LA SERRE – arts vivants is happy to unveil the unconfined format of the 14th edition of the OFFTA, live arts festival, which will be held from May 22nd to 32nd, 2020. After discussion with the artists, it seemed essential to us to consider this edition of the OFFTA as an experimental and observation platform. With humility, we will try to conceive an open space-time to reflect together, artists and publics, on what marks the live in art. Beyond its form, every performance presented emerges from the desire of each artist to revisit their own practice in light of present times. Online, with a distance, through interposed mailboxes, every gesture will aim to reinvent relationships, embrace the unknown and fool distances.
The artists’ projects will be gradually revealed over the next few weeks. Additionally, videoconference exchange activities which will be organized for artists and professionals, as well as the online publishing of OFF. Radio podcasts, will be added to the program. The full schedule will be available on May 18th. Until then, festivalgoers are invited to obtain a pass. During the festival, this pass will give daily access to different performances and platforms.
Three passes, all offering access to all of the programme, are offered at $0, $25 and $50. Because our communities are actually in precarious financial conditions, we decided to open up the accessibility of the festival by offering a pass for $0. Donations of $25 or $50 for the solidarity passes are strongly recommended to those who can afford it. Such donations are crucial to support the mission of the OFFTA.
Imagining a live art festival in the actual context is everything but easy. In such confined moments, how can we activate the necessary fragility that ties us when we attend a performance? Which imaginaries can we summon, welcome, gather, in an attempt to question the past and what we seek for the future?
When imagining the 14th edition of the festival, we wanted to give people more time to take in other temporalities, lending another rhythm to what might seem inevitable to us. We tried to create new time, draft new calendars, imagine new interstices that we can fully occupy, coordinate widespread deceleration and abandon ourselves to this force that we cannot control. And then unexpectedly in the last months, our aspirations have been exceeded by reality. Our questions materialized abruptly in our daily lives while the context forces us to stop to listen.
If we don’t know yet what will remain of the world that we are now leaving behind, or what to expect next, we make the daring gamble to invent a deconfined festival. We invited the artists to present original artworks, thus allowing their necessary voices to reach you. Whether through your headphones, your mailbox or online, we commit through different forms to preserve the live experience, the fragile and sensitive that unites us despite the distance between us.
We’ll meet again on the other side of this forced pause to activate the rest. In the meantime, let us invent together the 32nd of May.
- Editorial excerpt from Inventing the 32nd of May, signed by
Vincent de Repentigny, Artistic and General Director
and the whole festival team
Artists participating in this latest edition:
Penelope and Chloe – Simon Thomas Elle Barbara Dominique Leclerc – Patrice Charbonneau-Brunelle Lara Oundjian Hugo Nadeau (c) Davis Plett – Gislina Patterson Jordan Brown (c) Andrea Spaziani – Matt Smith Nadia Myre – Johanna Nutter Simiuni Nauya – Aurélie Pedron – Robin Pineda Gould Nate Yaffe Camille Lacelle-Wilsey – Nien Tzu Weng Melanie Binette
Mani Soleymanlou – The Young Troop of the Quat’s Sub SME-ART
