IPA gets moving with performance art

ISTANBUL

The aim of the festival is to attract more young artists to Istanbul and spread the popularity of performance art in Turkey with various events in different venues.

This year, the International Performance Association’s festival is returning to Istanbul with more artists for 13 days of workshops and events.

The festival, which will be organized with the support of the Koza Visual Culture and Arts Association, aims to attract more young artists to Istanbul and spread the popularity of performance art in Turkey.

This year, the workshop teachers and the festival artists will include Agnes Verena Stenke and Jürgen Fritz, both of Germany. The festival, which will be held at a number of different venues, will run from today until Aug. 24.

The festival team can offer limited places for 40 participants. Last year, more than 150 young artists applied, and there are expectations that a similar number will apply again this year.

Many experienced teachers, as well as performance artists, will be at the festival to teach participants. The workshops start Aug. 11 and will continue until the end of the festival on Aug. 22.

There will be three workshop groups with 10 to 15 participants per group. The participants will stay in one group for the whole duration of the workshop. Workshop applications can be obtained at http://www.i-pa.org.

More performances in Istanbul

Fritz, the artistic director of the IPA Summer, said the IPA was an expanding network of process-oriented artists, devoted to cultural awareness through the professional practice of performance art.

The IPA strives to provide a platform for such artists from all over the globe to exchange ideas and initiate progress in the world of performance art. Founded as IPAH e.V. in 2006, the organization formed a series of workshops, performance festivals and meetings that encourage the development of participants‘ artistic endeavors.

“This year IPA will focus more on teaching and learning performance art, and the theme is ‘The next step,’” said IPA Istanbul director and performance artist Burçak
Konukman.

Protests and performances

While IPA will bring performance art under the roof of the festival for the next two weeks, such art has already been seen in Istanbul this summer with the eruption of the Gezi protests at the end of May, with performance art putting its stamp on the protests, particularly with Erdem Gündüz’s “standing man” demonstration.

Gündüz, himself a performance artist, touched off a nationwide phenomenon after he stood still for eight hours in Taksim Square on June 17, two days after police violently ejected hundreds of peace protesters from Gezi Park. Gündüz inspired hundreds to also stand still in the square, while his demonstration was imitated across the country.

Gündüz’s performance art-inspired act of civil disobedience quickly became dubbed the “standing man” (duran adam) on social media.