God’s Entertainment: Europa to Go!

Rijeka, Croatia
May 25 – 28, 2021

For the finale of the Dopolavoro program, carried out within the Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture project, Viennese art collective God’s Entertainment will perform several art-sightseeing walking tours in the center of Rijeka. Within Europa To Go walking tour, chosen locations in the city will emulate European’s landmarks and sites, and each site in Rijeka will be prepared specifically to “perform” another location from all across Europe.
Tour around Europe without a covid passport
Our mobile and thoroughly globalized world is stalled by Covid-19: travel restrictions, quarantine, distancing, entry tests… Mobility and tourism are experiencing an unprecedented upheaval. Even in Rijeka, the summer and winter vacations have recently been far less international than usual. Especially last year and this year, when Rijeka had to prove itself as the European Capital of Culture.

Every crisis also offers opportunities and it seems to us that art with its practices can offer a way out of this dystopian scenario.

EUROPA TO GO offers compact, safe and environmentally friendly sightseeing of the performative special class as a regional-international travel tour. From the south to the north of Rijeka, guided by the artist collective God’s Entertainment, numerous sights of Europe can be visited and personally experienced in a good 2 hours as a walking tour: whether the Capitoline Wolf statue in Rome, the statue of Franz Kafka in Prague, or the Holy Mary of Međugorje as a pilgrimage site in an abandoned clearing; it is only a few steps from the Red Light District in Amsterdam to the Père Lachaise cemetery. Here, places and orientation shift, glances and perceptions get lost: is this still Rijeka or already Venice?

What many art lovers and cosmopolitans were deprived of by travel restrictions – art, culture and international flair – is now possible again with EUROPA TO GO. A round trip offer, which is affordable for all with at the same time minimum CO2 output and completely without passport.

EUROPA TO GO is an interdisciplinary art project in public space, whose concrete execution is always strongly developed in confrontation with the specific local conditions. This applies to the itinerary, the selection of the sights shown, as well as the team: for the people-intensive project, targeted collaboration is also carried out with local people and initiatives. The transfer of the sights, as well as their re-contextualization, allows for a contemporary perception of the artworks or their expanded interpretation. In doing so, the real environment is also put into a relationship with the actual place of origin of a sight and associatively connected.

Furthermore, God’s Entertainment tries to initiate and lead a discourse about cultural exchange and the understanding of reality and performativity within the performative tour. Artists will perform the show together with local artists and extras. By use of statues and landscape interventions, chosen sites will give initial setting where performers will add additional value through performance.

Photo: Peter Mayr

Organized by: Drugo more

Co-production: Kampnagel (Hamburg)

Supported by:
Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, City of Rijeka – Department for culture, Cultural Department of the City of Vienna and Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport of the Republic of Austria, European Commission program Creative Europe, Croatian Government Office for Cooperation with NGO’s
The program is part of Dopolavoro flagship of the Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture project
Drugo more is a beneficiary of the financial support of the Kultura nova Foundation
This program is realized in the framework of Create to Connect -> Creat to Impact (CtC ->CtI), a joint European project.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
This project has been funded with support from the Croatian Government Office for Cooperation with NGOs. This communication reflects the views only of Drugo more.

More: http://drugo-more.hr/en/gods-entertainment/