve the public in artistic and cultural projects,
street arts, by putting relations with the public and the position of the spectator at the
heart of their artistic process, show that they have the potential to be a driving force of
social cohesion.
• From that point of view, the mobility of street artists needs to be improved and
supported. By going abroad to meet the inhabitants of other countries, the artists confront
their own vision of the world with that of other cultures and encourage the emergence of
a common, cross-border identity through an artistic act that is federative because it
includes the public, who are transformed into the audience.
5. General conclusions
‘When street theatre artists go off to perform their show abroad, they open themselves to an
encounter from which they hope to return changed: when the original work crosses a border and
is presented to a different audience, in a distant town, it is certainly being transported,
transposed, indeed transferred: it is to be hoped it is also a vehicle of transformation… Without
that, the company would merely be booking another tour date’ 363 .
Whilst a work transposed abroad is necessarily also transferred, it also arrives charged with its
own integrity and identity. The foreign spectator perceives that, receives it, and leaves a
changed person. The street artist also returns from his travels a changed person and leaves
spectators marked by his visit. Whilst we are now beginning to gain a better understanding of
the socio-professional profiles and cultural practices of street arts audiences, we still know very
little about how they respond to performances – and nothing at all about the response to foreign
performances. It is undeniable, however, that they may well have a strong impact, like any other
art form that is in tune with the sensibilities of the individual who encounters it.
Today the studies on street arts spectators have shown progress in the area of democratisation
and the encounter with untapped audiences. They show that in spite of the huge challenges
posed by sociological determinism street arts have the ability to bring together a composite
audience, where spectators familiar with cultural institutions, fans purely of street arts and
novices attracted by the festive spirit appear side by side in a public space recognised as a
common space. They also show the need for new efforts to find ways of engaging with
audiences excluded from culture. From difficult urban districts to rural villages, street artists, in
their own country and elsewhere, draw no distinctions and are willing to encounter everybody.
The fundamental dual issue of access to art for all and the emergence of a common culture at
local level is both national and supranational. Artists did not sit and wait for cultural policies
and international programmes before going off to confront audiences throughout Europe. In that
respect street artists, who raise national issues and place the relationship with others at the heart
of their approach, do more than any other group to raise the question of audiences in Europe.
‘Urban activities, unusual approaches to living together, the need to bring art out of its shell, to
combine it with conviviality and festivals, all this modestly but surely defines the contours of
that desire for Europe that can be fostered by artistic exchange’ 364 . We are in fact talking very
much of desire, the desire that inspires both artists and spectators of street arts in Europe.
‘The desire to bring theatre into the street, Europe – the world’ 365 .
363 Wallon Emmanuel, quoted in Martin-Lahmani Sylvie, ‘Territoires: rue, Europe, monde’, in In Situ, Voyages
d’artistes européens, op. cit., p. 12.
364 Adolphe Jean-Marc, Sauvageot Pierre, ‘Au désir d’Europe’, in Rue européenne, op. cit. (no page numbers).
365 Martin-Lahmani Sylvie, ‘Territoires: rue, Europe, monde’, op. cit., p. 14.
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PE 375.307