Open Up and Play!
Dear friends and players,
This year for the fifth time, we are setting up a playground: the city, the public space. Playing is not a free time activity. Playing is learning and experiencing. By playing we put ourselves in different perspectives. We explore and discover our playground: ourselves and our society. Very often we are being played or we play, but it’s not called a game and it is not a performance. Much more ‘serious’ names are used: public domain, public debate, public space.
This year, HAPU is extending its playground to Fushë Kosova too. In HAPU we invite you to open up and play with us. Not because we want to entertain you, but because playing is not a luxury, it is a way to better understand our being, the others and the society. It is fun too!
We have played the programming puzzle and are opening HAPU with acrobats of Un Loup Pour l’Homme, who push their physical limits in the game they constantly reinvent the rules. These acrobats will be playing with our actors before the Festival to bring in Kosovo these new skills and scratch new circus playing experiences for the future. Donika Rudi will be playing for us her composition of a musical journey through nine stages of life.
This year’s HAPU will be also a playground for Swiss based Asphalt Piloten, playing with perspectives through the use of adhesive tape and bodies of performers. At the other corners of public spaces, android woodpeckers of Marco Barotti will play audible and visible acoustic drumming patterns, reinterpreting our playing with mobile communication and wireless technology. Fitore Berisha invented another type of playfulness, the quest for the hidden art. In The Snowball effect, members of the audience are protagonists, they lay the ground for playing with artists with observers as an audience. Playing the game of the community enriches us in many aspects.
We are creating HAPU as a result of our position of a meaningful player among our partners in IN SITU. This European “game” is a great and very fruitful endeavor and experience. European players are meeting Kosovar audience and Kosovo players are meeting European audiences. Therefore, open up and play with us, with artists, with fellow citizens.
Florent Mehmeti, Artistic Director, HAPU – Festival of Art in Public Space
IN SITU is the European platform for artistic creation in public space. Since 2003, it has supported more than 200 artists working outside conventional venues and contributing to the transformation of our territories. IN SITU is an ecosystem connecting a new generation of artists with audiences, programmers, and key-players involved in the economic, political and social realities around Europe. IN SITU develops an ecology of creation based on transnational artistic workshops and laboratories, European and international residencies and collective mentoring for pilot artistic projects. IN SITU also designs tailored consulting and expertise for European cities, online training modules (MOOC) and a Think Tank dedicated to artistic creation in public space.
IN SITU is led by Lieux publics – European and national center for artistic creation in public space (France), and brings together 20 partners from 12 countries: Artopolis Association / PLACCC Festival (Hungary), Atelier 231 / Festival Viva Cité (France), CIFAS (Belgium), Čtyři dny / 4+4 Days in Motion (Czech Republic), FAI-AR (France), Freedom Festival (United Kingdom), Kimmel Center (The United States of America), Metropolis (Denmark), La Paperie (France), La Strada Graz (Austria), Les Tombées de la Nuit (France), Lieux publics (France), Norfolk & Norwich Festival (United Kingdom), Teatri ODA (Kosovo), Theater op de Markt (Belgium), On the Move (Belgium), Østfold kulturutvikling (Norway), Oerol Festival (The Netherlands), Terni Festival (Italy), UZ Arts (United Kingdom).
Since 2018, the IN SITU Cloud gathers new associated members around IN SITU.
IN SITU ACT 2016 – 2020 is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
