The festival aims to explore the phenomena of emotions: “an intensity that takes place between people, concepts, and objects.”. Through performances that were commissioned specifically for the event, it wishes to engage with questions such as: Have the political passions associated with twentieth-century revolutions and social strife been exhausted? Which emotions can unite us, and which emotions divide us? Which emotions should we trust to be our guides? Can we feel hopeful again?
As part of the festival a new book will be launched. The volume comprises interviews with the participating artists conducted by the festival curators during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The interviews reflect the roles that emotions play in the practices of the invited artists as well as how these artists, whose performative practices often necessitate the physical proximity of human bodies, were themselves affected by the pandemic.
The main organizer of the event is tranzit.org, a network of civic associations working independently in the field of contemporary art in Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia as well as across the borders of wider Europe. Its main goal is to support and articulate emancipatory practices and establish connections between culture and society by moving across geographies, generations, and political realms. Since its founding in 2002, tranzit has been a critical (and self-critical) platform that challenges dominant narratives of post-war European (art) histories. It has promoted contemporary art practices, theory, and social discourses with an aim to contribute to present-day mobilizations of solidarity and community building in a Europe of rising nationalism, cultural essentialism, growing economic egoism, and social as well as gender inequality.
For more information in English please visit: https://matterof.art/projects/we-are-all-emotional-have-we-ever-been-otherwise-towards-new-gestures-of-empathy