With: John K. Cobra, Ong Keng Sen, Tamara Cubas 

Moderated by: Nayse López 

Artistic provocation by: Alejandro Ahmed

There is a spectrum that surrounds this entire conversation: the spectrum of the pandemic. The traumatic experience of the past two years is a mark in all the speeches, a permanent reference; it serves as a point of comparison for almost all experiences. It was a "radical moment", summarised the stage director Ong Keng Sen. An "important" process because "the entire world was levelled" at that moment.

For the first time - at least in our lifetime - "the world stopped". No one left home. No one travelled, no one got on a stage, few were able to continue creating. For once, every person on the planet had to face the same problem, Keng Sen recalls. There is therefore a before and an after the pandemic.

But there is also a during the pandemic, noted the artist Roland Gunst (aka John K. Cobra), when he recalled the "peace of mind" he felt at that moment when we all strongly hit the brakes. Suddenly, it was not necessary to respond to the constant request for novelty and that seems to have been a sense of freedom and also of learning.

Although this idea was not explored in this first session of the cycle of talks that the DDD and Panorama festivals are currently promoting, it is important to keep it in mind. Maybe it will be important in the next sessions, especially when reflecting on the future of artistic practices, the new forms of production, of performance and, necessarily, also of programming.

In this first talk (which took place online on April 4) the theme was sustainability. But, after all, what are we talking about when we talk about sustainability? Above all, are we talking about environmental issues, as it was systematised in the introduction to the session made by the moderator Nayse López and the choreographer Alejandro Ahmed? Or is sustainability "more complex than that", as Tamara Cubas suggested?

Perhaps something in-between, judging by the remaining statements. The environmental issue - the expression "climate emergency" was not used but it was always present in the talk - is unavoidable and will mark the debates and decisions of the next five to ten years. However, in this session, simplistic solutions were refused. The issue is in fact "more complex" and in need of deeper solutions than a drastic reduction in air travel or an entirely vegan menu at festivals can guarantee.

The introductory text for this round of talks stated that, during the early days of the pandemic, we lived with the feeling that, after that period, nothing would stay the same. The problem is that "maybe many things have gotten worse!", one wrote. This was also an idea explored in the talk on April 4 by Ong Keng Sen and Nayse López. In the first encounters of programmers after the pandemic, it seemed that "nothing had changed". "It seemed like 2015," illustrated the director of the Panorama festival, who moderated the session.

A concern that Ong Keng Sen tried to answer when he pointed to a process (of change) "that is incomplete, unfinished". Half-digested. Is there hope?

Therefore, this talk took place in a post-traumatic context and in a context of change (or at least of wanting it). We talked about festivals. About the way they are made - programmed, produced, also communicated. About the pertinence of this meeting place.

In the "provocation" on video that began the session, Alejandro Ahmed recalled the historical importance of these events. For the company Cena 11, which directs from Florianópolis, in Southern Brazil, being part of festival programming - especially in the 1990s, pre-Internet - was the opportunity to "be seen" and reach national and international platforms that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Festivals are also a way of training and of encountering other artists. "It's vital to step out of your place," says Ahmed. "To be in touch with another way of thinking, another way of urbanism and another way of organising the socio-cultural path". Festivals allow it. So do world travelling.

The pertinence that keeps the encounter, the physical presence in a show or in a festival, one of the strongest ideas that crossed several interventions. Ken Sen valued the dimension of the festival as "time and space for encounter". To feel the bodies, the sweat, the saliva of the other.

The choreographer Tamara Cubas states that " the experience of being in another place is very important", "to understand the world and even to understand the place where we are from". Seeing an image of a place is not being in the place, she mentioned. "Not being able to live together will make us have only a vague idea of what the other is". And that is, warns the Uruguayan choreographer, a "dangerous thing".

Moreover, in the initial "provocation" Alejandro Ahmed had already pointed to the "historical challenge" of presence in the living arts in the introduction to the talk. There was a need to find some ways of responding. Roland Gunst suggests that festivals "cannot be a pure representation of the society in which it is installed". They must question, disorganise.

For Nayse López, it is not possible to continue doing festivals in the same way as all the big events have been made in recent years. "I have no intention of programming 25 shows if they are not part of a broader question".

That "broader question" is a possible answer to the concerns raised. What seemed clear in this talk was a willingness to question the fundamentals.

In this sense, no intervention was as vital as Ong Keng Sen's, who raised radical questions: "What is valuable in what I do?"; "Does the way forward lie in doing something else together?"; "Who is the audience [of festivals]?".

And then "What does it mean to be present?" he also asked, putting forward one possible answer: facing the challenges of sustainability, we must question our movements, our journeys, and select where we can and should be present. Ken Sen proposes that the essential is "to be present where change is necessary".

In other words, "it is still important" to gather 50 people from all over the world, but it is necessary that these people are "change-makers", who, after this encounter, can go back to their respective contexts and change their local realities. "The human encounter is still important". The point will be to make each of these encounters meaningful.