asfaBBQ 2016 / Performing Utopia; Celebrating 500 Years of Radical thinking
The second edition of the asfaBBQ will celebrate and reflect on the 500th anniversary of the publication of Thomas More’s radical speculations on social organization. There is a shift in the direction of the festival from the human body to the body politic (the theme of the previous edition of the festival was Bodies that Resist;), with art being the instrument for imagination and re-constitution. The invocation utopia may seem overambitious, even ironic, if one considers the living situation in Athens today. Nevertheless, the necessity of thinking the conditions of living and creating together, in the fashion that More did 500 years ago, is even more pressing in a context of the continuing disintegration of social and political institutions. Utopic thinking and creating can protect and cultivate creativity, if only temporary, from the pressing challenges of a society in crisis, allowing the space and the time for experimentation and reflection.
With this in mind the festival is inviting students and alumni of the Athens School of Fine Arts to participate in the festival, suggesting three streams of intervention:
Body and the promise of subjective and collective emancipation.
Performance as a methodology of experimental research of the social condition.
The digital domain as a non-place for speculation and resistance.
With this in mind the festival is inviting students and alumni of the Athens School of Fine Arts to participate in the festival, suggesting three streams of intervention:
Body and the promise of subjective and collective emancipation.
Performance as a methodology of experimental research of the social condition.
The digital domain as a non-place for speculation and resistance.