Toward Social Activism, a Conclusion

Cinema and the Festivalization of Capitalism

nv reserves the right to protect this publication against unauthorized use. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. The Open Access publication of this book is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (dfg, German Research Foundation)-Projektnummer 502058482. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https:// crea tive comm ons.org/ licen ses/ by-nc-nd/ 4.0/ Contents Acknowledgments xi List of Figures and Tables xiv Introduction 1 Film Festivals, Introducing a Global Population 18 Part 1 Affordances 1 Film Festivals and Festivalization 35 1 Film Festival Research in the Cinema Field 35 1.1 Propositions for Film Festivals 36 1.2 Historical Origins 37 1.3 Contemporary State-Festival Relationships 39 1.4 Within-Population Differentiation 39 1.5 Center/ Periphery in the Cinema Field 41 1.6 Festivals as Counter-Culture and Sites for Identity-Politics 42

Progress in Human Geography, 1998

Despite their ubiquity and cultural prominence, academic study of arts festivals has been neglected. This article examines how cyclical arts festivals transform places from being everyday settings into temporary environments that contribute to the production, processing and consumption of culture, concentrated in time and place. Moreover, festivals also provide examples of how culture is contested. Support for the arts is part of a process used by e Âlites to establish social distance between themselves and others. Festivals have traditionally been innovative and have always been controlled. In the past, artistic directors wielded this control but recent attempts by commercial interests to control festivals reflect a wider situation in which marketing agencies and managers are transforming arts and culture into arts and culture industries. Today, promoting arts festivals is related to place promotion, and this encourages safe' art forms. This highlights latent tensions between festival as art and economics, between culture and cultural politics.

2021

Recent decades have seen a rapid proliferation of cultural festivals and a renewed interest in their study. The broad interdisciplinary debate on contemporary festivals revolves mostly around the issue of “festivalization,” associated with the strategic use of festivals for various social, political, and economic ends (Bennet, Taylor and Woodward 2014). Festivalization has thus far been mostly explored in the context of the neoliberal mode of urban governance and the utilization of festivals for the purposes of urban revitalization and place marketing. In this dissertation, I focus on the underexplored articulation of festivalization, as present in the practice of using festivals as tools of civic action. My research thus not only contributes to the debates on festivalization but also responds to the call by civil society scholars for a more robust and meaning-centered understanding of “civic action” (Lichterman and Eliasoph 2014) and a need to better understand the processes that sustain the growing popularity of “civil society events” (Citroni 2020). In my research, I explore the cases of three multigenre cultural festivals: [fjúžn] in Bratislava, festival WIENWOCHE in Vienna, and festival Ghettofest in Brno. These festivals have several important things in common that are central to the argument of this thesis. All three were established in response to a specific civic concern that their organizers shared and wanted to address. In all three cases, this concern was related to the marginalization of specific minority groups in the city or effects of such marginalization on the urban environment: the “invisibility” of residents with a migratory background in the local public space in the case of [fjúžn], a lack of representation for residents with a migratory background and other ethnic and social minorities such as Roma or LGBTIQ in the local field of cultural production in the case of WIENWOCHE, and the stigmatization of a low-income and multiethnic neighborhood inhabited predominantly by Roma in the case of Ghettofest. Finally, all three festivals are multigenre cultural events, organized by civil society organizations (CSOs). The commonalities pervading the three cases provide for an ideal setting to study how festival organizers blend festival production with civic action when using festivals as tools for advancing their distinct visions of social change, which is my primary goal in this dissertation. To address this goal, I rely on a combination of qualitative research methods, including in-depth interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, employing a multiple case study research design. I focus on the perspective of festival organizers, whom I understand as actors who have the power to control how the festivals enter the “cultural public sphere” (Giorgi, Sassatelli, and Delanty 2011). Drawing on the epistemological approach of cultural sociology, which understands meaning-making as constitutive of action (Swidler 1986), I focus on the reconstruction of meanings that sustain the civic action of festival organizers. Based on the analysis of my three case studies, I advance the concept of “civically engaged festivals,” which I define as festivals organized in response to specific civic concerns with the intention of making the concerns public and providing a remedy. Despite this shared pattern of strategic utilization of festivals, which I identify in the cases of all three festivals, I found that their approach to making their concern public and providing a remedy was vastly different. In order to account for these differences, I turn to the concept of “group style” (Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003), which helps me to elucidate different patterns of civic action––each sustained by distinct patterns of meanings––and their implications for the use of festivals as tools of civic action. I show that the group style of new minority advocates leads to the use of the festival as a tool of awareness raising about the presence and life of new minorities in the city, the style of societal transformers to the use of the festival as a tool of minority empowerment, and the style of neighborhood enthusiasts to the use of the festival as a tool of familiarity building in relation to the social, material, and symbolic space of the neighborhood. My findings further develop the notion that festivals can serve as instances of cultural public spheres and generate sites for contestation and democratic debate (Giorgi et al 2011). They problematize the overly narrow understanding of festivalization as the commercialization and commodification of culture. The research framework I have developed by utilizing the concept of group style bears the potential for more elaborate exploration of the relationship between arts and culture, ethnic diversity, and social inclusion (Martiniello 2015), offering a nuanced perspective on the boundary work performed by organizers of cultural events. Finally, my findings further develop the argument that styles act as filters that influence how civil society actors use events to promote their visions of societal improvement (Citroni 2015) and identify three distinct patterns in which festivals can be used to address “cultural processes leading to inequality” (Lamont, Beljean and Clair 2014) in contemporary ethnically and culturally diversifying cities.

