Kunstenfestivaldesarts 2018
Del 4 al 26 de mayo en Bruselas
The Kunstenfestivaldesarts is not a festival that can be captured in a nutshell and that’s why we are so committed to it. It tends to prefer taking a risk rather than opting for something tried and tested. Within its space dedicated to vibrant and current artistic creation, it offers a multitude of possible narratives. It is written and experienced in real time. The great majority of works in its program is newly created and being premiered at the festival; they are works conceived with care, determination and a sense of urgency by artists from all over the world. Their journeys are different: some are already well known, others are here to be discovered. Their visions of the present and future world resist assimilation. They assert the importance of complex territories in which genres and definitions remain fluid and ideas continue to be questioned.
On the bill of this, our 23rd festival, key European artists use fiction to address anti-democratic developments on the continent. Milo Rau, a leading and controversial figure in contemporary theatre, is having a world premiere here. Histoire du Théâtre is dedicated to the present and the future of one of humanity’s oldest art forms and its essential ability to confront the world. The latest dark work by Joris Lacoste hits contemporary Europe where it hurts most: in populist words and a conservative closing of minds. Rooted in a sometimes unbearable present, the much-anticipated creation by the Spanish collective El Conde de Torrefiel takes us through different timeframes in search of a possible future world.
The role of fiction, its ability to add complexity to the world and to make us think about the future has inspired Sarah Vanhee’s ambitious creation with children. Younger generations have a direct presence and are addressed in various projects at this year’s festival. In Paradise Now (1968- 2018), Michiel Vandevelde brings a group of teenagers together around a cult work in theatre, a testimony of the utopias of the late 1960s.
Beyond Europe, the festival is collaborating with artists who question the decolonisation process. From Singapore (Ho Tzu Nyen) or Kisangani (Faustin Linyekula who is working on a project at the Royal Museum for Central Africa), they conceive works that dig into the stratifications of history in an attempt to bring future transformations to light. Several projects this year come to us from Brazil, a country badly affected by the reappearance of ultraconservative measures and still by numerous inequalities. Essential and occasionally crude, the choreographies of Alice Ripoll, Eduardo Fukushima and Macaquinhos address division – social, racial, physical and mental – through the body.
Dance features extensively at this year’s festival, offering particular choreographic formats, an exhibition of forgotten and marginalised dances (Eszter Salamon) and a program (initiated by Latifa Laâbissi) dedicated to the figure of the witch, a symbol of ‘the other’ being excluded and hunted today. Fundamentally the festival supports artistic expressions getting away from dominant codes while seeking solace through bodies, objects and spaces. This is particularly sensitive in the creations of a young generation of Brussels artists, including Léa Drouet, Gwendoline Robin and Louis Vanhaverbeke.
The Kunstenfestivaldesarts takes place in Brussels, reaching out for various venues in the city to realise remarkable projects. This year the festival centre is moving between four different locations, among these the art school INSAS, hosting a program dedicated to forms of resistance. The last stop will be at the former Citroën garage, a space holding the promise of a major new cultural project for Brussels.
4-26.5.2018 A festival in the present, dedicated to international, multidisciplinary and contemporary creation. Here and now lays the possibility of imagining a future. Time shared, intensely filled with artistic experiences, debates and celebrations, bringing us together in diversity. We would like to thank all our partners who make this precious project possible and warmly invite you to join us for the twenty-three days of this year’s Kunstenfestivaldesarts!
February 2018
Christophe Slagmuylder, director
