International Arts Festival Research Articles

Bioengineered Living Entities in Art: Aliveness, Duration, and Movement in Bricolage

Abstract Bricolage is a kinetic biological artwork first exhibited at the Perth International Arts Festival in 2020. The artists used stem cell technologies to create bioengineered living entities from donated human heart muscle cells. These living entities are suspended in an incubator from the ceiling and are made visible to gallerygoers, who watch the performance of cells generating and moving independently. This paper considers how the assemblage, animation, and performance of cells embedded in Bricolage highlight questions around the conceptualizations and perceptions of life, duration, animation, and aliveness.

Proposals and practices for promoting tourism by advancing open data through public-private partnerships

The tourism sector, which has suffered a decline in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is expected to be revived with digital technology in the post-COVID society. This study aims to link event initiatives in Ichinomiya City (Aichi Prefecture) with local government-led initiatives to promote the use of local informatization and open data, create and publish event information data, and utilize such data. To this end, we created and implemented a proposal to develop tourism promotions through public-private partnerships between the City Hall and local companies. Through initiatives undertaken at the International Art Festival Aichi 2022 and the Hitsuji Summit Bishu, we were able to verify that our study’s presented methodology was useful for promoting events by the city (government) and industry (private). We believe that this will help to develop the entire region not just with regard to the tourism field but also other fields. Based on the results of this study, we also discussed ways to improve the city’s appeal and promote tourism.

Neo-endogenous revitalisation: Enhancing community resilience through art tourism and rural entrepreneurship

The decline and socio-economic stagnation of rural communities is a growing concern across the world. To promote community resilience, art- and creativity-based strategies are emerging as important means for rural revitalisation. This study adopts a neo-endogenous perspective to examine how socially engaged art can represent an effective tool for revitalising communities and strengthening their resilience. We examine the case of Japan's Setouchi Triennale, an international art festival which aims at revitalising twelve small islands by promoting socially engaged art and festival tourism. This mixed methods research focuses on the three islands characterised by the best revitalisation outcomes. The tourism opportunities and increased place recognition resulting from the exogenous art festival initiative triggered endogenous community responses in terms of increased entrepreneurship and social innovation, facilitating the emergence of neo-endogenous revitalisation processes. At the same time, different islands are characterized by different response mechanisms, which depend on the initial resources and features of each island. Exogenous, endogenous, and neo-endogenous elements are therefore all necessary to increase rural resilience. Successful neo-endogenous revitalisation through socially engaged art, however, requires long-term co-creation between exogenous art development and endogenous community activities.

We are Serious Event Travelers: Event Travel Careers And the Social Worlds of Arts Practitioners to International Arts Festivals and Events

For most arts practitioners, going on tour with their shows or to participate in international arts festivals and events is an essential part of developing their careers. An event travel career (ETC) is formed when people are serious enough about their leisure interests to travel to participate in related events. Existing studies on event travel career are focused on the serious sport tourists. This study employs an arts-informed life history approach to gain insights into the constraints and facilitators of the ETCs of 19 Singaporean arts practitioners. The theory of serious leisure, social worlds, and the event travel career concept provide a framework to qualitatively examine their ETCs. In an integrative framework constructed from their lives lived, the participants' membership in their social worlds emerged as the key driver throughout the development of their ETCs. The findings also draw attention to the emergence of new social worlds' leaders and stakeholders in attracting serious event travelers to new social worlds destinations, and recommend that destination marketers and event managers work with them for future planning in event tourism marketing.

From Cabaret to International Festivals

I write not as an academic, but as a singer, writer of works for the stage, festival director, and arts advisor. The word curator first entered my understanding as the role of those working in art galleries and museums: those skilled individuals who “cared for” their collections. The word has now spread to many of the things that I do, including the way I have “put together” large international arts festivals.

Amplified Listening to Race and Gender in Fiamma Montezemolo’s "Echo" and Stephanie Dinkins’s "N’TOO"

Looking retrospectively and prospectively, this article reflects on what is heard when listening to the women talking inside artworks. Both Echo (2014) by Fiamma Montezemolo and Not the Only One (N’TOO), an ongoing project by Stephanie Dinkins, present sound archives that animate spaces with fragments of dissenting women’s voices. Looking back at the impact of inSITE, a curated international art festival in the Tijuana and San Diego region, Echo amplifies the sonic remains of art produced in the context of NAFTA. In N’TOO a living AI archive is potentiated as a fourth generation in the artist’s family, carrying on the histories and subjectivities of three women. N’TOO optimistically intervenes in AI’s expansionist and biased trajectories by furthering Black and familial subjectivity in a specific context of racial and gender foreclosures. Despite their spare use of sound, both artworks enable amplified listening through the avatar-like objecthood afforded by gallery-based media artworks. This methodology is consistent with decolonizing efforts in Canada and has significance for artists intervening in intersectional, race, and gender studies, border studies, and in settings of computational or interactive technology.

