On Thursday I joined the opening performance of ASEM, the Asia meets Europe cultural festival at Bozar.
The renown Belgium visual artist Honore d’O has been invited to develop a piece for this occasion. I already had the pleasure to get know Honore half a year ago in Vienna, where he should have done a work in public space in the frame program of the current Pieter Bruegel exhibition at the Kunsthistorische Museum in Vienna. Unfortunately it seemed that the whole framework program of contemporary art has been thrown over board. Even more I was curious about Honore’s piece for Bozar.
The commission work for Horta Hall at Bozar, a Belgium architectural classic, with an orchestra and a famous Chinese pipa player already gave a strong frame to the performance. In the beginning I thought it’s gonna be a “nice” but probably boring piece bringing the musicians together with art through a video projection. However, even though he worked with the leitmotif of the mask (in his case from an industrial background) and a Chinese classic singer, the in-situ sound installation had something really inclusive and deep-going. Performers coming out behind the curtains into the audience positioning flowers made out of masks, the music, the projection … it was kind of contemplative. Everything fit together. Honore worked collaborative with other artists, got into dialogue with the architecture and also included the audience.
It’s a silent piece - but somehow it’s tangent in a quite sensitive and resonant way*