THE BUFFER FRINGE 2015 PERFORMING ARTS FESTIVAL*

The call for applications for the Buffer Fringe 2015 Performing Arts Festival – Nicosia now open, with the theme of “performing urban memory”.

The annual festival of theatre, dance, audio-visual arts and mixed media will take place on 9-10 October 2015 with performances of Cyprus-based artists/performers. Through opening up new spaces in the public sphere for contemporary artists and bringing their works to the street, the Buffer Fringe Festival; themed differently each year, aims to:

• de-/re-/construct the social, spatial and symbolic formation of the old city of Nicosia
• find out meanings, signs and myths of the city on the fringes of memory
• celebrate the play of differentness, marginality and unexpectedness
• blurring the distinction between performer and audience

A write-up of the conceptual statement, criteria of participation, application form and list of festival venues are enclosed.

Deadline: Friday, 24 July 2015, 6:00 pm.

*Organiser: The Home for Cooperation, Production: Andreas Trachonitis & Mikaela Tsangari, Advisors: Athina Kasiou & İzel Seylani, Selection Committee: Home for Cooperation formed by professionals from varied disciplines in cultural studies, theatre, social science, public relations, film-media studies, arts and journalism.

Criteria of Participation

• Applications will be accepted from Cyprus-based artists/societies.
• The deadline for submission is Friday, 24-July-2015, 6:00 pm- (extended date).
• The application form must send to admin@home4cooperation.info with other required documents –check application form.
• The Festival welcomes all performances on theatre, dance, narration, interactivity and multi-media as well as puppet-theatre, pantomime and audio-visual installations.
• Performance can be designed for children and/or adults.
• The performances (particularly theatrical ones) must be max. 30min.
• The type and duration of performance/artwork, may allow the possibility for looping/repetition of act/installation during the festival.
• In view of indoor and outdoor festival venues, participating artistcan choose to perform/install the artwork at a certain venue or choose to present a performance moving/mobilising from one point to another. The artist should state their preferences and applicability clearly in the application form.
• For performances that include dialogues/text, trilingual translation is encouraged. The text can be subtitled, projected or shared as print outs. The participant(s) are expected to state their preference in the application form. The script/text if any has to be submitted 40 days prior to festival.
• Selected performance(s)/artwork(s) will be supported by the Home for Cooperation under a tier basis. Please see table below Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3. The selection committee will contact the shortlist applicants to discuss the support provided prior to the official announcement of selected performances/art works.
• The criteria for the tiers will be decided by the selection committee depending on the performance’s/artwork’s qualities such as format, originality, creativity, relevance to festival theme, city/audience and technical & linguistic requirements.

Theme

The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind.

…

Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Nicosia is our invisible city. It does tell neither its past, nor its present, nor its future, but contains them like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, on the façades of the buildings, on the carvings of the doors, on the scratches of the flagstones and every little segment marked with a particular script, smell and sound. Since, cities are not only seen, but also felt.

In that sense, “performing/reclaiming urban memory” should not be considered as a frame to stay in, but as a limit to get beyond. Remembering, forgetting, imagining, remembering to forget, forgetting to remember, archiving, buffering, repeating, silence, noise, blackout, amnesia, dejavu, storing, conserving, manipulating, selecting, excluding, including, marking, matching, categorizing, organizing, reducing, exaggerating, deforming, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing, visualizing… each of them is a variable, a play of the memory. Urban is the jungle including challenging sites in which contemporary artists have opportunity to make/articulate the difference.

About the Buffer Fringe

As Home for Cooperation Society, since established, one of our main purposes has been the revitalization of the buffer zone which has been most neglected and avoided part of Nicosia for 40 years. The idea to organize a performing arts festival emerged with the desire to open up a new space empowering the local artists and benefiting from the transformative influence of the contemporary art in the building of new societal identities between communities of Cyprus.

And so the 1^st Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival in Nicosia was held in 2014 in which 12 local theatre groups performed on three stages at the Venetian Moat in the buffer zone. Different from general understanding, buffer zone has been the fringe in the heart of the city that makes Nicosia a city that ambivalently contains the ‘other’ within the ‘self’.

‘Fringe’ itself is already a challenging and ambivalent concept to mainstream art practices in a given context, but what is more challenging and ambivalent is to discover the ‘fringes’ and marginalities of a city life that has been ‘buffered’ in its habitants’ minds not only physically but also symbolically; not only visibly but also invisibly. In this sense, a festival named ‘Buffer Fringe’ can only be another paradox for the participants to enjoy.

For the very reason, in the second year of the festival, we decide to get out of the buffer zone which is fringy but stable at some point; limit the performance durations and design a more dynamic, instable and flowing festival route between various public discursive arenas at both sides of the divide. So that the selection of the venues for the Buffer Fringe 2015 Festival has resulted in a number of squares, hidden backyards, deadlocks, side-streets, unused buildings, roofs, market places, passageways and an underground car park as well as a library which are ‘suitable’ for performances and offered to the interested artists. In this way, they can create a new performance depending on the venue or they may prefer to revise/adapt any previous performance to the venue.

Buffer Fringe is still in its early stages, taking small but significant steps forward while also strengthening its roots. On this, we strongly believe that with the courage and creativity of the local contemporary artists, the Buffer Fringe can give a valuable and critical perspective on cultural practices and politics in Cyprus.

Festival Route Map *tentative

map.jpg

 The official venues will be announced end of July 2015. Participating artists are strongly encouraged to have a tour –in company with the H4C Team (optional) – to the initial festival route before deciding on the performance site. 

For any questions regarding the application and/or venues  (their size, features, addresses, visit etc...), please contact Home for Cooperation:communications@home4cooperation.info|+357 22445740 | +90 5488345740

Download the application form: BUFFER_FRINGE_PERFORMING_application_form.docx