Symbolic Capital and Relationships of Flow: Canada, Europe, and the International Performing Arts Festival Circuit

Abstract

The essay examines the political and creative relationships between curators and artists operating in the field of cultural production known as the international performance festival circuit. Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic capital, a metaphorical currency that confers prestige on an individual and is exchanged between agents vying for status and power in the field, is applied to both the overall dynamic of the festival network and to individuals who occupy positions in the network. The social Darwinist character of Bourdieu’s theory is balanced by a group of theories that describe the gestalt of an aesthetic encounter as something sought-after, treasured, and undertaken for its own sake. Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of flow, Dewey’s theory of qualitative thought, and Fischer-Lichte’s “radical concept of presence” help make the case that aesthetic encounters have the potential to become what the essay calls “touchstone experiences”: somatically felt events that are prized by curators and artists, and that become the basis for the drive to accumulate symbolic capital—capital which is then leveraged to create more touchstone experiences. Curators and artists on both sides of the Atlantic are interviewed, providing personal insight into the creative and practical concerns that drive them to develop work for the festival circuit. What emerges is a complex web of relationships among the various producers of performance in this particular field of cultural production: the festival network becomes, for the artist, either a potential market in which to promote work or a restrictive gate that blocks access to a larger audience; the curator becomes both a gate-keeper regulating access and a cultural agent providing a platform for cultural exchange and offering local artists exposure to diverse practices from elsewhere. The differences in real and symbolic wealth between the Canadian and European contexts is also considered in the essay, with an emphasis on how European cultural institutions provide opportunities and obstacles to Canadian artists seeking to promote their work overseas.