Riga Performance Festival STARPTELPA* is an annual international art and culture event focused primarily on performance art, yet also supporting cross-disciplinary and experimental synthesis of performative arts. The aim of the festival is to strengthen the position of performance art as a sovereign form of art, fighting against its constant ghettoization in the arts and culture ecosystem. In the increasingly alienated contemporary society, a dialogic and communication-driven art should be seen as a powerful tool not only enriching and diversifying the arts field, but also providing an opportunity to expose audiences to thought-provoking and empathy-encouraging experiences.

* translated as a liminal space or space in-between

Programme: STARPTELPA runs for a duration of one week in late May / beginning of June in Riga and entails a vast and immersive programme of events, including exhibitions, workshops and master classes, symposium and live performances. The festival attracts a variety of local and international artists providing an opportunity for audiences to get acquainted with diverse artistic strategies and aesthetics, as well as acting as a catalyst for networking and further cooperation among artists, researchers and students.

Sustainability: STARPTELPA is organised by a mission-driven core group of experienced specialists, who are invested in ensuring the continuity of the festival branding it as one of the key performance art events in the Baltic and Nordic region. Taking into account the curatorial challenges when working with ephemeral process-based arts that often struggle with institutional support, the festival should be seen not only as a crucial event that allows exhibiting such arts, but also as an archival platform facilitating documentation and maintaining a valuable archive of still and moving images. The archive is used for research and pedagogical purposes, providing the sustainability of the festival.

Image: Guntis Trops. Performance "SMTH UNCN". Riga Performance Festival 2019. Photo: Anna Maskava

Inception: STARPTELPA started in 2018 as a festival curated for performance art students, who presented their graduation works in the festival along with professional artists. Students – whether they are just starting to explore the potential of performance art or they are mature and experienced artists who want to test the performance art as a discipline in an array of other visual arts disciplines – have always been at the heart of the festival. 

Theme: STARPTELPA works with a new theme every year. The thematic framework can be interpreted in various directions, yet it gives an impulse for devising the work in a certain conceptual mode. For example, the theme for the 2023 festival was “Collaborative Authorship”, consequently the performance artists worked with participatory aesthetics and engaged audiences in the creation of the work of art on multiple levels.

Image: Noa Reshef. Performance "FireArm". Riga Performance Festival Starptelpa 2019. Photo: Anna Maskava

Venue: STARPTELPA is a nomadic festival and is always looking for new spaces and territories to discover the site-specific potential.

Funding and support: STARPTELPA works with 3 groups of artists: students, artists who apply to the festival by responding to the Open Call and invited artists. To ensure the participation of all groups, the festival attracts funding from the State Culture Capital Foundation, Riga Council, Nordic Culture Point, Erasmus+ and others. The festival also reaches out to representative institutions such as the Goethe Institute and the French Institute operating in Riga, and also appreciates the in-kind support, for example, provided by the Art Academy of Latvia. The accommodation for international artists is provided at the artist residency centres run by the Latvian Centre for Performance Art and MA Space. STARPTELPA also appreciates the philanthropic initiatives by art patrons, such as VV Foundation in Latvia that has supported emerging local artists in performance art by providing monetary awards and artist residency opportunities.