Art, and especially performing arts have been my happy place for many years.
After moving to Stockholm I joined several artistic groups, since my interest in performing music and theatre improvisation has always been a strong component of my personality. Both outside and within the university space, being part of performing arts groups would make me want to improve my artistic traits and live in the present – and has culminated with leading an arts association myself.
However, in the past few months I have noticed a decline in the interest for art activities on campus. As an artist, it has been difficult to accept that some performing arts activities are not favoured anymore – painting, writing poetry, theatre improvisation or open stage nights. I cannot tell whether this is a result of the pandemic, but I do miss hearing people I met for the first time or first year students coming up to me and saying, “where is the theatre group in this university?” or “we want another poetry evening”.
Regardless, it seems that physical meetings which require a high degree of attention and engagement with one another have decreased, perhaps in the face of AI generated activities, or pub parties.
I have not seen any posters demanding performing art activities, except maybe if I am the one posting them, they are likely to be ignored. So I guess I am trying to find out what happened to performing arts especially, even though there are plenty of art pieces surrounding the campus. And that is still not enough to account for the lack of interest in this specific type of art lately.
Regardless, I believe that expressing my thoughts about it will perhaps sound familiar to anyone who has been experiencing a similar issue regarding this type of arts on campus. The main idea here is to create a space where artists of all levels of expertise are welcome to join and promote their creativity with like-minded people.
Despite requiring so few physical things, perhaps except a room, the desire to gather and perform has not been manifested as I would have expected to, but I still have high hopes for the future of performing arts and finding people who wish to perform – on campus or outside of it.
Performing arts lovers, this message is for you and I am asking you to join me in the creation of something greater than the sum of its parts.
