Open Performance Academy | OPA
OPA is an open knowledge and practice platform for practitioners and theoreticians working in the field of performance. Both nationally and internationally, performance and live art receive major attention within institutional context. However, outside official educational structures, the scope for research, reflection and feedback is still limited. OPA responds to this gap by offering a platform for research, experiment and reflection. OPA sees collaboration as a method to establish new conversations and interest. By bringing both the academic, artistic and public together OPA strives for lively debates in fragile moments of development. OPA considers itself as an open academy that values the conversation between makers and thinkers, in which the audience plays a key role. By basing itself on a collective form of learning and making, OPA contributes to intercultural and interdisciplinary dialogue.
After a successful first edition in 2018 in the Netherlands, OPA joins forces with WORM UBIK in Rotterdam (2018/2019), Leiden University (2018/2019) Performance Site in The Hague (2019/2022), Venice International Performance Art Week (2019/2020) and This Art Fair in Amsterdam (2020/2021)*. OPA collaboration is pre-eminently a place where the relations between knowledge production, media and culture can be investigated. During our collaboration themes such as social and cultural identity, queerculture, globalism, technology, ecology, and community, were discovered through embodied practices, theoretical debates, and curatorial exhibitions.
OPA collaborations were generally supported by Mondriaan Fonds, het Cultuurfonds, Stroom The Hague, Goethe Institut Niederlande, Gemeente Den Haag.
*During the global pandemic it was impossible to create an OPA program, which is why the events were postponed or closed.
