Last day Performatik19***

Saturday 3pm at Bozar, the Performatik crowd is gathering in the Horta Hall to see The allegory of the painted woman, a performance by artist and choreographer Alexis Blake. Four musicians and the two dancer Nafisah Baba and Marika Meoli enter the stage. One performer starts with instructions “Magdalena, Anastasia, Cecilia, Salomé, Daphne, Venus, …” , all female characters of classical paintings. The other performer starts to take on the related positions. The oral instructions stop, the music starts and both dancers start to move synchronically according to the sound. The performers are very good, every move and all sound seems to be perfect, but I am not sure if the space provides the right setting. Even though the dancer’s outfits are perfectly fitting to Horta Hall’s marble floor, it may have been stronger in a setting which offers more contrasts, an exhibition space which shows some of the kind of women figures and their assigned roles, issues like gender, representation questions to reflect upon. I am not sure, but I liked this half an hour.

Wow* 10 days of The Brussels Biennial of Performance Art are already over again. It was an extremely broad and comprehensive program, as usual not enough time to see everything I wanted to, but happy about each single event I could make it to.
Looking already forward to 2021***

For the whole blog of the brusselsARTproject click here.

On Balconies and Utopia*

In times of pan-European neo-nationalism, Brexit and co, it is so important and energizing to meet people with inspiring ideas towards a consistent, united and positive future of Europe. So the case at the recent panel discussion On Balconies and Utopia at BOZAR organized by Forum Alpbach Brussels, the European Forum Alpbach and the Austrian Cultural Forum Brussels. After the proclaiming the European Republic the 11th of November 2018 among thousands of culture producers also in our StudioOne Apartment in Brussels, it was great to attend a follow up event discussing A new story for Europe in an refreshing interactive format moderated by Austrian ORF correspondent Tim Cupal. Guest on the panel where Ulrike Guérot (European Democracy Lab), Milo Rau (NT Ghent), Markus Ferber (Member of the European Parliament) and Annamária Tóth (European Forum Alpbach) and there was the chance to take the free seat after the fishbowl-principle for everyone from the audience who wished to discuss on stage.
Besides some refreshing statements and ideas the whole evening turned into a kind of powerful argument between Guérot and Ferber, the one portrayed as a utopian and the other as the realist. Hence, I astonished more and more the insistence of Guérot, an expert and intellectual, on her one single point she insists on and came up with again and again from different perspectives. Yes, in a European Union where it is possible to define a date from which on several countries abandon their old currency and have a shared one, there it is definitely possible to define a date from which on the member states take on a trans-European perspective and abandon nation-based law in favor of equal law for all citizens of Europe. It may sound like utopia but it’s actually possible. I completely go along with Guérot when she says that what weakens the European Union and the political parties who want to strengthen it are having no visions of a future of Europe. It seems that they even don’t dare to think of a Europe of the citizens. What a failur, especially on the eve of the European elections in May 2019!
If Europe want a unity in diversity we need to institutionalize solidarity and come up with a common law***
That’s the only fruitful solution for a united story of Europe!

For the whole blog of the brusselsARTproject click here.

From exhibition to meeting the author*

This week’s Wednesday eve was divided into exhibition opening and lecture.

First, I passed the opening of the current artist’s in residence exhibition at WIELS. For the exhibition on the myth of The Divine Goat the Greek resident Yiannis Skarimbas did a collaborative work with all the other residents currently working at WIELS. I think that’s a really nice approach, even though the presentation didn’t really say a lot to me … yet, it produced a nice winterly atmosphere.

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Well, we hopped further and had the great pleasure to attend a reading by Austrian writer Arno Geiger and a conversation with Belgian writer and philosopher Geert van Istendael at Bozar, organized by the Austrian Cultural Forum. Geiger’s latest book Unter der Drachenwand has been published in Flemish Onder de Drachenwand - this was a good occasion to talk about the genesis of this piece, which he has been working on for more than 10 years and about his remaining œvre. It was such a good in-depth talk about Geiger’s research for the book, which is a kind of “Gesellschaftsroman” counting the story of people in a small village near Mondsee in Austria in the year 1944, from the perspective of not knowing that the war is going to an end. Though Geiger is an historian he tried to completely fade out his knowledge, didn’t research with secondary literature but only reading primary sources as thousands of pages of letters from that time. That’s what makes the novel is so special, thrilling and recommendable. In conversation with Istendael Geiger was so well reflected and quick on the comeback - also when it came to contemporary (Austrian) right and nationalist politics.

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For the whole blog of the brusselsARTproject click here.

*singing masks*

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*

For the whole blog of the brusselsARTproject click here.