Kaaitheater is taking to the streets for a new festival, CITY:LAND

Kaaitheater is taking to the streets for a new festival, CITY:LAND

9 > 13/10 performances, installations, workshops, films and debate on & around place de la Monnaie/Muntplein

In the new festival CITY:LAND, Kaaitheater is leaving its theatre halls and taking to the streets. For 5 days, artists will explore the city as a shared space in a divided world. 

CITY:LAND brings together two themes that have long been prominent in the Kaaitheater programme: ecology (cfr. ten editions of Burning Ice and more programmes in the context of Imagine2020) and city & society (cfr. Festival Kanal, a.o.).

This first edition, from 9 to 13 October, is based on and around the place de la Monnaie during the week leading up to the local elections. Each edition also focuses on one of the Kaaitheater artists-in-residence. This year, Michiel Vandevelde is presenting his Precarious Pavilions #2.

In the evenings as well as during the day, you'll come across performances, installations and exhibitions: from Kevin Trappenier's antenna on the place de la Monnaie and Anne Collod's re-enactment of Anna Halprin's parade of people marching through the streets, to Ant Hampton's performance in the entry hall of La Monnaie. You will pass by Sarah van Lamsweerde's 'security' cameras and can visit a lecture performance by Roland Gunst & Sibo Kanobana at Muntpunt. In the rue des Princes you can walk in and watch a film made by Sarah Vanagt and groups of children in the surrounding streets. From there you can visit the exhibition by Architecture Workroom Brussels in the WTC.
Free entrance to all events. (Free) tickets for the performances and the debates can be booked on cityland.brussels.

 

Michiel Vandevelde, Wouter De Raeve and Lietje Bauwens
Precarious Pavilions #2: the new local

Choreographer and Kaaitheater artist-in-residence Michiel Vandevelde is taking his Precarious Pavilions to four different cities. For the second ‘pavilion’ in Brussels, he is bringing the 431 collective – comprising Lietje Bauwens and Wouter De Raeve – to the place de la Monnaie, a place of great historical significance that is now primarily the terrain of passers-by, shoppers, and major events. During the day, a dozen artists will conduct an experiment on the square. The documentation of these interventions will be the central focus of the evening programmes, during which artists and other guests will engage in debates. Participating artists are Alex Zakkas & Kurt Tichy (Constant), Beny Wagner & Sasha Litvintseva, Hana Miletić, Helena Dietrich, Martin Belou, Naïmé Perrette, Ola Hassanain, Rozalinda Borcila, Vivien Tauchmann, Parasite 2.0, Sepake Angiama and Mijke van der Drift.
You can find all programme updates on precariouspavilions.be and you can read an interview with the 431 collective on the new local.

Precarious Pavilions #1 ran in Ghent in june 2018. Following Brussels, there will be versions in Antwerp (early 2019) and Leuven (May 2019). Later this season Michiel Vandevelde returns to Kaaitheater to stage his dance production Lamakh.

former restaurant Roma, Prinsenstraat 12 rue des Princes, 1000 Brussels | 9 > 13/10 | debates/workshops/performances/films

 

Anne Collod / Anna Halprin
The Blank Placard Dance, replay

A day before the municipal elections, a parade of people dressed in white marches through Brussels, accompanied by a brass band. They wear white placards with no slogans. American choreographer Anna Halprin created Blank Placard Dancein 1967 as a protest against the Vietnam War. ‘What are you protesting against?’, passers-by would ask the dancers. ‘What do you want to protest against?’ they would throw the question back at them. French choreographer Anne Collod recreates this performance with participants from Brussels. She thus explores Halprin’s utopian thought around protest and collectivism in today’s context: what is the importance of collectivism in a radically individualist age?

Anne Collod first re-enacted The Blank Placard Dance in Malaga's Centre Pompidou, and recently in Lille. After Brussels, she'll present another one in Brazil.

starting point: place de la Monnaie | 13/10 - 13:00 > 15:00 | performance

 

Ant Hampton
Crazy But True

Children have an insatiable hunger for unusual facts and trivia of the ‘crazy but true’ type. In this performance by Ant Hampton, children between the ages of eight and eleven form a panel of experts. A text is whispered to them via headsets. They repeat what they hear, and thus present a growing list of extraordinary facts. It is a tender, intergenerational confrontation involving tragic ánd comic extremes.

