{"id":620,"date":"2024-12-04T15:12:21","date_gmt":"2024-12-04T15:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/?p=620"},"modified":"2024-12-22T10:57:09","modified_gmt":"2024-12-22T10:57:09","slug":"contextualising-means-everything-at-the-kunsten-festival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/30\/contextualising-means-everything-at-the-kunsten-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Contextualising Means Everything at the Kunsten Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Beri Juraic<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels, Belgium. 10 May\u20131 June 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kunstenfestivaldesarts of 2024 (KFDA or just Kunsten) was supposed to be celebrating its 30th edition since its foundation in 1994, but due to the pandemic it \u201clost a year.\u201d The festival has been known for its consistently cutting-edge multidisciplinary arts programming and discovering new artistic voices alongside well-established artists. Taking place over three weeks in the Belgian capital, the festival does not have an overarching theme, but the majority of the programme consists of world premieres. The 2024 programme featured twenty-seven world premieres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current artistic directors Daniel Blanga Gubbay and Dries Douibi took over the reins in 2019. For the past two years, the programme has been marked by the post-pandemic conditions. For example, the 2022 edition was oriented towards site-specific productions, while the 2023 edition saw a gradual return to theatre spaces. In the 2024 edition, the artistic directors seemed to have opted for a more hybrid format, making wonderful use of abandoned spaces (cinema, hotel), schools and city streets along with traditional theatre spaces. They also chose to slightly deviate from the non-thematic nature by providing some thematic guidance through their editorial in the festival\u2019s mammoth programme. Nevertheless, the directors have not yet found a good formula for contextualising new work for the audience, especially from the non-European context.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Birds-eye view of the atmosphere from \u0141ukasz Twarkowski\u2019s six-hour show Respublika<\/em>. Photo: Tuur Spillemaeckers<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

What makes the festival a compelling proposition, though, is that it creates a certain excitement before it even begins because the majority of works presented have no performance history. This year, big names included \u0141ukasz Twarkowski\u2019s six-hour happening Respublika<\/em> that turned the former covered market and now cultural centre Halles de Schaerbeek into a rave party with bars, restaurants and sauna; the European premiere of Back to Back Theatre\u2019s Multiple Bad Things, <\/em>a morbid contemplation about mundanity; or Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and dancer Radouan Mriziga\u2019s take on Vivaldi\u2019s Four Seasons<\/em>. However, what draws me repeatedly to this festival are the hidden gems.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Dancer swirling in Nacera Belaza\u2019s La Nu\u00e9e<\/em>. Photo: Luca Ianelli<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

One such gem is choreographer Nacera Belaza\u2019s La Nu\u00e9e.<\/em> Belaza, Algerian living in France, regularly appears in KFDA\u2019s programme. This latest dance piece for six dancers is a result of a meeting with First Nation people in the Midwest U.S. and observing their dances and cultural practice. La Nu\u00e9e<\/em> follows her previous work L\u2019Onde <\/em>(2019) in so far as it tries to find connections between Algerian and Native American experiences of colonisation. As an outsider, she was able to observe two elements that were also at the heart of her artistic practice\u2014rhythm and circle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The performance begins in total darkness with the audience in the round. While I am adjusting my eyes to this darkness, I sense the bodies of dancers coming on to the stage. Soon, the light appears in the middle of the stage very faintly to reveal one dancer\u2019s body that is sometimes still and sometimes swirling their arms and body. Like swarms (la nu\u00e9e<\/em> of the title), five other dancers run around the space as they brush the edges of the light. Coupled with darkness, this kind of dramaturgy plays with our perception of distance. The soundtrack, based on the music by First Nation people, is also sometimes barely audible. This interplay between absence and presence of the bodies, light and music also points to the decentring of the performers and spectators\u2019 bodies. A reminder that one is constantly deprived of something. However, knowing Belaza\u2019s background one cannot shake the feeling that this piece also references the Algerian Black Decade (civil war in the 1990s), during which people disappeared into the darkness in plain sight. The latter half takes a slightly different turn, when dancers bounce, swirl, run, jump around in circles visibly evoking the process of everyday life, its longevity, slowness and velocity. Towards the end, as spectators we are blinded by the extremely bright light again blurring our vision. In short, I see this piece as a contemplation on the past and uncertainty about the future.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Eduardo Fukushima and Beatriz Sano suspended from the floor among Tomie Ohtake\u2019s sculptures in their dance piece horizon<\/em>. Photo: Anna Van Waeg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Another dance piece, Eduardo Fukushima and Beatriz Sano\u2019s horizon<\/em> (or horizonte <\/em>in Portuguese) epitomises the interdisciplinarity that has become the trademark of the festival. Living in S\u00e3o Paolo, choreographers and dancers Fukushima and Sano are part of Brazilian Nikkei communities (the largest Japanese diaspora communities in the world). In this piece, Fukushima and Sano are inspired by Tomie Ohtake\u2019s sculptures, also a part of scenography. Tomie Ohtake, Brazilian Nikkei of a different generation, was a key figure in the Brazilian geometric abstraction movement and her sculptures are exhibited in major museums worldwide.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Eduardo Fukushima\u2019s twisting his body underneath Tomie Ohtake\u2019s swirly sculpture in horizon<\/em>, choreographed by Eduardo Fukushima and Beatriz Sano. Photo: Anna Van Waeg<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I climb up to the third floor of Wiels, former brewery turned into contemporary arts centre, where Fukushima and Sano are already on the floor drifting among Tomie Ohtake\u2019s white twisty sculptures, along with spell-binding beats of percussion played by Chico Leibniz. In this vast hall, marked by four pillars with the audience seated behind them, dancers\u2019 bodies are suspended from the floor like puppets, moving up and down. At other times, they move closer and further away from each other. Bodies stroke the sculptures ever so slightly, producing a wave-like effect similar to the movements. Their airy brightly coloured costumes (designed by Rita Comparato) blend seamlessly into the space. Every now and then, a single powerful beat shifts the movements in another direction. Fukushima and Sano also puncture the flow of Leibniz\u2019s drumming through bird-like whistles. All the dramaturgical elements seem to reside in an (in)visible centrifugal force. This is especially evident when Fukushima and Sano move outside the space to the room at the back. In this meeting of dance, sculpture and music, we can also observe the flow of in-betweenness that rests on migration of experimentation across generations and disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Domestic scenes in an abandoned hotel in Brussels. L\u2013R, performers Zere Asylbek and Gulmira Tursunbaeva in Theatre 705\u2019s \u0423\u044f (Nest)<\/em>, directed by Chagaldak Zamirbekov. Photo: Inge Vermeiren<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

