In the spring of 2007, Richard Spartos (Montague Fund) traveled to Eastern Europe, beginning in Poland, to meet with and work alongside artists from all over Europe, specifically with three colleagues of Marilyn Arsem; Kenny McBride, Angel Pastor and Malgosia Butterwick.
I attended a week-long residency with artists of varying disciplines in Myslenice and then traveled to Berlin to attend a performance art summer camp hosted by the International Performance Association of Hildesheim, Germany (IPAH). There, I had the unique experience of working with Jurgen Fritz and Alastair MacLennen over the course of six days. I also became a member of IPAH and became friends and colleagues with several artists from the University of Hildesheim, Braunschweig and several other schools across Europe. At the end of the summer I performed at the Navinki Festival in Minsk, Belarus with several artists from the Museum School, Sweden, Poland and Belarus. In October, I performed at Galleria Off, in Piotrkow Trybunalski, and was invited, by Jurgen Fritz, to return to Europe in December for IPAH's annual performance festival in Hildesheim.
Since then, I have maintained professional and casual relationships with many of the artists I encountered during my travels in 2007. After completing my MFA thesis in the spring of 2008, I returned to Europe and have taken several opportunities to work with or alongside a number of these artists, including Neil Jefferies (UK), Tina Kramer (DE), Arti Grabowski (PL), Adina Beir (US), Raz Gomeh (IL), Nadine Grobeis (DE) and Dennis Romanowski (BY/SE).
Credit: Richard Spartos, Richard's Lion Heart, Navinki, September 2, 2007. Durational performance, situational response. Photo by Chuck Chaney.
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