Taking as my starting point the assumption that art is a social practice, and how it is made and perceived is always determined by the socio-political and economic context, I would like to propose that a festival be regarded as an art institution – and consider the implications of that perspective. The political ontology of the festival; the political and economic entanglements of curatorial practices; economic (self-)censorship and its recent manifestations at theatre festivals in Poland will be the main facets of my study. I will also enquire about how the festival today can be ‘taken over’, regained a space for critical activity. My consideration of the institutional practices of present-day festivals will be based on my own experiences as a curator; they will also be situated in the context of practicable institutional-critical activity as proposed by Gerald Raunig, and take as their point of reference the concept of an institution as a common good. The concept of the ‘performativeness of the art world’ formulated by Ana Vujanovic will be of primary importance to my study.

Eventification as a social trend has spawned a boom in autonomous events and places (zones), like festivals and free cultural spaces. This is becoming not only an industry, but a social phenomenon, where social and political change emerges. Burning Man, Ruigoord, Boom, Christiania and the history of autonomous initiatives (Hakim Bey) are discussed in a context of psychological and social needs, escapism, and the experience economy.

2014

"The Festivalisation of Culture explores the links between various local and global cultures, communities, identities and lifestyle narratives as they are both constructed and experienced in the festival context. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from Australia and Europe, festivals are examined as sites for the performance and critique of lifestyle, identity & cultural politics; as vehicles for the mobilization and cementation of local and global communities; and as spatio-temporal events that inspire and determine meaning in peoples' lives. Investigating the manner in which festivals are no longer merely periodic, cultural, religious or historical events within communities, but rather a popular means through which citizens consume and experience culture, this book also sheds light on the increasing diversity of contemporary societies and the role played by festivals as sites of cohesion, cultural critique and social mobility. As such, this book will be of interest to those working in areas such as the sociology, consumption and commodification of culture, social and cultural geography, anthropology, cultural studies and popular music studies. "

Organization Studies, 2017

The present essay examines the festival as a form of organizing and as a metaphor for contemporary organizations. Drawing upon classical and contemporary perspectives on festival, we focus on social ambivalences and how these are enacted and mediated through festivals. Specifically, we argue that festivals mark a tension between linear and cyclical dimensions of social time. Next, we argue that formal institutional and communitarian principles are mediated through festival. Finally, we argue that festivals mark a tension between reflexivity and social critique on the one hand and mass spectacle on the other, and problematize the notion of bodily enjoyment as a form of social consciousness. We discuss the implications of these three ambivalences – in the notion of time, the notion of community and the notion of reflexivity – for contributing to contemporary organizational discussions.

The Oxford Handbook of Global Popular Music, 2021

This chapter adds to a growing subfield of music festival studies by examining the business practices and cultures of the commercial outdoor sector, with a particular focus on rock, pop and dance music events. The events of this sector require substantial financial and other capital in order to be staged and achieve success, yet the market is highly volatile, with relatively few festivals managing to attain longevity. It is argued that these events must balance their commercial needs with the socio-cultural expectations of their audiences for hedonistic, carnivalesque experiences that draw on countercultural understanding of festival culture (the countercultural carnivalesque). This balancing act has come into increased focus as corporate promoters, brand sponsors and venture capitalists have sought to dominate the market in the neoliberal era of late capitalism. The chapter examines the riskiness and volatility of the sector before examining contemporary economic strategies for risk management and audience development, and critiques of these corporatizing and mainstreaming processes.

Cinergie. Il Cinema e le altre Arti, 2022

Film festivals brand themselves as yearly rituals that set out to glorify the seventh art along with its makers. Blended in a rhetoric of universalist humanism, such a self-branding discourse has often concealed the actual variety and outreach of their agencies. Throughout their global and individual histories festivals have, in fact, done more than celebrating films, and have had significant impact in film culture as well as beyond, tapping into the domains of international diplomacy (Pisu 2013, Kötzing et al. 2017), cultural exchange (Razlogova 2020, Gelardi 2022) and local development policies (Fehrenbach 2020, Rasmi 2022), for example. It is because of their crucial role within the cultural histories of cinema that festivals have attracted critical attention since their outset, observed and theorized from different standpoints as sites of intersection, negotiation, circulation and sociability. In this vein, one can consider some of the early commentaries on these institutions, such as André Bazin's short essay (1955), in which he observed and questioned the sacred rules underpinning Cannes' religious "order" and its prestige, or the (little known) speeches by Tommaso Chiarini and Mino Argentieri (Anonymous 1966), who engaged with the controversial proliferation of festivals in Italy and Europe in the 1960s and argued for the "public value" of festivals' programming and discoveries. 1 Attention on festivals has not waned ever since and, throughout the last twenty years, it has become central to scholarly discussions on film and of its social, cultural, political and economic contours, including the historical developments of film aesthetics (