Resilience in Pandemic Sensemaking: Thinking Through a Community of Practice

In the fall of 2020, a series of videos created for the exploratory shared experience called Massive Micro Sensemaking were presented at the Virtual International Arts (VIA) Festival for Social Change in New York. In this article, Luka considers these works as caring, reflective and expressive practices of resilience during a global crisis, while questioning who benefits from promoting ideas about social resilience in such circumstances.

‘Seeing everything in a new light’: Edinburgh International Book and Arts Festival Diary 2020

A personal review of the 2020 Edinburgh International Festivals, much reduced and mostly online due to Covid-19.

Chouftouhonna Festival: Feminist and Queer Artivism as Transformative Agency for a New Politics of Recognition in Post-revolutionary Tunisia

Abstract In Tunisia, like in other MENA countries, feminism has opened the door to activism advocating for individual liberties and sexual rights. After the 2010-2011 revolution, a new wave of political activism has relied on new forms of cultural and creative practice to reconfigure the public space. This paper utilises ethnographic fieldwork to investigate the experience of the Chouftouhonna Feminist International Art Festival in Tunis as an example of ‘artivism’ – i.e. artistic activism – grounded in secular feminism and advancing LGBTQ+ claims. The first section of this paper explores the multiple ‘dimensions of subversion’ of the Festival. The second section aims to demonstrate why Chouftouhonna’s experience can be analysed as part of a political strategy contributing to a new imagination for a substantive egalitarian citizenship, through both ‘affirmative and transformative remedies to social injustice’. Because the Festival is meant as an expression of ‘transformative agency’, its founders and organizers strive for a new politics of recognition for women and sexual diversity in post-revolutionary Tunisia.

International Arts Festivals Visitors’ Motives and Profile Characteristics: The Case of Two Medium-Sized Greek Cities

International Arts Festivals Visitors’ Motives and Profile Characteristics: The Case of Two Medium-Sized Greek Cities

Understanding Influences Affecting Local Visitors to an International Arts Festival

This study is an attempt to identify and analyze the factors that may influence local visitors to attend an international arts festival. Using primary data collected via surveys and employing the technique of logistic regression, the researchers identified four factors that significantly influence local visitors to various international performances at the Hong Kong Arts Festival. The factors found to significantly influence local visitors' interest in various show performances by international actors included education (p≤0.05), number of adults in the party (p≤0.01), number of children in the party (p≤0.01), and number of prior visits (p≤0.05). Also, the paired samples t test results show that some particular show performances were significantly correlated with local visitors' interest in the Hong Kong Arts Festival.

The triumph of paralysis

Ings reviews an exhibition of the works of several artists, including Egle Budvytyte, Ho Tzu Nyen, and Fabrizio Terranova. at the Lofoten International Art Festival and The New We, an exhibition of the works of Rachel Mayeri and Asjorn Skou at Kunsthall Trondheim in Norway.

Predicting International Visitors' Interest In Hong Kong Arts Festival

Major international arts festivals are responsible for attracting many international visitors to a location. This study proposes that the high profile major international acts that are programmed within a particular festival play an important role in attracting international visitors to the event. This empirical study was conducted to predict the demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral factors of international visitors that could influence their interest in attending performances of international artists (i.e., those imported for the event) that had taken place at the Hong Kong Arts Festival. It employs descriptive statistics, paired samples t test, and logistic regression as analytical techniques in order to achieve the above objective. A total of 129 samples were drawn randomly from both male and female international visitors. The results from t tests, which generated two-variable correlation coefficient values with corresponding levels of statistical significance, suggest that the show event that most significantly (p≤0.05) influenced international visitors' attendance was the Northern Sinfonia and Chorus, and the Latvian National Opera: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk was the second most important show event. The results from the logistic regression model suggest that international visitors' interest, in particular international performances, was mostly influenced by their demographic and behavioral factors, but not by their attitudinal factors. This study suggests that relevant programming strategies should consider why, at which degree, and how the demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral factors of international visitors are important to attracting them to and to increasing their interest in the arts festivals of this kind. Although the main limitation of this study is the use of a small subset of samples, further research could overcome this by considering a larger sample size and looking into the demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral factors of international or local visitors that could influence their interest in some other arts festival events/shows showcasing local artists and productions.

