Performatik 2011

Black box or white cube?

For ten days the Performatik festival turns the spotlight on contemporary performance art or live art. For the second time we are cooperating with a great many Brussels partners. In this way we view this art form not only from the angle of theatre and dance, but also that of visual art, where performance art once flourished and is now coming to the fore once again. In The Other Tradition, for example, Wiels is introducing a generation of artists which, by means of ‘actions’, are examining what art can do rather than what it can depict. Mette Edvardsen also leaves aside the visible art object in a performance entitled BLACK. By contrast, other artists actually want to breathe new life into objects: Ivo Dimchev works with the portable sculptures of Franz West, Zoe Laughlin investigates malleable liquids, Dawn Scarfe does something with wine glasses and Patricia Portela starts out from a box full of writings and objects that she found.

This festival also opts decisively for artists who dare to abandon their own familiar territory. Together with the musician Ari Benjamin Meyers, the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster makes a foray into the theatre, while Kaai’s artist in residence Kris Verdonck sets up an exhibition circuit in the Raffinerie. Both inspired by Kafka.

There’s more than enough emotion in the work of Mette Ingvartsen and Christoph Helfi, but apart from this it is striking that many artists are going back to words, and that the art of storytelling is being redefined. We are looking forward to lecture-performances by Tris Vonna-Michell, Barbara Matijevic and Giuseppe Chico and others.

Black box or white cube? Performance or exhibition? With seven world premieres and five Belgian premieres, the Performatik festival seeks out limits, untangles codes and stimulates encounters between various art worlds. The most indispensable element in these here-and-now encounters is you, the viewer and participant. Welcome!