Aesthetics and Politics of Street Arts Interventions
Notes Preface: Into the Street 1. Sue Harris (2004) in her article, ‘“Dancing in the Streets”: The Aurillac Festival of Street Theatre’ demonstrates the same thrill although in somewhat more measured tones of academic discourse. These ‘astonished reactions’ are dis- cussed in more detail in the Introduction as forms of ‘shock’. 2. ‘Street arts’ and ‘street theatre’ are contested terms. Many artists who work with some form of live performance in public spaces do not come from theatre backgrounds, but rather from music, film, dance, painting, sculpture, architec- ture, or installation art and reject the labels of ‘street theatre’ and ‘street arts’ for their creative work. Charlotte Granger lists several terms: ‘arts de la rue, théâtre de rue, théâtre itinérant, arts forains, théâtre in situ, arts urbains, animation, divertissement cultures urbains, arts dans l’espace public, arts publics, spectacles en plain air’ and claims that the range of terms signifies a range of forms and thus thwarts any common definition (Freydefont and Granger, 2008: 27). For many years in France, there was discussion over whether to call the work théâtre de rue, théâtre de la rue, or even théâtre dans la rue: a distinction hard to translate with the same connotations, but one that prioritizes essential characteristics over location. In this book, I will rely on the terms street arts, street theatre, and performance in public spaces, using them interchangeably. 3. HorsLesMurs was created in 1993 by the Minister of Culture as a resource to document and disseminate information, both scholarly and practical, about street theatre and circus. 4. I have limited my study to performance interventions that have occurred some- where in Europe even though a few of the artists are based elsewhere.
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