Art Festivals and the European Public Culture

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Art Festivals and the European Public Culture

• Jérôme Segal, ICCR Vienna, Austria
• Monica Sassatelli, University of Sussex, UK
• Presentation at the EFRP Workshop
• Urban Impact of Artistic Festivals
• Helsinki, 11-12 April 2008

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Art Festivals and the European Public Culture
Aims of the project

• Examine the role of festivals as sites of
  trans-national identifications and democratic
  debate

• Identify and focus on the (aesthetic) public
  sphere

• Consider its role not only as containing
  depictions of social reality but as autonomous
  social fields

• A contribution to a comparative cultural
  sociology of contemporary European society

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Art Festivals and the European Public Culture
Festivals are an important expression of
aesthetic public culture
Two hypotheses
1. Festivals are sites to analyse trans-national
identities and gain a better understanding of
the meaning of Europeanization
How do festivals frame the discourse of identity
in relation to arts, with particular attention to
the local /European and local/global interfaces
as well as the issue of cultural diversity?
How can we interpret trans-national
/cosmopolitan identifications as seen through
festivals?
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Art Festivals and the European Public Culture
2. Festivals can be seen as places enhancing
democratic debate
How do festivals use aesthetic forms to
symbolize, represent and communicate social and
political life (European / national /
sub-national) from the perspective of different
actors, including programme directors, funding
promoters, performing artists and the audience?
How do festivals provide sites of competition for
access to resources, status and power and how
this competition impacts on debates about
representation, openness and the public sphere?
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Art Festivals and the European Public Culture
Urban impact of festivals cosmopolitanism and
the city

• In contemporary major art festivals different
  elements are drawn together from different
  cultures, including global culture.

• Whilst drawing on and creating place
  distinctiveness, urban festivals also emphasise
  the encounter with outside artists, cultures and
  publics.

• They display, draw on and enhance a cosmopolitan
  character that urban theories have always
  connected to the city.

• Their official rhetoric often supports the idea
  of cosmopolitan transcultural exchange and its
  relevance for contemporary identities.

• They provide a viewpoint on current urban
  identities and on cosmopolitanism seen not as an
  abstract or exclusively élite driven phenomenon,
  but as it enters the public debate and culture.

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