Art as an act. The writer beyond his desk. Telling stories than the skin tells. Live. In the moment. Creating with no premeditation. A mirroring experience. In the moment. For the moment. That remains as part of our experience. That stays in a paper.
I believe that we live in a time when it is important to sit in front of each other and learn to look at ourselves and express our feelings with honesty and poetry, to hold up a mirror to people.
Cross-border/international
Austria
Belgium
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Czechia
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Germany
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Portugal
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Romania
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Spain
Member State(s), Western Balkans and other countries: Slovenia
{Empty}
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
Yes
Creative Europe
{Empty}
No
Yes
2023-01-25
As an individual
First name: Adrián Javier Last name: Dozetas Osztreicher Gender: Male Nationality: Spain If relevant, please select your other nationality: Argentina Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Mollardgasse 71/2 Town: Vienna Postal code: 1060 Country: Austria Direct Tel:+4367762659522 E-mail:adrian@dozetas.com Website:https://dozetas.com
A Written Portraits is a participatory performance based on improvisation, where, as painters do, I portray a person improvising a poem with my typewriter, and the person receives the poem in a paper as a gift. The poems can be in Spanish, English and German. This performance began ten years ago as a casual experiment in a painter's studio in Buenos Aires and evolved until the form expanded to include artists from disciplines other than literature. It has been performed all over the world.
The experience is based on improvised live music and other art disciplines also improvised, which not only drive the moment and the words into an experience of trance and human interaction, but also tend to represent the person in their own language. It invites all kind of audiences to be part of it. It is art as a spontaneus act. The writer beyond his desk. Telling stories that skin tell. Life. In the moment. Creating without premeditation. Music is there to portray the person, to express their abstraction. And to create an ambience. And the dance, the movements that describe who is portrayed. The vibration of that person. Captured in movement. All of this together as a mirroring experience. In the moment, for the moment. Remaining as part of our experience, and in a paper.
Through all these years, it is very touching people sending me my poems framed and hanging in their walls. They were seen.
In 2022, the Written Portraits performance was supported by the Culture Council of the City of Vienna, by the Culture Council of the District Neuköln of Berlin and was performed in Brussels in The New European Bauhaus Festival. In the same year, a collection of the poems-portraits written during the last three years of performances in Europe were published as a book called The Written Portraits Poems, and it includes a prologue about the art of writing portraits and fighting against all the obstacles of making space of such a disruptive idea in the actual cultural scene.
Promoting a sense of belonging
Self-awarness
Art with social impact
Participative and inclusive
Thinking, living out of the box
Our goal is to make big things with little: this is our ideal of sustainability; using mostly our ideas, emotions and bodies
- All the transports taken were mostly by train or bus
- I use recycled paper for the given poems; the ink of the typewriter is always bought second hand
- In our tours, my and the team of artists eat vegetarian food.
- Fair payments to the artists
- The Written Portraits Poems book is available in E-Book and is only printed on-demand when somebody decides to buy it
The Written Portraits performance brings emotion, makes people feel seen and they keep the experience and the poem for themselves. In a context of crisis of different aspects, through the experience of being portrayed people seem to go back to what they are, to listen again to themselves, which is a value that is missing in a society full of noise from the outside world. It gives room to look at each other eyes, we don't do that often. I have seen more than 500 faces sitting in front of me, many of them crying. I have seen their thankfulness. They go back home with a smile. Like reborn, affected, reunited, found again.
As a writer, who normally writes in lonesome, this was a capital experience: offering my writing for somebody, direct, live and without expecting nothing. This experience showed me the importance of listening (even in this silence context where listening means observing somebody else). Aesthetically it breaks the rules of what we all expect from literature; it shows that still there are unexplored horizons like creating this new genre which I called a Written Portrait. It shows that we must think out of the box, no matter the obstacles, and push forward the ideas that we believe are impossible to realize.
The Written Portraits has no barriers concerning people and societal models. It is in itself an idea of inclusion, transparency, playing together, and read the person who sits in front of me no matter who this person is. It is a universal project, opened to the people who wants to be part. Me and my team we even portrayed dogs and turtles from people from the audience.
The Written Portraits performance, as a principle, was always free of charge to the audience and participants.
