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.
Whatever aspect of ritual and myth is chosen, this year’s festival Starptelpa will showcase a myriad of performances focusing on this theme. The festival will also offer discussions in virtual format. The festival’s platforms are: Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.
Artists participating in the festival from Latvia: Dāvis Valbaks, Beatrise Anda Ozoliņa, Undīne Trapenciere, Dārta Drava, Justīne Vaivode, Anna Maskava, Laura Šterna, Laura Feldberga, Jelena Glazova, Arvis Kantiševs.
International artists participating in the festival: Camilla Graff Junior (Denmark), Group Roi (Russia), Alexandra Holowina (Germany/Poland), Jeongsoo Lim (Korea), Rubena La Berenjena (Spain), Maria Sanchez (Spain), Johannes Deimling (Germany), Association of Free Association (Finland/Sweden), Lidia Zhudro (Russia), Jenny Abouav (France), Olga Drachuk-Meyer (Germany/Ukraine), Tetiana Kornieieva (Ukraine), TREMORS Dance Company (Belarus), Josef Ka (Russia/Finland), Joseph Morgan Schofield (UK), Robert Ladislas Derr (USA), Jessica & Monique van Deursen (The Netherlands), Jolanda Jansen (The Netherlands), Maeshelle West-Davies (Germany), Saeborg (Japan), Sylwia Hanff and Marzena Brzezinska, LimenButoh (Poland), Jessica Hirst (USA/Spain), Eduardo Amato and Jonas Sanson (Brazil), Dean Frechtman and Lyla Palmer and Julia Rauch (Germany / Israel), Kamilla Wolszczak (The Netherlands), Armando Navarro (France), Anniina Lehtinen (France-Finland), Llewellyn Reichman (Germany).