Enticing and essentially creative

Festival Performa Platforma - Festival of contemporary performative practices and contemporary dance

‘In the fight for visibility and money, desire and passion lose their central position.’ We have written these words last year in our word of introduction to the festival. This year, we are shifting the perspective to focus on an element that is suppressed and undermined – passion.

Passion is not misleading; quite the opposite, it is revealing. It gives stability in relation to a thing; it lures out of it those hidden but essential traits. Passion is enticing and essentially creative, says Nietzsche.

This year’s edition of the partnership of two festivals, Performa and Platforma, is focusing on passion – to revive, awaken, or simply draw attention to this state or relation, which is nowadays, more often than not, covered in dust.

We are not losing sight of the time of the emergence of Performa, which was also the springboard for Platforma. Of the time and especially the people, whose enthusiasm, dedication, and unquestionable passion for artistic creativity has constituted and developed the conditions out of which the cornerstones for trans- and interdisciplinarity within performing arts have emerged. One of such cornerstones was the late poet and multimedia artist Tomaž Brenk, the author of numerous ground-breaking art works (such as The Tradition of the Sphinx, Reincarnations, and Emanations) and the force behind the concept for the contemporary performing arts festival Performa. We are keeping in view the emergence of the Platforma festival, the conditions brought about by the festival, and the locus where young and even younger makers presented their work alongside the established authors. Aiming to open up different possible entry points into the artistic process and choice of content, form, language, and medium, the programme was conceived as an intersection of different languages (loudmouthed and close-mouthed, deafening and silent), formats (traditional and open), and genres (covering different loci of performativity). But, since staying on the level of mere "demonstration and presentation" seemed inadequate, we have constituted a platform for the exchange of know-how, an art laboratory, where the makers will have the opportunity to pick up and share their knowledges, skills, and practices.

The current socio-political circumstances have resulted in certain facts that undermine the desired ways of working. We are thus faced with the questions: why are we still pursuing what we do? What is the force behind what we do? Why do we persevere? And above all, in what ways do we persevere? We hope to give answers to these and some other questions, as well as present some subjective perspectives on them, with our selection for this year’s edition of the festival.

We hope that you will take in the festival with as much passion as we do!

Jasmina and Mojca