21.11.2024
2nd Body and Freedom Festival
Zurich Rathausbrücke
22-25 August 2018
The naked body as an instrument of art expression is generally accepted in theatres, galleries and art houses everywhere today. In contrast, open events in public appear to have remained taboo. The „Body and Freedom“ festival intends to initiate a change. It aims to explore the possibilities of the naked body in urban space and everyday situational life, thereby contributing to it's establishment in this context.
The first edition of Body and Freedom occured in the small city of Biel/Bienne (Switzerland), August 2015, with authorization and financial support from the city: www.bodyandfreedom.com. The high interest of artists and a wide international and national media echo has shown the importance of a festival presenting artistic statements with the naked body in public space and confronting it with its architecture, passers-by, rules, laws and medias.
The second edition will take place in Zurich and invites 18 performance projects. We are looking for projects involving the naked body in a comprehensive way, creating scenes including pedestrian circulation, architectural environment and ground surface. Effects on urban space, medias and society should likewise be reflected. We welcome conceptual projects working with the immediate presence of the naked body, thereby interpreting public space as platform for interaction and statement. The vulnerability of the naked body in all of its forms and also its strength and charisma may then be exposed within the interplay of civilized urbanity and raw nature.
The naked appearances should last 10 to 25 minutes and should be repeatable for 2 or 3 times. Single performances of 40 to 60minutes duration and-long-time projects lasting over the entire 6hr-period are welcome, as well as some groups with 2 until 5 performers. There will be video and photographic documentation. Together with clothed persons responsable for communication with interested viewers and passers-by, there will be two security persons engaged to ensure a minimal security.
In addition an evening program inside will offer talks and lectures giving insights in practices and meanings of the naked body in past and present, looking back several centuries as well as widening the scope of our interpretations of the effects of naked performing in public today. We would like to create a space for reflexion, discussion and meeting among artists, scientists and everybody interested in the prevailing topics related with the naked body, striking shame, sensuality, power, status, sexuality, pornography and many more.
More informations, proposals: info@ritualtheater.ch (Thomas Zollinger), until April 30, 2018.