The first day of Baltic Circle Festival began with a briefing on new Covid restrictions: we would get through the opening weekend as planned, the second weekend would need some rearrangements for only two events. Nothing would need to be cancelled.
After balancing for months with uncertainty some ground was suddenly felt beneath our feet and for the first time, there was a reason for a small celebration.
Contrary to our preliminary information, the 20 years old Baltic Circle was not to prove the hero of the celebration. Reminiscing the past years seemed odd and even sore. The closeness, confidence, and ease captured in the jubilee exhibition seemed painfully far away.
Instead, the events that could be held despite the Covid situation took centre stage. The moments when people saw each other, did things together, exchanged, and shared their experiences.
If the festival continues the tradition of a carnival as an exception to the everyday, this year’s festival was an exception to an exceptional time. Almost impossible, but not quite. Little dim, but still, joy and recognition, moments of tenderness and reunion sparkled this year, too. Small, private fests behind facemasks.
The untimely termination of the festival revealed its vulnerability. The festival is an intense and extremely charged time frame into which a huge amount of physical and mental work, expectations, possibilities, tensions, media space, political potential, and visibility are compressed.
Art is made out of invisible elements: dreams, rhythms, nuances, and relationships, structuring the world and its phenomena. When the work is interrupted, the unfinished work leaves behind a brittle, empty, and shaken atmosphere. A concern for the artists and those who enable art, all those whose work requires visible structures to support them.
Baltic Circle retreats now to sharpen its feelers. It is beginning to hunt for the next subjects, energies, forms, and possibilities for gathering until it is once again ready for a moment to invite everyone together next November.
Hanna Parry, Artistic Director of Baltic Circle Festival