Nikos Raftakis | Re Formance Performance Festival [C.A.S.A.]

It all started when... A group of artists originating primarily from the fields of Performance art and Interdisciplinary art, faced with the special curatorial and organizational challenges of persenting their work to the public, and the resulting exclusion and misrepresentation of their art from the conventional art venues, decided to put forward a proposal for May 2014, for a month long presentation of performance art works. The show was to be organized by the artists, for the artists, in a strongly independent and direct fashion. We, as a community of artists, would attempt to be in control of all aspects of the presentation and as many levels of organization as possible, including event production, curation, press contact, promotion, publication of material through social media and the web, documentation, and subsequent archiving. The needs that we felt would serve the necessary contextualization and presentation of work originated from our individual, and shared experiences of working with the existing systems of curation and organization in fine arts, and their limitations, prevalent at the time in Athens. Re_Formance Performance art festival at Booze Cooperativa was to become a coordinated, artist–initiated effort to open up the sensitive medium of performance – art to a broader audience, with the terms of the artists themselves, guided by the unmediated intentions of the 10 participating artists towards their work, and challenging the conventions of art-event organization. The success of Re_Formance was to become a clear example of the dynamic condition created when the interaction of the public and self–curated artwork becomes possible, within the framework set up through artistic collaboration on the level of organization. The experience gained by Re_Formance Festival played an important role in formulating the charter of aims, methodology and structure that were later to define Contemporary Art Showcase Athens. RE_Formance performance art festival: June 5 - June 18, 2014 at Booze Cooperativa / organised and curated by Contemporary Art Showcase Athens [C.A.S.A.] #contemporaryart #performanceart #videoart #artists #athens Please like, comment, and subscribe! http://c-a-s-athens.squarespace.com/ contemporary.art.showcase@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/contemporaryartshowcaseathens/ https://twitter.com/C_Art_Showcase https://www.instagram.com/c_art_showcase/ https://plus.google.com/+ContemporaryArtShowcaseAthens