CURATORS NOTE | 

​

Bringing the past into the present is never an easy task. Current local and national politics have shown us the positive and negative dialogue that is generated from bringing history back into focus. We have seen what happens when history is chosen to be erased, forgotten, or mishandled. Taking on the responsibility for the continued growth of Yellow Fish we feel the responsibility to make sure the festival’s history of work, artists, venues, and community is retained, celebrated, and acknowledged. Too often when organizations, collectives, and spaces change hands important knowledge and information slips through the cracks; often times getting lost forever in the ineffable nature that performance and experimental art perpetuates. As the only festival in the city presenting durational performance art work we believe it is imperative that we begin to build an active collection and archive of the artists, presenters, and curators who have been pioneers, experimentalists, and leaders in durational and time based performance work in Seattle prior and during Yellow Fish’s lifetime. This year's festival theme seems to be the match needed to ignite this dense, layered, and complicated investigation. Every moment as time moves forward there is a past being created . How we decide to hold space for the past, will determine the shape our future takes.