It’s the time to get grounded!
Dear friends and enthusiasts of the Earth, of air and water,
After countless struggles and hardships over the past two years, we are slowly but surely taking our first steps towards picking up where we stopped prior to the global pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Through the chaos, our consciousness has been shaken to its core, questioning where we really live and how we live, how we are treating our planet, ourselves, and each other. Unavoidably, we are focusing at the core of the existence, at us, the members of the humanity.
But is it already late? Can we still ground ourselves and connect with Earth?
This year HAPU’s eighth edition seeks to interrogate these questions, or perhaps even raise more. Featuring artists this year are putting neurological artistic points on Taukbashce and the City Park as a means to converse with the Earth and its inhabitants. To raise these issues and other that intertwine, the mediums of music and sound are being utilised, those of sign and body language, the black board, the movement and gesture, the props and everything that surrounds us.
We invite you to join us in this journey with artists, part of our joint work and the collaboration at the European level with our partners within our IN SITU partnership. We invite you to open up (as HAPU means in Albanian) yourselves with the Earth, the water, and the air and with all other non-humans that co-habit with us. We invite you to rethink our role and behaviour as co-habitants of this Earth.
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.
