The Month of Performance Art-Berlin (MPA-B) is an artist-led and month-long collaborative platform, whose central focus is the promotion and support of independent and contemporary performance art theories and practices in Berlin.
Running annually in May and featuring hundreds of performance art projects at dozens of locations across the city, MPA-B was founded in 2011 with five main objectives at its core:
* to facilitate connections and develop cooperation amongst venues, curators, networks, organisations and other independent players working in the field of performance art;
* to draw attention to a thriving, but often overlooked, community of artists and performance art practitioners whose work challenges, explores and embodies a multiplicity of artistic forms and languages;
* to foster innovative critical discourses, practice-based exchanges and interactions between performance art makers and audiences;
* to explore and confront new models and methodologies of curating, producing, promoting, sustaining, creating, making, understanding and talking about performance art;
* to document and trace the contemporary history of performance art practices in the city through the annual Berlin Performance Art Report.
Now in its 3rd edition, MPA-B 2013 will once again bring experimental and ground-breaking performances to the general and specialised public alike, with an eclectic programme featuring performances, lectures, screenings, site-specific actions, public interventions, discussions, workshops and unique audience encounters and interactions.
5 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MPA-B
1) MPA–B is not the Month of Performing Arts - Berlin but the Month of Performance Art - Berlin.
2) MPA–B is not a festival, institution or organisation but a collaborative platform. It is self-organised by all its participating artists, curators, producers and practitioners with a central team looking after its overall production, logistics, press, PR and networking.
3) MPA–B is a non-funded initiative, which runs on donations, personal funds and registration fees. It also runs on the voluntary work of its organising team made of a group of artists/curators/producers.
4) MPA–B does not own or manage a central venue, office, agency or space where it can host artists and projects.
5) Through its new Curatorial Collaboration Initiative for 2013, MPA–B aims to explore and develop new performance art formats that challenge and re-examine traditional and contemporary notions of “curating” and “curator”.