Crazy but True was previously staged at Kaaitheater in september 2017 and also in Chili, Spain, Greece and Ghent.

de Munt/la Monnaie entry hall | 11/10 | performance/installation | in Dutch and French (surtitled in English, Dutch & French)

 

Kevin Trappeniers – AntennA

Visual artist and theatre maker Kevin Trappeniers constructs an antenna that is several metres high - a serene installation around miscommunication and lost communication. Can we still be connected with one another without a network?

place de la Monnaie | 09/10 11:00>20:00 | installation

 

Sarah van Lamsweerde – Instant Fiction

The live video installation Instant Fiction films everyday situations in public places, following the principles of security systems. You see people talking, laughing, drinking, or reading the newspaper. The difference is that the footage is supplied with subtitles in real time, taken from the scripts of a wide range of different films. Sarah van Lamsweerde thus transforms contemporary reality into a set with actors who are completely unaware.

Sarah van Lamsweerde works at the intersection of theatre and visual art, and researches subjects such as the mass media. Instant Fiction was commissioned by the Finish ANTI-Festival, and has toured in the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

Muntpunt + Muntpunt café | 09 > 13/10 | realtime video-installation

 

Roland Gunst & Sibo Kanobana
The Reign of Afropeanism (De Heerschappij van het Afropeanisme)

Artist Roland Gunst and sociolinguïst Sibo Kanobana sketch a picture of the African presence in Europe and present an alternative version both of history and of the future. Based on facts, fiction, autobiographical elements, videos, and ritual objects, they aim to reveal the authentic face of Europe. Their work is based in Afropeanism: an anti-essentialist attitude that cherishes cosmopolitanism and seeks to transcend the divide between African and Europe through encounter and exchange. 

Muntpunt | 12/10 | lecture performance | in Dutch

 

Sarah Vanagt – PLAKFILM

Sarah Vanagt’s documentaries, video installations and photos present surprising combinations of history and cinema. With a role of tape and a magic lantern, the children in PLAKFILM gauge the turbulence of our age. They roll out transparent tape in the streets where they grew up. When they strip the tape away, an imprint of the city comes with it: dust, sand, candy wrappers, insects, glass, bits of fluff… The strips of tape thus form an ultra-realistic diary that is brought to life using an old magic lantern. Can all these forms and images help us to predict the future?

former restaurant Roma, Prinsenstraat 12 rue des Princes, 1000 Brussel | 09 > 13/10 | installation

 

Architecture Workroom Brussels & IABR – You're here (part 2)

There is a growing realization that the natural resources and space on our planet are finite, and a growing fear of climate change. But can we move from the acquisition of knowledge and experimentation to genuine change and spatial transformation? Leo van Broeck (The Flemish Architect General) and Joachim Declerck (Architecture Workroom Brussels)  present the exhibition YOU ARE HERE in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center – an iconic remnant of 20th-century urban planning. A first part of the exhibition ran from 2/06 to 8/07, on 15/09 a second part will open. The exhibition is a Brussels satellite of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam, which is completely focused on sustainable development

WTC 1 | 15/09 > 11/11 | exhibition & debate

 

 

About Kaaitheater

Stage

Kaaitheater is a stage for dance, theatre, performance, music and debate in Brussels. Founded in 1977 as a pioneer of innovative performing arts, this house has grown into a platform for both work by artists of the Flemish Wave and new generations of performing artists. From Brussels to international, from small to large venues, and just as well in the squares and the streets, where urban and global themes are tangible.

Motto

Under the motto How to Be Many?, the Kaaitheater team makes room for a broad spectrum of stories, perspectives, artists and audiences, so we can learn to better reflect the city's many voices. That we do in cooperation with many partners.

Places

Currently, Kaaitheater’s building on the Sainctelettesquare will be under renovation. We will move into our new building in 2025 and that will give us an additional auditorium as well as a city balcony and spaces for artists and audiences, all of which will give the new urban arts centre on the canal its identity. In the meantime, we will continue to perform in Kaaistudio's, and we will be on the move through the city and briefly make use of at 14 many theatres and partners in and around Brussels, with whom we will present a multifaceted programme.

(In) practice

Looking towards the future, Kaaitheater will continue to develop new lines of participation and mediation so that we can introduce new generations of audiences to contemporary performing arts. We invite organisations and groups that still are underrepresented on the Brussels stages to create their own artistic programmes. This allows us to open the way for co-ownership of artists and audiences.

Kaaitheater moves with the times, stimulates social and artistic debates and embraces the pluriform performing arts of today and tomorrow.

Kaaitheater
Rue Gallaitstraat 20
1030 Schaerbeek