Immersing audiences in ‘pockets’ of arts and exploration: Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival presents its full 2022 schedule

The 9th edition of Buffer Fringe will take place on the 7th, 8th and 9th of October 2022,? followed by Nicosia Atelier for Young Festival Managers, by The Festival Academy?

Since 2014, Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival, which is organized by the Home for Cooperation, hosts performing artists from Cyprus and around the globe. It promotes experimental and ‘fringe’ works, and gives space for artists to create, resist, trigger discussions, and share their unique ways of seeing.?

A tapestry of vibrant artists, from Cyprus and abroad, makes up the Artist Lineup for Buffer Fringe 2022, responding to this year’s Pockets (beyond) theme. Through their unique performances and projects, artists offer suggestions on puncturing dominant notions, resisting the logic of the main frame, and offering space for thinking about difference and identity, past and present, inclusion and exclusion.?

Buffer Fringe 2022, expanding its inclusive and peacebuilding agenda, is getting ready to immerse audiences in pockets of arts and exploration with five curators and fourteen artistic teams, over three days and three venues across Nicosia:?

DAY 1: Friday, October 7th at Rüstem Bookstore?

For the first day of Buffer Fringe 2022, on Friday October 7th, Lebanese director/performer/peacebuilder Raffi Feghali is curating narratives and immersive environments within the spaces of Rüstem Bookstore. According to Feghali, through their works, artists inform “identity and belonging, they feed on history, and constantly evolve.”

Part 1 of the day begins with NOBODY by ERGO Theatre [CY] a musical staged reading extracted from milestone works on Odysseas/Ulysses by Homer, Joyce and Kazantzakis; while visual performance piece Ilk: A Queer Arab Dichotomy by Berlin-based Lebanese artist Ahmad BáBá, engages with questions regarding the queer Arab Muslim identity. For Part 2, Compa?ia Encuentro [IT/SP] presents Una Guerra Entre Nosotros (A War Between Us) - a dance piece on a contested romantic relationship, addressing themes such as love, death, and homophobia. Finally, Inal Bilsel [CY] with his live electronic music and multimedia performance, immerses audiences into a Nostalgia for the Future that never arrived.?

DAY 2: Saturday, October 8th at Theatro Polis OPAP

Australian-Cypriot writer/dramaturg Kat Kats, Australian performance director Bryce Ives, and Cypriot theatre director Maria Varnakkidou are curating the festival’s second day, on Saturday October 8th, at NiMAC’s Theatro Polis OPAP. Here, the curatorial team is inviting us to “think inside the [black] box: a pocket of space to be or become whatever or whoever you want.”?

Part 1 of the day begins with Die Wolke Art Group [GR] who will present Poetics of Space, a dancetheatre study of the subjective perception of space and the concept of intimacy; while Compagnie Inflexions [FR] will invite audiences to listen and dance to poetry and sounds in the interdisciplinary performance As We Drove Short Short Horizon-Line. Part 2 features ody icons’s [GR/CY] POLYDRAMA, an interdisciplinary musical performance on queerness, tradition, social fight, darkness and light, solitude and the collective. Vasilikí Anastasiou and the sound of Amalgamation Choir’s [CY] 20 female voices will immerse audiences in soundscapes, primal sounds, songs, whispers and lullabies with their From West to East performance.

DAY 3: Sunday, October 9th at Ledra Palace Buffer Zone, Moat and Home for Cooperation

On Buffer Fringe’s third and final day, on Sunday October 9th, Cypriot art historian Derya Ulubatli, transforms the Ledra Palace Buffer Zone and Moat area around Home for Cooperation into a common meeting point, into “a ‘pocket’ where different artists will create new stories by collaborating with the audience and the Other”.?

In STATE, interdisciplinary artist Melita Couta [CY] will create an interactive performative art installation proposing the establishment, development and ultimate failure and dissolution of a 24-hour “STATE” in the buffer zone. Video artist Fatosh Olgacher [CY] will present ΚΥΠ|RIS, a video installation divided into two paths, with two different films based on the experiences of Cypriots living in either the northern or the southern part of the island during the period of 1974-2004. Netherlands-based Martín álvarez will present Where Words Become Music, an interactive live performance of classical music and literature, exploring the possibility of spreading a universal message beyond language. For Tera Group’s Muzuru [CY], a musician and two actors come together to present a forbidden love with music and tsiattista/actisma rhyming couplets in Greek and Turkish.?

The day’s Parallel Activities include K&A [Switzerland] who are returning to Buffer Fringe this year for a “simple collective action, a poetic ignition, a crucial gesture” with their Relay of Matches. And finally, in a unique crowdsourcing history project by CYENS Centre of Excellence, audiences can contribute to a deeper understanding of Nicosia by bringing their personal photographs, newspaper clippings and other historic material at DeepNic’s scanning station at Home for Cooperation throughout the evening.?

TICKETS

Friday and Saturday nights are presented in 2 Parts each – audiences are encouraged to attend all performances! Tickets for each Part are 5 euros / 70 TL, and 10 euros / 140 TL for both Parts. Sunday performances are free and open to the public. Ticketing information and purchases:?

https://www.home4cooperation.info/buffer-fringe-2022/

Atelier Nicosia

In partnership with the Home for Cooperation through the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival, The Festival Academy is bringing together 30 young festival makers, cultural experts, artists, cultural activists, and cross-sector experts from all over the world to engage in a global conversation about today’s challenges regarding festivals, and the role of art and culture in communities and contested spaces. Atelier Nicosia will take place between 7-13 September in Nicosia. For more information: https://www.thefestivalacademy.eu/en/activities/atelier/atelier-nicosia-2022/?

More on schedule, venues and tickets: www.bufferfringe.org/whatson?

The Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival is a program of the Home for Cooperation project, implemented by the Association for Historical Dialogue and Research and funded by the Active Citizens Fund 2020-2024. The Festival is also supported by IMPACT (Imagining Together: Platform for Arts, Culture and Conflict Transformation), the Norwegian Embassy in Athens, Goethe-Institut Cyprus, Europe Direct Ledra Palace Area, the British High Commission in Nicosia, the Cyprus Mail, and The Home Café. Collaborators: The Festival Academy, International Community Arts Festival – Rotterdam, ASEF 360 Culture, and Theatro Polis OPAP.?

Buffer Fringe 2022 is collaborating with Sesta, a podcast on culture by Meltem Burak, and Island Talks – the island’s only trilingual podcast station.?

Buffer Fringe is a proud recipient of the EFFE label 2022-2023 as a Remarkable Arts Festival!?