My final highlight was \u0423\u044f (Nest)<\/em> directed by Chagaldak Zamirbekov for Theatre 705, with a script based on interviews with Kyrgyz people about the meaning of home. Zamirbekov and his group are one of the few feminist and queer voices in Kyrgyzstan. Due to censorship in their home country, the group performs in apartments in the capital Bishkek. There, buying tickets means registering in advance and being contacted personally by the team. Here, in Brussels, the situation is different but similarly intimate because it is performed for only forty paying spectators in an abandoned hotel Continental.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As I arrive on Place de Brouck\u00e8re in the city centre, it takes me a while to locate the entrance. Maybe it is because I am not local, but it adds to the feeling of secrecy. The performance itself takes place on the first floor in a narrow corridor between two rooms, where we are seated on benches very close to the action. It commences when the performers bring a large bucket of water into the middle of the corridor and director Zamirbekov closes the door. Through seven episodes, the actors recount verbatim various stories; a story about a boy, whose father joined Daesh; about an ultra-nationalist politician who is a member of a party Kyrwk Choro that wants a non-parliamentary form of government as well as to abolish human rights; about struggles of a female director of an orphanage and about domestic violence. It is clear that the actors have been given freedom to go off-piste from the scripted text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This performance is based on verbatim dramaturgy with live and scripted translation. The first part centres around everyday life as a mother bathes her son. As the mother narrates her everyday struggles raising a child and being a wife in the Kyrgyz language, we rely on surtitles on the side wall. However, it is clear that there is something lost in translation. After a while, her daughter, turned interpreter\/guide, translates parts of her speech for us. She also verbalises that the surtitles might be unreliable, thus urging us to listen to the original language. This creates a sense of attentiveness about one\u2019s surroundings, of our perception of the space and actors in it and, ultimately, of fear, that\u2014at least from what we are told\u2014permeates contemporary Kyrgyz society. Conversely, it is also perhaps a double critique of the linguistic dominance of English, of Western values and international festivals that increasingly rely on surtitles to translate the local context. This year\u2019s KFDA was particularly marred by poor surtitling in some shows that omitted important cultural contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Re-enacting political speech by a member of Kyrwk Choro, ultra-nationalist party in Kyrgyzstan. Performer Zhusupbek uulu Emil in Theatre 705\u2019s \u0423\u044f (Nest)<\/em>, directed by Chagaldak Zamirbekov. Photo: Inge Vermeiren<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Furthermore, there are elements of audience participation. At the end of the first episode, I was asked to put away the heavy bucket while other audience members helped sweep the floor. While stories are re-told with passion, they do not rest on pure verbatim. Rather, they confront the audience directly with questions such as: \u201cDo you have a mother\/father?\u201d \u201cDo you love her?\/What do you wish for him?\u201d This leaves many spectators bewildered and incapable of answering. After a particularly poignant and tense episode about domestic violence, they throw a question at us about whether this happens in our homes. This unique performance demands that we deal with difficult questions in a world that does not want us to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of these three performances and others that I saw, KFDA missed providing an important cultural context beyond a few lines in programme notes. The festival should take note; how one goes about contextualising performances for the audiences means everything. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*<\/a>Beri Juraic<\/strong> is a PhD Candidate in Theatre Studies at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University, United Kingdom. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Kansai University in Osaka, Japan in the autumn of 2022 supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK and The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. He holds an MA in Japanese Studies (Distinction) from SOAS, University of London. His research interests include post-war and contemporary Japanese theatre, theatre and migration and multilingual theatre. Prior to academic career, he worked as a theatre producer and a festival programmer in the U.K. and abroad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2024 Beri Juraic
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>, #30, Dec. 2024
e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

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