We regret to inform you that the workshop and the performances of Benjamin Abras The Voice of the Voice in the Voice are cancelled.
Procedural matters associated with belonging to a territory of a given country, citizenship and the resulting privileges and limitations regulate our life, work and opportunities. For the most part we have no influence over them, and their changing nature is a matter of chance. This fact is one of our subjects of discussions, film screenings, happenings and social actions during this year’s Malta festival. We, who are all too often focused only on the scrap of land we live on, wish to become more aware of the complexity of the surrounding world, which on one hand is an arena of war, and on the other, in times of peace, is regulating social life through normative, and at times oppressive, structures.
Hindered mobility of artists, problems with obtaining visas, the constant need for the legitimisation of one’s actions, limitations to expression and liberty in transnational, inter-human cooperation are currently an ever-increasing problem. In the face of the looming Brexit, political and military conflicts ongoing in many places of the world (i.a. Middle East), tense or non-existent diplomatic relations between countries, as well as growing internal violence in countries such as Brazil, we hear more and more often about situations of cancelled cultural cooperation, difficulties in meeting procedural requirements or lack of support for artists. We believe that as “members of kind communities” (to which we are summoned by the curator of this year’s Idiom “Army of the Individual” Nastio Mosquito) we should speak up about it, support artists on an organisational and human level, build social awareness regarding the subject and broaden the common ground of empathy.
Malta Festival Poznań Team