It was this time last year that I missed out on the first TINAG festival:
'The festival brings together people, living and working in Europe, who's main preoccupation is the city. TINAG creates platforms for emerging academics, activists, human rights canvassers, artists, youth workers, filmmakers, architects, students and more, whose point of departure is the city'.
Yep, it was back again this year - and this time - I made it!
I popped into the Sonalle's exhibition of photography based on 'ethnic minorities coming out' - an interesting exploration into the individual tales and experiences of those that featured.
The exhibition did well to feed into the first of two sessions/workshops I attended - 'The City as Stage: Art, Narrative & Play'. The hidden narratives behind the experiences of the subject in Sonalle's images related directly to the discussion of the panel in the 'The city as stage' seminar.
Artist Lottie Child and Dan Hon a media technologist joined additional speakers from the world of theatre (notably the Soho Theatre) to talk about their experiences in using the built environment as both stage and stimulus. Most interestingly, as slightly reassuring for anyone thinking of using the city as stage on the micro and macro scales… Lottie’s comparison of Rio De Janero to London highlighted that in Brazil issues of permission and authorisation were non-existent. This was not the case with the UK. They highlighted a real case for a guerrilla approach to using the city as a stage and in drawing from the built environment to develop narratives and multiple discourse.
The second session I got to join was ‘The City And The Transnational Commons’. European Alternatives discussed the themes from Polis 21, a series of transnational interventions and discussions run over the month of November in Athens, Zagreb and Belgrade. The session explored the idea of how cities can become urban containers and how with merging with notions of post-national cities, new ethno-spaces and post-national social forms hybrid cultures can form and lead to a deconstructed, or, an ‘un-built’ state.
The festival’s strength is obviously in its ‘mix and match’ interdisciplinary approach to the city. The opportunity for attendees to jump into such diffusive avenues of discussion and make their own interconnections acts as a catalyst for thought and energises ideas. My only criticism of the festival was the feeling of a lack of an opportunity to meet others and enter into a larger discussion surrounding the various strings that made up the event.
Roll on next year though…
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