A few words

“Now, more than ever” and “unprecedented times” are phrases that have exponentially multiplied in the year 2020. As we continue to ask ourselves “why” - why now, why this, why anything, we have kept coming back to this phrase, “why not?” 

In the absence of in-person gatherings, INVERSE chose to focus our 2020 efforts on intimate spaces of dialogue and conversation. In a time of so much uncertainty, we dug in to what we knew - how to have a conversation, how to hold space for questions, how to feel close to one another. We have so much to learn from the medium of performance - it is the very act of engaging with our problems, with our environment. It leads us to solutions. 

This year’s festival is different from prior festivals. For much of 2020, performance artists and organizers have wrestled with the virtual space. If we’re not performing live, are we still performance artists? If no one is present to witness my action, is this a performance? Is performance in the digital space still performance? We have an uncanny need to categorize and summarize...wrap it up in a neat package and tie it with a bow. For INVERSE 2020’s digital festival, we invite you to sit in the liminal space with us, for just a moment, and meditate on our experiences, our concerns, our fears, and how we can learn, grow and move forward.

This year’s festival is also a celebration. A celebration of the ways our vibrant network of artists and students have put themselves and their work into the world in the midst of this global pandemic. A celebration of the new ways performance has been considered, and the relationships that have grown and developed in the liminal and uncomfortable places. For this festival, we work again with artists we know well and celebrate our five years of work together. The programming we’ve developed follows throughlines of 2020 - the exploration of new landscapes, self and communal activism, and deep engagement with the past to create a brighter future.

So, we’re starting here. We’re inviting you to join us in the intimate and in-between places and experiment and explore together. We hope the work you experience in these next few days inspires you to consider ways to create, find, share and hold space in the digital sphere. 

See you at the festival,

Cynthia & Emma