Finding Trust in Dublin

02/05/13

Phillip tells us all about his experience at IETM Dublin:

So I’m back from IETM Dublin with more than a swag of business cards to get excited about. Now and then, however, a conversation comes along that isn’t about your flashy business card, but more about who and what we are creating for as a global collective community of artists-meets-producers-and directors.

The theme of this IETM Dublin was the big one:  Trust.  As societies in Europe continue to change, whether it is due to recession, austerity cuts, revelations of clerical abuse or the rise of fascism, how do we, as citizens, trust those in authority? How do we as artists, curators, producers and cultural workers trust one another and the structures built to support our work? How do our audiences learn to trust us, to support the development of new types of work and models of presentation? How has the swift advance of technology changed the way we relate to one another? Has it impacted on our ability to trust one another? These were some of the questions posed through IETM Dublin and the organizing committee.

I braved the elements of Dublin and participated in a session called Newsround. In this dynamic session, pre-selected participants got to make 3-minute presentations about themselves, their project or their organization. The session proved to be a fail-safe way to discover what’s going on in the performing arts elsewhere in the world and meet your colleagues, or even your future project-partners! I was auctioned off in the first Newsround session with 17 other budding artists and was inspired to hear about a vast array of projects from artists across the Euro divide. What made it click, however, was the reciprocal pitch from presenters uttering the words "we are looking for an artist with a project or idea to work with our Festival” and concluded that if you’re an artist working around cross-disciplinary practice, especially visual arts and live performance context, you got the lingo down – Just don’t mention the word choreography.  After the session, I attracted the attention of a few French presenters and a cute Italian that all sounded rather promising and kept me busy back at the pub as the business goes.

Sophie Travers hit the mark with a session entitled Do We Trust Showcases which she presented with a line up of top-notch-contributors. The Brief was: So many of us love to complain about showcases – and yet they still have a key role in the buying and selling of productions internationally. Nice one Sophie! I didn’t attend this session but heard it went down a treat.

High on the must-attend-agenda for me was a session called What is the role of the critic? A commentary on the role of culture in society, or a ticket seller? This session inspired me to try to replicate this session in my home town of Melbourne sometime soon, where the broadest-reaching forums of critical reviewing (in my opinion) is rather shallow and intellectually limited, residing largely in news publications such as The Age and Herald Sun. The Blogosphere is the one forum to get a fix of critical art reviewing but even that is flooded with whatever… (C’mon critics with rigour…. Get writing!)

I also had a brilliant time meeting some of Ireland’s leading dance artists and choreographers in attending performances in the beautiful (but rainy) Dublin.  Greece is the next port of entry this October with the theme TOMORROW. What a perfect match, my work did promise the future after all.  Greece, The Phillip Adams Experience is coming. 

Image: Some friends Phillip met on his travels, at the Hunterian Museum and Arts Gallery – University of Glasgow

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