ISSP 2019 Publication - Photography and the World

How do you reach people
through the curation of a big
festival of photography?
To me, the biggest question to answer is how to
show a different perspective to people that are not
already involved in the discussion. It's very easy to
spread messages among people that are already very
self-aware and aware of certain processes of society.
These people are already the audience of most of the
art festivals, biennales, triennials... So how do you
reach a new audience? And how to really inspire
those people that are not actually participating and
questioning the political and social situation?
I think a festival has the structure and the tools to
potentially attract people into certain participation
because it's an event and it's cool and it's something
that you really want to go to because your friends
are going. At the Hamburg Triennale, there were
hundreds of thousands of people seeing the exhibitions
on the streets and in our containers, so for me,
those were as important as the exhibitions that were
held in the museums.
Something that I have observed during the past five
to ten years is that at most of the important festivals
099 Can I give you my card?
and events – like Documenta, Manifesta, the Berlin
Biennale – every single event was related to equality,
ecological crisis, the rise of nationalism... it's not
anymore only about photography or visual arts.
We are not discussing the medium anymore, we are
talking about the real situations that we face, there
is a really deep profound message behind. I think
this is kind of firestarter. Festivals are great places to
start certain discussions. Of course, it's still existing
mainly in the intellectual part of society, but it's still
important to have these firestarters.
I have my doubts about the
general character of events in
terms of sustainability if you
think about what it causes...
...like how many people have to fly in, and how
much carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere...
We are wasting lots of plastic every day,
people are smoking and eating meat... It should
be more integrated. The photo festival in Łódź is a
good example: we started to think in an integrated
way, and we tried to bring in as many people as
possible via trains, we got rid of plastic, we tried to
consume less energy... We tried to do the festival in
a really sustainable way.
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Where is the money
supposed to come from?