STREET ARTISTS IN EUROPE - Fondazione Fitzcarraldo

5.3. Attitude: internationality and flexibility
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Street Artists in Europe
When talking about international work, the core element is mobility. For the performers,
exchanging experiences and confronting with other artists is a huge source of creativity and
helps gaining the awareness of what is going on in the rest of the world. Education too can get a
huge improvement from experiences abroad.
Concerning festival directors, travelling allows them to open their mind, to increase their
knowledge and also, seeing a work performed in situ, to evaluate if it fits with their festival. in
fact, they have to visit several festivals each season.
When dealing with cooperation projects, it is of vital importance to accept the differences and
try to work with them, taking them as a challenge and as a chance for confrontation and mutual
development and not as an obstacle. An open-minded attitude therefore is another important tool
within the international attitude set. Advantages of international cooperation, from an artistic
and a managing point of view, have already been described, but sometimes the traditional way
of working does not include this approach – this happens in “Eastern” countries, for example,
but also in Germany.
Finally, in a work which requires a lot of travels and obliges to face many unexpected events,
and in which performances take place in completely different and “unconventional” sites,
flexibility is a keyword. While in conventional theatre, for example, the surroundings are always
the same, no matter the country where the performance takes place, in street arts performers
never know what they should expect. Rules and restriction very different from the ones in the
home country; simply a tree in the exact place where the performance takes place; the natural
light which is not perfect for the show and is different from what one expected… it is
impossible to make a check list before leaving (and sometimes previous visits to the site are
required to have a clear idea of how the site is).
Also, flexibility is required instead of being sure to find perfect and comfortable
accommodations, or to expect one’s own food abroad.
5.4. Networking
Especially concerning directors and managers, networking is one of the words more frequently
used by the operators.
Networks help opening and feeding the debate among professionals of street arts, collecting
problems, reflections, needs and actions and conveying them to all social agents, attaining a
dimension of “critical mass” whose voice can be more powerful than that of the single members.
From a more practical point of view, as already written, networking helps bypassing financial
and structural problems: they help finding partners with whom starting co-productions and allow
the members – as a whole – applying to EU funds.
Also, the trust built within a network has a practical relevance for artists and directors in case of
co-productions: for example, the partners of the co-production can guarantee for the artistic
quality of the work with directors, who may not know the company involved but may trust in
what the peers say – even if, of course, the decision to insert a show in a program come sonly
after having seen the work).
PE 375.307