Through this performance, people feel that they are being looked at, that they are valued for who they are through an improvised art that speaks of you and not of me. Through Written Portraits, we give people visibility and importance not necessarily culturally but spiritually. The people who sit in front of us find a space that in our superficial, fast and brutal society they do not find. A calm space where art is directly at the service of the viewer, where we can take off our masks for a while. And then these poem-portraits remain in the rooms of their homes as the proof, the mark of a moment where they became themselves again, where an honest, serene and dedicated look has told them: it's okay to be who you are. That caress is what is missing in our society at the interpersonal level, a small safe space of respect for who we are and how we are.
I have worked with different institutions, both private and governmental. More than forty artists of different backgrounds, nationalities and disciplines have made Written Portraits possible. It is incalculable how many people have worked to stage the performance; technicians, theater directors, festival directors, assistants, volunteers, etc.
When you have an idea, a clear dream and you can share it graciously, it is gratifying to see how people begin to collaborate with that dream and make it grow. For the last three years Written Portraits has received few "no's", and this is due to the strength of the simplicity, the clarity of the proposal and the fact that it is created from giving and not from taking.
This project started solitarily in a bar in Vienna, the only bar that accepted me to sit at a table in a corner with my typewriter, once a week. Eventually I started to invite other artists to participate and portray people with their discipline. Then the invitations to different cultural locations began. And then the invitations to big festivals in different countries in Europe. I collaborated in the implementation with cultural institutions and organizations and mainly with artists from different backgrounds, nationalities and disciplines.
With this project I have expanded the horizons of literature and created a map of the variety of people that make up our society. As a proof of this map, I have published a book with more than 200 poems-portraits where you can see the mentioned variety, the possibility of live written literature and the importance of interdisciplinarity in the arts. I have created work for many people, paid work, precisely because I know how important it is that culture can be economically self-sustaining. I have collaborated in building a network of contacts willing to take risks for new and disruptive ideas. I have portrayed more than 600 people in Europe, I have given them a space for self-reflection and visibility. Especially with my team of artists who accompany me, we have given people a special, unique and unrepeatable moment that they will keep as a place to return to when they feel lost in the sea of symbols and noises of our society. We have given them a place to return to.
Because is a new way of combining writing with other disciplines. Because is a new way of communication. Because is a new experience. Because you are being looked by people. You get attention. And a mirror of yourself. The sense that we are the same but different. We are all important. We all have a story and feelings and experiences and misery and love and hate and passion. And we have to talk about it honestly. And I use poetry and improvisation for that. For making not the word better but the humans. A moment of self awareness.
The methodology of this project is simple: it is about observing, getting involved with another person and creating, giving back what that other person gives us.
The process is improvised, collaborative and interdependent. The different disciplines combine in an interconnected environment.
The process requires being available to another person, thus creating a safe space between the sitter and the portraitist.
The internal work process, as well as its objective, was to seek the widest and most diverse audience possible, which is why the Written Portraits performances have managed to expand their reception by reaching different countries and audiences. We always appeal for a fair remuneration for the artists and for the performance to be free for the audience. We have a system of promotion and sustainable design, never appealing to commercial aggressiveness but to the gentle invitation to participate in an art of the "you" and not of the "I". We are always there for you.
This performance is pioneering in its proposal: it proposes to invert the relationship between art and audience. It also expands the horizons of what we consider literature. It proposes an art without masks, where honesty, peace and a warm ecstasy of emotions prevail. It is art with direct social impact, it is art that gives. It is an example in sustainability for its simplicity and its impact, in how a good simple idea, with people who contribute to that dream, can impact and generate belonging, equality, serenity and a "place" where individuals can return. Art must pivot from "I" to "you" or "we" to "you" or it will likely perish.
The Written Portraits performance is born from giving and not from taking. It teaches that the one who gives, gets and not the other way around.
- The way that art and culture can be delivered
- The idea of pushing one idea to its own boundaries (from a small table in a bar of Vienna to big festivals and to the publication of a book)
- Influence in the culture, focus on the individuals as social changers: when the individuals grow we all grow
- Giving room for special experiences, moments, spaces that in our societies don't exist anymore
- Bringing back emotions makes us better human beings, makes us feel
- Humanize. Through emotions achieve our authenticity, stopping reacting as robots, coming back to fundamental analog moments and processes of our existence
- The sense of belonging, of being part of a creation that gives back beauty from the artists to the audience.
