BFPAF Theme, “Displacement: people, ideas and artistic practice”

The Festival is a creative meeting between local and international artists, interdisciplinary artists, students, and scholars. 2019 marked the creation of the first immersive space in the buffer zone, with the theme and methodology becoming blended into one to produce an artistic result.

2020 had proved a great challenge for the artistic community, with the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. As a Festival, we stand in solidarity with the arts community, and decided to keep the theme of the festival, but to re-shape the structure of the festival to be more flexible, aligning with the times. Buffer Fringe 2020 was one of the few artistic platforms in Cyprus and globally to have adapted and materialised a festival amid the Covid-19 pandemic, supporting artists in Cyprus and internationally.

Here’s the 2020-2021 festival theme:

The Concept of the BFPAF 2020 and 2021 is based on the idea of materializing the displacement of people, ideas and practices, based on (but not limited to) the following questions to the Artists:

• What does ‘displacement’ mean to you (artistically and personally)?
• How do you perceive the relationship between migration, mobility, and displacement, and how can we differentiate between them?
• How do you understand ‘mobility’ as an experience of people, ideas and practices, in your own reality or that of others?
• How do you understand displacement as a process, an ever-changing process that spans through time, memory, and aesthetics? Does this relate with nostalgia, and how?
• How is displacement manifested as a day-to-day practice? What does it mean during the COVID-19 crisis, in social/physical isolation and confinement conditions?

In a process that we started in 2019, we asked that the idea of displacement is blended with the methodology of the festival, offering performance spaces in three cities, Nicosia, Famagusta and Limassol, as well as the possibility for project development through the unified 2020 - 2021 planning of the Festival.

The Open Call for Artists (now closed) also specified that “artists’ work must adhere to the values of artistic freedom and mutual respect, and strive for artistic excellence and the production of meaningful art, while at the same time recognizing the space as one of past trauma, but which also holds promise for a peaceful future.

All forms of experimental performance work are accepted, which can contain (but are not limited to) theatre, music, dance, acrobatics, installation/visual art and other cross-disciplinary elements. Moreover, we welcome works of participatory, durational, and/or site-specific formats.”