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6/5/2010

010 Kunstenfestivaldesarts

Beursschouwburg and Bronks, Bruxelles

Kunstenfestivaldesarts takes place in dozens of welcoming Brussels theatres and art houses for 3 weeks every May.

Kunstenfestivaldesarts features performing arts and visual arts, by Dutch- and French-speaking, Western and non-Western artists.

Kunstenfestivaldesarts is a festival dedicated to new creations, intended for artists with a personal outlook on the world and spectators willing to question their own views.

Kunstenfestivaldesarts is a cosmopolitan city festival. We are increasingly becoming part of a complex network of communities that cross and redefine national, linguistic and cultural borders. The city is the environment "par excellence" in which this cosmopolitan society can be seen.

Kunstenfestivaldesarts takes place in Brussels, the only city in Belgium where the country’s two largest communities live together. Several Flemish- and French-speaking institutions are involved in the project. Fundamentally conceived as a bilingual undertaking, it contributes to encouraging dialogue between the communities living in the city.


The fifteenth Kunstenfestivaldesarts. An annual get-together with contemporary creation from all over the world. A selection of works created today and stimulated by the present which they explore, attempting to understand and energise it. An artistic inventory also likely to show exactly where we are. A space for creation and a clash of visions, with encounters and dialogues between works and individuals.

In a world overtaken by the excesses it has produced, the watchwords are economy and moderation. We have to save. Inoculate ourselves against epidemics. Insure ourselves against the vagaries of finance and the threat of losing what we have acquired. Protect ourselves against the dangers of the street, the gods of "others" and our own excesses. The Kunstenfestivaldesarts does not have a theme. Each work presented here has its own vision and invents a language to express itself. It is fascinating though – and one of the fantastic features of a festival – to focus our attention on what these creations are telling us when they are presented together, here and now, and consider how they are able to size up the times in which we live.

Shows that testify to difficult paradoxes. The delicate and painful situation for man caught between a realisation of his excesses as "homo consumens" and his fear of being part of a uniform society. Torn between his legitimate need for security and stability on the one hand, and his refusal to live in a world that is overprotected and under continuous control on the other. Do we have to keep everything we have accumulated so far, at all costs and forever? Will we end up missing what we do not need? In her latest creation, Vera Mantero stages a repetitive and liberating ritual where beings attempt to have a good clear out and rid themselves of the goods they have acquired. The link between material possessions and happiness, but the threat of precariousness too, lies at the heart of an astonishing reworking of A Doll’s House by Daniel Veronese. In Versus, Rodrigo García is concerned with the threat of intellectual and moral passivity and emptiness inherent in having too much. Searching for a space that is fit to live in and living between the extremes of excess and silence, his explosive productions rebel against a leveling out of languages and bodies.

Forms of control and their effects on people’s freedom to act are frequently evoked. South African Boyzie Cekwana denounces the mechanisms (conscious or otherwise) that aim to classify, but also suppress, different physical and racial identities – whether applied to an individual or an entire continent. Jorge León kicks off a triptych centred on the figure of the maid, updating a globalised slavery that brings into play a terrible balance of power. From Tehran, Amir Reza Koohestani creates "fables" in order to bear witness to a reality where basic rights are being flouted. In Toshiki Okada’s work, the individual is looking for his own "partition", free from social etiquette and hierarchy. The works echo processes of liberation, while in Belgrade Tomi Janežic tests the utopia of a theatre liberating itself from its performance space and contaminating everyday life.

Finally it is striking to note how the starting point for some projects is the workplace and its relationship with its immediate environment. Lia Rodrigues works as a choreographer in the middle of a Rio slum. Christoph Schlingensief, a brilliant agitator, is creating a village-opera in Burkina Faso, attempting to bridge the huge gap between distant worlds. Lotte van den Berg invites her neighbours onto the stage and comes up with a work on displacement – envisaged as the only way of defining "home". Compared with rampant globalisation, the artists are looking for proximity and mapping their own town (Enrique Diaz) or street (Sarah Vanagt).

Residence & reflection

Each year, Kunstenfestivaldesarts invites a number of artists for an intensive 10 days stay to attend the numerous events and to enter into joint reflection and dialogue: the Residence & Reflection project. The invitees are young artists from all across the globe, met during one of KFDA’s prospection trips, as well as a few open-minded Belgian artists keen on international dialogue and confrontation. The ‘Res&Reffers’ are not only "hungry" for international creations, they are particularly curious to find out about each other’s sometimes quite opposite or different opinions and perspectives. They feel kindred with colleagues from other continents and disagree with their countrymen. Or the other way around. Or both. The exchange and sharing of observations creates room for new frames of reference for interpretation, political views, ethical or aesthetical considerations. Dogmas and power relations are revealed and questioned, making room for new concepts, ideas and opinions. The participants do not only meet ten or more colleagues – they mostly end up finding themselves confronted with themselves, as world citizens, as artists, as human beings.

Guest artists: Diego Aramburo (BOL), Rajni Shah (UK), Luisa Pardo (MEX), Gabino Rodriguez (MEX), Benjamin Vandewalle (B), Tomi Janežic (SLO), Sarah Vanhee (B), Shu Matsui (JAP), Anne-Cécile Vandalem (B) and others
Moderator: Barbara Van Lindt
Supported by NXTSTP, with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union

Encounter and training for young international programmers

The Vlaams Theater Instituut is one of the founding members of SPACE, one of the European Commission’s four mobility pilot projects. "SPACE" means "Supporting Performing Arts Circulation in Europe". The network’s aim is to map the mobility of performing arts productions using innovative data linking technology and to offer training sessions to young managers, critics, curators or programmers. Kunstenfestivaldesarts will prove an inspiring spot for the training of a group of young international programmers who are constantly on tour, on the lookout for productions in every part of the world. SPACE offers them opportunities to optimize the results of their moving around by enabling them to meet regularly at the major festivals. A group of international programmers will arrive at KVS from May 20th to 23rd to exchange knowledge, experience and knowhow, and above all, to (re)assess their own position in the mills of international selection.

Image: Zachary Oberzan, Your Brother Remember

Kunstenfestivaldesarts
Handelskaai 18 Quai du Commerce
B-1000 Brussels +32 2 2190707 (tel) +32 2 2187453 (fax)

Full program on:
http://www.kfda.be/en/programma

Anne-Sophie Van Neste
press, PR & communication annesophie@kfda.be

Venues:

Beursschouwburg
A. Ortsstraat 23 Rue A. Orts, 1000 Brussels

Bronks
Varkensmarkt 15-17 Rue Marché aux Porcs, 1000 Brussels

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