Riga
Performance festival
Starptelpa 2021

This year’s festival Starptelpa (In-Between) organised by the Latvian Centre for Performance Art takes place at the time when the world is still struggling with COVID-19 and its consequences.

For an art form such as performance art it is challenging to adapt to virtual and digital formats, but in this situation we should look at the technologies as vehicles of communication that help us to connect and avoid alienation. Moreover, being so ephemeral, performance art has always had special relationship with documentation.

The theme of this year’s festival is “Ritual and Myth”. This theme goes as far as the genealogy and history of the humankind. Without the collective myths, symbols and rituals the fate of the humankind might have been completely different. Although ritual has been extensively explored in social sciences, especially in anthropology, the field of art also offers productive grounds for further investigation, reflection and cross-disciplinary comparison. The range and intensity of rituals can be varied – there are ancient, mythology-based and religious rituals. There can also be miniature everyday rituals important for individuals in their own contexts. Political scientists analyse political rituals and ceremonies as repetitive symbolical acts in public space, thus ensuring the visibility and presence of power, whereas folklore scholars pay attention to ancient traditions and understanding of secular and mythological worlds. Ritual offers the transformative power through its liminal stages, and transformation is necessary for regeneration.