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Europe's Most Forward-Looking Festival: the KunstenfestivaldesartsDateline: 11th May, 2008In the springtime, we look forward with optimism and so May is an apt time for one of Europe's most creative festivals. Tomorrow morning I will be boarding a train at the Gare du Nord in Paris bound for Brussels. I'm going to review the Kunstenfestivaldesarts and I'm delighted. I love this festival. When I asked our dearly beloved editor if I could cover the Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, he mumbled (in email-speak) something to the effect that Brussels was about as exciting as a rainy Sunday evening in Milton Keynes. How wrong can one be! Brussels is a fascinating and vibrant place. With so much more to offer than simply the clichéd manneken pis, Brussels is a multilingual, multicultural city and offers treats for culture-vultures, food fans, and families alike. And the best thing about it is that it is so central. It is so easily accessible: just over an hour from Paris, two hours from Amsterdam and just a couple of stops on the train if you are coming from London. So read on…..because believe it or not, the Belgians are making some of the most exciting and innovative theatre and performance in Europe at the moment. And I'll put my shirt on that! Maybe the title seems a bit odd: Kunstenfestivaldesarts! Yes, that is one word: kunsten means 'arts' in Dutch (or Flemish if you're in Belgium) and arts means 'arts' in French or (Walloon if you are French-speaking Belgium). The title of this festival is bi-lingual because it is an annual event that bridges the gaps between communities. Moreover, it is actually a tri-lingual festival, because you will find English everywhere, in surtitles and programme notes and in performances. In fact, the festival has grown over the years into a cross-cultural event celebrating differences and similarities throughout all the cultures of Europe, Asia and the Americas. The festival is all about opening new dialogues, breaking through barriers that impede communication, pushing at the boundaries of perception and understanding. How much we need that in a world full of peoples and social groups rapidly retreating into tiny fearful enclaves nurturing a siege mentality! As the artistic directors put it, "In an explosive mix of bodies, things, images, words, feelings, ideas, voids and silences, a festival brings about a sort of realization that it is possible to talk and listen to others. A festival simply enables people to look at and listen to art together, and the mental and physical spaces thus generated and shaped also give meaning to speech itself." Equally, the festival is about nurturing precious diversity, the richness and colourfulness of difference in a world in which globalisation is a euphemism for commodification and people are transformed into standardized consumers. In a world in which the lowest common denominator threatens to turn everything - hotel rooms, TV and film, people and their lifestyles - into the accommodatingly neutral colour of slush, we are in need of diversity too. Essentially, the festival has functioned as a gateway through which we all need to pass and leave our own cultural prejudices at the door. The festival is about opening the mind and the senses to new experiences, to new challenges, to new reflections and, above all, to a willingness to entertain fresh encounters. It has always given a platform to young performers and directors, visual and installation artists, (documentary) filmmakers, musicians and composers, theatre-makers, dancers and choreographers who are looking for new forms of interdisciplinary collaboration, new ways to (as the Franco-Hungarian choreographer Josef Nadj put it, so eloquently but simply) 'express what it means to be alive in the 21st century.' I've become very fond of that phrase, 'to express what it means to be alive in the 21st century'. This is a century in which new forms of communication offer tantalisingly immediate interactions, but shut down conventional forms of intimacy. It is a century of such rapid change and technological innovation that much of my daily routine would barely be recognisable to my grandparents. Globalisation, information technology, has changed so much that it seems very feasible to suppose that we need to explore these means to express ourselves in the languages of performance. And all this can be found at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts among (young) artists and performers eager to communicate and share both ideas and sensations with audiences who are ready to have their preconceptions challenged. To me, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts is very special. I've been before, but this time I'm going officially as a member of the press, and I'm delighted, firstly because I speak all three languages and that makes me feel a bit like a smartie-pants, but also because the central philosophy of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts is one close to my own heart. Over the last years, Belgium has produced some of the most exciting performance (theatre/dance/interdisciplinary work) in Europe. Here are some reasons to put Belgium on your performance map of Europe:
Thanks to the Kaaitheatre, and its equivalent in Amsterdam, the Mickery, companies from Britain, as well as the rest of Europe, and the US, could depend on an international tour of theatres in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany affiliated to the circuit. 7:84, The People Show, Pip Simmons, Belt and Braces, Gay Sweatshop, Hesitate and Demonstrate, Incubus, Forced Entertainment, the Wooster Group and a host of others travelled these roads honing their shows in front of enthusiastic audiences, earning precious funds they couldn't find at home. They were the cream of '70s and '80s fringe theatre which was wiped out by Thatcherite arts policies. As a postgraduate theatre studies student in Amsterdam, my notions of theatre and performance were radically altered as a result of the work I could see coming through the Mickery/Kaaitheater circuit and the Brakke Grond where the Belgian innovations were on display. So, for me, the Kunstenfestivaldesarts is special, because it represents in a nutshell the will to challenge and explore consistently and to do so with a firm commitment to quality . Over the years, it has been a fulcrum for innovatory work and has made a remarkable contribution to the continuity of new forms being generated. It is a meeting place for those who want to be challenged as much as for those who want to challenge. For decades, it has nurtured young artists and performers as well as continuing to give space to old stalwarts such as the Wooster Group, Forced Entertainment, Christoph Marthaler, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and others. Visions of finality and disappearance are recurrent themes of the 2008 festival and it is apposite that we should be reflecting on these in an age of such apocalyptic predictions. However, destruction and cataclysm can equally engender a desire for new beginnings and optimism. In this sense, the appealing and the disconcerting go hand in hand, disintegration can provide an opportunity to break free. In order to elicit the most challenging dialogues, the festival has been carefully constructed to create a whole from remarkable, if dissonant voices, confrontations and collaborations. This year there is an exceptionally invigorating programme throughout the month. Some of the highlights include a new work by Heiner Goebbels, Stifters Dinge, which will also be showing at the Avignon Festival in July. A German composer who has worked in performance for many years, Goebbels' uses music, lighting and movement to remarkable effect. His work is deeply moving, thought-provoking and often very humorous as well. In this latest piece, he examines the ways in which mankind has overestimated its place in the scheme of things. He envisages the disappearance of humankind from the planet. In Call Calcutta in Box Swiss theatre collective Rimini Protokoll treats audiences to an hour long piece of their trademark 'theatre'. Starting every hour, audiences talk by mobile phone for an hour to specially trained non-professionals in a call centre in Bangalore. Performance artist Kris Verdonk introduces us to a possible scenario for the end of the world, linking modern technology with Greek tragedy. Japanese choreographer Zan Yamashita creates a reflection on the complex relationship between movement and words in his latest piece. That is just for this coming weekend, and, throughout there will be exhibitions, documentaries and the AB Café at the Beurschouwburg functioning as a congenial place to relax or to eat and to meet. If you need any more convincing, think about the contribution the Belgians have made to the arts throughout the ages, think Flemish Primitives (Van de Weijden, Memlinck and Van Eyck), the Renaissance (Rubens), the Surrealists (Matisse, Delvaux). The Musée des Beaux Arts is in a beautiful building and contains a remarkable collection of works from the middle ages to contemporary arts. If you like architecture, Brussels is renowned for its Art Nouveau quarter. If you like to eat well, the seafood and the steaks are excellent and the Belgians make the best chips in the world…believe me! Not to mention the chocolates. But I'm going for the Festival and I hope you will join me. Download the Festival Programme on www.kfda.be in English, Dutch and French. And watch this space. Reviews to come at the beginning of next week…or, perhaps, see you in the AB Café. The Festival runs from 9th to 31st May. Jackie Fletcher >> Next
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