The first series of the festival “thirty performances,
thirty artists, thirty days” was our response to the status quo: to introduce performance
art to our audience as a new medium with exclusive expressive qualities and
potentials. There are features, which make performance art a unique and
distinguished genre: the typical emphasize on the function of context, the significant
determining role of the audience, and the elevation of the artist/performer from
an omniscient creator into a curious experimenter. These characteristics, and
therewith the temporary and transitory state of the work itself, metamorphose
the image of the professional artist, change the passive inactive role of the
audience and challenge any commercial understanding of the work of art. Hence, the
artist as well the audiences, find the opportunity to undergo a different experience
that goes beyond the predefined field and framework of definitions and
expectations.
The first series of “thirty performances, thirty artists,
thirty days” was the outcome of the development and variety of theoretical
debates around the contemporary art in our society. This festival provided the
possibility for a comprehensive theoretical introduction of this medium as well
as the practical experience of some of these theories. Thus, by this festival,
we realized our intention to provide a ground for the practical application of
these theories and to start a dialogue among the artists working in the field.
In the second round of the festival, we will keep following
our previous agendas. Due to the inter- disciplinary nature of performance art,
this time we have invited artists from different disciplines. Also, we have
taken for granted the fact that keeping equal the number of contributors from each
discipline is neither possible nor makes any change in the general intentions
of our project.
Finally, this time we have tried to put more emphasize on
the constitutive role of the audience in the formation of the work of art,
which is, needless to say, one of the fundamental principles of performance
art.
Amir Rad & Mohammad Rezaierad