An impact analysis of slow mobility measures on travelers' consciousness, behaviors and creativity enhancement

Human and regional creativity is closely related to a sense of speed in daily life including travel. This paper focuses on the impact of slow mobility measures on travelers' consciousness and behavior and creativity enhancement. A questionnaire survey is conducted in the analysis for clarifying the relationship between people's experience of slowness at Seto-uchi International Art Festival and the consequential change in their consciousness and behavior that is expected to enhance the creativity. It is evidenced that slow mobility tours using ships/ferries would contribute to this enhancement.地域とその地域に暮らす人々の創造性は、日常生活や交通などにおける速度感（sense of speed）と密接に関連している。本稿は、スローモビリティが旅行者の意識や行動の変化、創造性の増進に及ぼす影響に焦点を当てている。成功裏に幕を閉じた瀬戸内国際芸術祭と創造都市の関係性に着目をしたアンケート調査を、香川県高松市の住民に対して実施し、主として海上の船を活用したゆったりとした観光体験が参加者の意識および行動に与えた影響を分析している。さらには、スローモビリティを活用した観光が地域にもたらす創造性涵養効果を考察し、創造都市の実装に対する新たな視点を提供している。

V‐Effekt: Death, Mortality, and the Melbourne International Arts Festival

SummaryOn 16 October 2009, a friend died. He was the first person I knew of my generation to die. That night, I saw a play in the Melbourne International Arts Festival (MIAF), one which dealt with the messy realities of sudden death. Almost a year to the day later, I saw another MIAF production about the dangers of holding onto ghosts. They were chaotic, transcendent, heart‐stopping experiences. In this paper, I use them to explore my personal engagements with death, grief, and release. Part criticism, part exorcism, it is my attempt to understand what happened to me in the same theater across two very different Octobers. This paper further engages with the limits of semiosis, presenting a recount and analysis of Pornography and Opening Night drawing on both the semiotics of the productions and my own very particular embodied experience of them. How do we make sense of what it is to die? Even with that knowledge, how do we comprehend someone's actual death? And what might theater have to do with it?

Drumming the Future: Vietnamese Drumming as a Bridge Between Tradition and Popular Entertainment

The fascination of Vietnamese with drums and drumming reaches back into the pre-historic when bronze drums (Dong Son), from the Red River Delta region of Vietnam’s north, were prized trading commodities throughout the Asian world of that time. Substantial archaeological evidence from the Dong Son culture (1st millennium BCE – 2nd century CE) indicates that the bronze drums, cast in one piece through the lost-wax technique and often weighing two hundred kilograms or more were venerated possessions used as regalia, burial objects and musical instruments for ceremonies and festivals. Now in the twenty-first century the Dong Son and other historically renowned drum types have become symbols for Vietnam’s emergence into an international cultural and economic arena. Three Vietnamese international events illustrate the emblematic use of traditional drumming as a nationalistic symbol of modern Vietnam: The Third Asian Indoor Games held in Hanoi in 2009 opened with a drumming spectacle using battle drums; The Jubilee celebrations of the Vietnamese Catholic Church in 2010, drew delegates from across the Catholic world with the opening in the north in the Ha Nam province beginning with an immense traditional drumming performance within its religious setting; The 2012 Hue International Arts Festival incorporated ‘Resounding the Vietnamese Spirit’, a specific drums and percussion festival with performances using Binh Dinh war drums, royal drums from Hue, Dong Son drums, and Tay Son battle drums. In particular, Hue’s ‘Resounding the Vietnamese Spirit’ was designed to attract Vietnamese youth to the popular possibilities of traditional drumming. The hallmark of the move to drumming as popular entertainment, extending from the use of drumming in the traditional lion dance performances is the emergence of small, youth drumming groups who perform in the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City for shop openings and local cultural events.

