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Open call: a seminar for young performing arts curators, artists and 
researchers at the Konfrontacje Festival
EEPAP Performative Centre, Konfrontacje Teatralne Festival, Lublin, Poland
Lublin, Poland (11-15.10.2017)
WHAT IF THAT WAS YOUR VERY LAST FESTIVAL EDITION?

Open call for a seminar addressed to young performing arts curators, thinkers, 
researchers and practitioners, based in Central and Eastern Europe.
Tutors: Gundega Laivina, Daniel Blanga Gubbay

Festivals are definitely one of the most influential art institutions in the 
contemporary performing arts field. They showcase the works of artists, but 
frequently produce and promote them as well; they act as an intermediary 
between the artist and the audience; they co-create and actively shape critical 
discourse accompanying artistic praxis (catalogues, translations, publishing 
series, thematic books, etc.), thus actively informing the ways of thinking 
about theatre and dance, and participating in setting out the directions in 
which these develop. An examination of the current international circulation of 
performing arts will show that it is primarily shaped by festivals. What is the 
impact of the understanding of the festival as situating it in the space of 
public institutions of art? What task and what responsibility (to artists as 
well as to audiences) does the festival have; what role does it play in forming 
the exchange of thoughts and experiences and in shaping new artistic proposals? 
At the same time, in the festival context, artists’ working conditions have 
become precarious; artistic practice, stretched between one project and the 
next, lacks continuity, focusing instead on the result and the end product. 
Moreover, festivals proved to be a perfect instrument of promoting the 
so-called creative class: international contacts and (geographically and 
financially) wide-ranging arts projects have become very fashionable indeed. If 
we look at the festival from that point of view, we will see that not only is 
it, to a large extent, the product of the neoliberal system, but it also 
reinforces and consolidates the neoliberal order. An urgent question presents 
itself here: how can festivals meet the basic criteria of a public art 
institution if at the same time they are so strongly embroiled in neoliberal 
mechanisms? And another one: given these circumstances, is it possible to think 
of a festival as a critical, emancipatory space? If so, how can that potential 
be unlocked?

We would like to propose that young performing arts curators, thinkers, 
researchers and practitioners reflect on the contemporary position, role and 
responsibility of a festival, to workshop together the possible (and 
impossible!) ideas on how to hijack it, how to regain it as a common space. Let 
us try to think of the impossible as possible; to embrace the impossible and to 
find a space for it. What if none of the conditions and ways of working that we 
know is left? What if the festival was another attempt to embrace the public 
space? What if, instead of presenting works to more or less professional 
audiences, we contradict the festival mode and use its tools to create a space 
which is not production-driven, but focused only on the present time? What if 
the art institution turns out to be a common space, inclusive of the groups in 
society that have always been excluded? What if we are delayed? What if that 
was the last edition of your festival — how would you think on its program 
then? Let us imagine the impossible, let us make a room forit– the 
circumstances and contexts we have known until now are shrinking anyway and 
there definitely is a space (and need!) for the unthinkable.

Gundega Laiviņa runs the New Theatre Institute of Latvia, a project-based 
organization working in the field of contemporary performing arts. Since 2009 
she has been the artistic and managing director of Homo Novus, the 
International Festival of Contemporary Theatre. Gundega has studied music, 
theory of culture and social anthropology. In 2011 and 2015 she was a curator 
of the Latvian National exposition at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance 
Design and Space (exposition The Submission was awarded with the golden medal 
for the total performance design in 2015); from 2010 till 2014 she was a member 
of the artistic board of Riga – the European Cultural Capital 2014 and was 
specifically responsible for site-specific initiatives and projects involving 
communities.

Daniel Blanga Gubbay is a Brussels-based researcher and curator of public 
programs. He graduated in Italy with Giorgio Agamben at the Architecture 
University of Venice, and got a PhD in Cultural Studies and a postdoc in 
Düsseldorf on the transformation of the concept of the possible in Modernity. 
He teaches Political Philosophy of the Arts, and currently holds the position 
of the head of the performance and choreography department at the Royal Academy 
of Fine Arts in Brussels. He works as a dramaturge for the 
Kunstenfestivaldesarts. He is part of the curatorial board for LiveWorks and is 
the initiator and curator of Aleppo, a research platform engaged in public 
programs in performance and political theory, appearing as open and free 
Imaginary Schools.

EEPAP Performative Centre is conceived as a research and artistic practice 
laboratory which creates and elaborates the discourse around contemporary 
performing arts practices. The Centre’s mission is to create a space which 
enables an open, animated dialogue, not subordinated to the market principles 
and free from hierarchical academic structures. The program will consist of 
research and residency projects, seminars, discussions and workshops, always 
combining theory and practice in the field of contemporary performing arts.
The Centre’s main goal is to offer artists, thinkers and culture workers a time 
and space to think and practice instead of forcing them to produce new events. 
The Centre offers a space which is focused on developing choreographic and 
performing arts practices and strengthening critical reflections around them in 
the social, political and economic context. 
EEPAP Performative Centre is a new initiative by EEPAP (www.eepap.culture.pl 
<http://www.eepap.culture.pl/>) and the Centre for Culture in Lublin, Poland 
(http://ck.lublin.pl/en/ <http://ck.lublin.pl/en/>) and is curated by Marta 
Keil.

How to apply?
Please send a cv and a short motivation letter to the address [email protected] 
<mailto:[email protected]> until the 10th of September. We will reply by the 14th of 
September.

Deadline: September 10th, 2017

Seminar will be held in English.
EEPAP covers the travel and accommodation costs of the participants and offers 
tickets for the festival Konfrontacje (www.konfrontacje.pl 
<http://www.konfrontacje.pl/>). The participants will be asked to write short 
essays after the seminar.

 
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East European Performing Arts Platform 
The Centre for Culture in Lublin
20−007 Lublin, Poland 
Peowiaków 12 Street 

+48 81 466 61 18
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

www.eepap.culture.pl 
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