The 18th of August 2018, Austria, Styria´s countryside - where a dance is not a dance. It´s a good day to leave this rapidly turning more and more right and fascist country for a while in order to gain new inspiration, ideas and approaches for the transcultural work in contemporary art and performance.
We´ve decided to come to Brussels - the informal capital of Europe.
Never before in my life I felt more European than in these times. I´ve always believed that “European” would be a term, too narrow and restricting. I´ve prefered “citizen of the world” but living on a continent where nationalist thinking is spreading out at an immense speed refacing the idea of EUROPE seems to be striking.
”Why Brussels?” everybody keeps asking. Back in New York 2015/16 while working at the ISCP N.Y.C. I got to know the Italian artist Francesca Grilli who then just moved to Brussels. She made me curious about it, and highly recommended me to check that city out artwise. In the last two years I went there several times, worked with local and international artists of different fields, in Belgium as well as in Vienna. Hence, I got more curious. And, after a few years of intense work in Austria I took the liberty to step out of our life defining system, the structures of daily routine and see how all that works in another European country. We want to get to know this city and it´s surrounding far beyond its EU status.
Last but not least, Robert Menasse´s fantastic book Die Hauptstadt was more than convincing that it must be Brussels, where I now moved to for at least a year with my partner Florian Nitsch and our two kids. We want to get to know this city and country with its highly pluralistic society far beyond its EU status. Let´s find out what a dance is here meant to be*
I am pleased
to share
this blog on
the
brussels
ART
project
with you*
fariba*
september 2018
For the whole blog of the brusselsARTproject click here.