Arts Flanders

Over a three-week period, some thirty works – mostly new creations – are discussed and shared with a diverse and enthusiastic audience in Brussels. It is a celebration, a moment of coming together, revealing the possibility of potential connections between different voices, aesthetics and realities. Artists based in Brussels and from all over the world, embracing a variety of disciplines, offer something concerning the world they live in and which they animate in the present. The festival supports their creations and offers a dynamic, lively and positive context where it is possible to share viewpoints without creating categories or exploiting practices or ways of looking at things. The Kunstenfestivaldesarts establishes a platform for reflection centred on a choice of works and individuals in whom it has great faith. What are they telling us? Where are we now and where should we be heading?

On the bill this year is a subtle balance between established and unknown artists, between generations, and between cultural and geographic landscapes. Leading figures in today's arts world such as William Forsythe, Claude Régy and Jérôme Bel rub shoulders with up-and-coming or unknown creators. They offer us direct and profound works that testify to the frailty of the human condition. Many of the works presented this year will astonish with their directness and immediacy: the artists literally address the audience from the stage and in our everyday environment.

While the Kunstenfestivaldesarts attempts to encompass a broad view both aesthetically and geographically, this year it has been important to focus our choices on the European continent, also through the eyes of artists from elsewhere. Brett Bailey, Faustin Linyekula and Rimini Protokoll disconcertingly reverse the situation between Europe and Africa. The profound divisions within the eastern half of the continent lie at the heart of the works by the Croatian Oliver Frljic, the Hungarians Kornél Mundruczó and Árpád Schilling, with the latter’s work embodying a fascinating reflection on the possible links between art and society. Today’s social and political Europe is echoed most pertinently in Guy Cassiers’ trilogy dedicated to Robert Musil. The artists re-evaluate the past and open up a path to the future. Drawing from Schiller, andcompany&Co.foments a future uprising. Among many of the young choreographers (such as Eleanor Bauer and Pieter Ampe & co), the watchword seems to be the formation of possible communities, hypothetical assemblies and new forms of life. The younger generation, well represented this year, has been given a heavy legacy: people who have gone hand down a great social, cultural and natural imbalance which has to be fundamentally re-thought and re-invented. Worth noting again this year is the presence of children and their delicate malleability, which is at the heart of Boris Charmatz’s magnificent new work and Inne Goris’ creation.

More info
Kunstenfestivaldesarts
4 – 26 May 2012
www.kfda.be/en