Spiral Time: Re-imaging Pacific history in Michel Tuffery's First Contact multimedia projection artwork

This paper investigates the multimedia performance, First Contact, by Michel Tuffery, a New Zealand-based artist of Samoan, Cook Islands and Tahitian descent. Presented at the Sydney Festival, Australia, in 2011, and the New Zealand International Arts Festival in 2012, the multi-storey architectural projection reconceptualizes the South Pacific voyages of British explorer Captain James Cook. It combines eighteenth-century artworks, artefacts and texts from those voyages with Polynesian histories and mythologies, narratives of New Zealand nation-building and Pacific diasporas, and filters them through twenty-first-century technology, visual art and live performance. The site-specific projections, cast over historical buildings and historical repositories such as museums, embed a further contrapuntal layering of past and present. Tuffery’s approach in First Contact is both transtemporal and transnational, intercalating Western and Pacific worldviews to prompt a reconsideration of Aotearoa New Zealand’s national identity and its relationships to the Pacific region’s intercultural heritage. Here, I provide a brief context for Tuffery’s art practice and his long-term First Contact project before exploring the potential of ‘spiral temporality’ for interpreting Tuffery’s historiographic method in his latest piece...

The Present of Social Relationships between Hansen's Disease Sufferers and the Others: National Sanatorium Oshimaseishoen and Setouchi International Art Festival 2010

The Present of Social Relationships between Hansen's Disease Sufferers and the Others: National Sanatorium Oshimaseishoen and Setouchi International Art Festival 2010

Exploring the notion of Bildung in theatre work: conversations with actors rehearsing Brecht's Fatzer

The article explores the German notion of Bildung, in relation to drama and theatre work, with a particular focus on the rehearsal process. Bildung is a term used to describe education that is simultaneously a process and a product, one that is oriented towards developing life competencies rather than predetermined or set skills. Drawing on an example from Bertolt Brecht's Fatzer, directed by Tore Vagn Lid for the Bergen International Arts Festival (Norway) 2012, the article examines if Bildung, as a cultural, self-reflexive, developmental kind of learning, can be identified when five actors rehearse for this performance. It is set against a global education backdrop where the humanities and the arts in particular, are devalued and vulnerable.

Perth: Intensely Beautiful, Often Overlooked

january–february 2013 • 5 photo : bob stefko notebook Kyung Uk Kim, page 07 What to Read Now: Testimonial Narratives, page 06 New Books: Journeys, page 08 Perth: Intensely Beautiful, Often Overlooked Reading List In a Sunburned Country Bill Bryson (Broadway) The Shark Net Robert Drewe (Penguin) Cloudstreet Tim Winton (Scribner) Kevin Pickard is a WLT intern. A desert sequesters the city of Perth from the rest of Australia; an ocean cuts it off from the rest of the world. This area of severe isolation also happens to be intensely beautiful. Located on the banks of the Swan River and with over eighty kilometers of white, sandy beaches, the British colonist Captain James Stirling, when he first caught a glimpse of what is now Perth in 1829, remarked that it was “as beautiful as anything of this kind I had ever witnessed.” Before the arrival of the colonists, the Whadjuk Noongar people lived in the remote region for forty thousand years, utilizing the Swan River as a source of both food and spirituality in their local mythology. And while the history of Perth is rich, its literary influence on the rest of the world can seem impoverished. Actually, the same could be said of Australia in general. When Australian writer Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973, the committee said he had “introduced a new continent into literature.” Of course, Australians had been composing literature long before 1973, but as a reflection of the rest of the world’s view of Australian literature, the statement by the committee is telling: it took until 1973 for the world to notice Australian writers. The city of Perth is trying to combat this lack of recognition, namely by housing the Perth International Arts Festival. This year the festival runs from February 8 to March 2. Begun in 1953, the festival “annually offers some of the world’s best theater, music, film, visual arts, street arts, literature, and free community events.” The festival’s director hopes it will help bring some much-needed recognition to Australian literature. Some notable works have already been written specifically about Perth. Bill Bryson devoted a chunk of his travelogue In a Sunburned Country to the sundrenched state. Novelist Robert Drewe’s excellent memoir, The Shark Net, takes place in 1950s Perth, and narrates not only his coming-of-age but also tells the story of a serial killer that threatened Perth’s suburban lethargy. And while Patrick White is the only Australian author to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature, many other notable novelists, poets, and playwrights have come from—and written about—“down under,” including the novelist and early feminist Miles Franklin, bush poet Banjo Peterson, and playwright David Williamson. – Kevin Pickard ...