24.07. – 05.09.2020.
La Strada, the festival of street art is this year divided into four periods of action, sets: 1st set: from 1 January to 31 December, 2nd set: 24 July – 1 August, 3rd set: 28 August – 5 September and the 4th set: Autumn 2020.
Who owns the city asks the festival this year and wants to encourage citizens to take back the city. This is especially important now, after the pandemic restrictions! With artistic actions the living space of the people shall be reconquered bit by bit. And who could not dare to do this better than a festival that uses public space as a space for action, so far the self-description.
Together with, among others, WLDN/Joanne Leighton, Christian Muthspiel & Orjazztra Vienna, Willi Dorner & Lisa Rastl, Chris Haring/Liquid Loft, Günter Meinhart/STUDIO PERCUSSION graz and the Dutch sound artists Strijbos & Van Rijswijk, creative ways of conquering space are being sought. The focus is on community art projects, which are developed and realised together with the local population and numerous other artists.
UPDATE:
The director Werner Schrempf has taken three measures to adapt La Strada to the crisis and its circumstances. First of all, he has extended the festival period to the whole year, i.e. La Strada will take place from 01.01. until 31.12.2020. This way you take the space you need to take place, to offer enough program and to attract enough visitors. The year will end with the project “The Graz Vigil” on Schlossberg, a “choreography for an entire city” by Australian/Belgian artist Joanne Leighton.
In a second step, contact was made primarily with local composers, musicians and choreographers in order to jointly devise artistic formats for the original period of the festival at the end of July and beginning of August. These were primarily intended to have an installative-performative character and to be formats that, in this phase of the summer, permeate the city and public space without actively gathering the public in specific places. And it has been successful: an exciting programme has been worked out, which can give people back their cultural city piece by piece and turn them into actors themselves.
For the third phase of the festival, the last week of August and the first week of September were used. Here, those planned outdoor theatre productions are now being shown which make it possible to regulate the number of spectators – the frequency of performances is increased accordingly.
La Strada
24.07. – 05.09.2020
various locations
www.lastrada.at
