Nomadic Arts Festival 2016: Neighbourhood and Territory

Nomadic Arts Festival has since 2014 facilitating festivals based on diversity, connectivity and community, through artis-tic work, research and cultural expression. Its nomadic nature encourages mobility, both geographically and as a festival, thus it changes its structure according to each location the festival is set. The cultural, social and ecological context of every fes-tival location therefore shape the structure and artistic theme of each festival – attempting to create a temporary community of sharing, creativity, research and exploration, which not only reflects the local community, but also contributes to its culture.

‘the nomad is a […] intensive, multiple entity, functioning in a net of interconnections […] the site of multiple connections.’- Rosi Braidotti

NAF’s Main Aims and Objectives

- To create festival platforms for creative expression, community building and research

- To create festivals, which encourage art and culture on a local scale

- To create festivals which celebrate and questions our contemporary culture: socially and ecologically

in partnership with PAS

Nomadic Arts Festival 2016: Neighbourhood and Territory will take place from 13th - 26th September at A4 – Centre for Contemporary Culture, Bratislava, and surrounding area. The aim is to focus on the local community by engaging with the textures of the A4-neighbourhood, through research, arts and cultural activity. The festival is thus an investigation into Neighbourhood and Territory, which will celebrate and explore the area by inviting local, regional and international artists and researchers to work with local citizens, initiatives and NGOs. The research aims to shed new light onto our own position in the place (home) where we live and questioning how we perceive it and what our roles might be within it: socially, environmentally and globally.

Nomadism […] is not fluidity without borders, but rather an acute awareness of nonfixity of boundaries’– Rosi Braidott

Nomadic Arts Festival 2016: Structure and Goals

• 3-day Festival taking place within the local neighbourhood of A4, Bratislava: at markets, private homes, community gardens, on the streets and in public galleries and performance spaces

• Presenting international art on a local scale

• 1 day symposium reflecting, analysing and discussing the notions of Neighbourhood and Territory through the lens of the festival activities

• To facilitate a 10-day workshop for students within the Visegrad Region with PAS | Performance Art Studies

• Creating relations between NGOs, citizen and local initiatives in the local neighbourhood

• Building the 2016 Festival in collaboration with local artists, citizens, initiatives and NGOs

• To contribute to the cultural context of the local neighbourhood

Nomadic Arts Festival’s Philosophy

Ecology is the foundation of Nomadic Arts Festival (NAF) and its core objective and driving force. NAF places an emphasis on cre-ating micro-scale festivals with an eco-ethical approach, which aims to unfold new ways of perceiving our environment on a local and tangible level. NAF’s ecological focus is categorised into three main areas, inspired by Felix Guattari’s thoughts on ecology:

• Social Ecology To explore and analyse human beings’ roles and interactions within social patterns and contexts, by actively create practical research within the social sphere through dialogues and collaborations with local citizens.

• Environmental Ecology To raise awareness of the proximity between human beings and their environment and simultaneously facilitating and contributing to a global environmental debate.

• Subjective Ecology To focuse on subjective expression and qualities, while also investigate the role and place of individuality on a wider local, social, national and global scale.

Education is for NAF based on processual learning, through exploration, analyses, debates and most of all through sharing and dialogue. Education is thus an integrated part of NAF’s structure, which aims to mediate and encourage a wider eco-logical understanding on a social, environmental and subjective level – locally and globally.

Experimentation is an integral part of NAF’s festival and educational workshops and symposiums. NAF sees experimen-tal research and exploration as an important part of proces-sual approaches for learning and mediating information, from which new perceptions and ecological understandings can be unfolded.

Art is a cultural medium that with its aesthetic and sensuous language is able to facilitate and explore ecological thinking, education and experimentation, which simultaneously holds a quality that can bring people together, through social forms of dialogues, celebrations and exchanges.

nomadicartsfestival.com – contact@nomadicartsfestival – @NomadicArtsFest – facebook.com/nomadicartsfestival

‘Existence is with: Otherwise nothing exists’ - Jean Luc-Nancy