Failure and Participatory Art Practices

Today we are talking fire alarms, synchronisity and the moment before the wheels come off. Frederique Lecomte is a sociologist, theatre director, daughter of the carnival and woman of peace, she’s been working in participatory theatre for the last 25 years and working in Africa during that time too, making theatre with vulnerable communities in Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic republic of Congo. Purni Morell is a freelance theatre director, writer and translator. She was formerly Artistic Director of the Unicorn from 2011 – 2018 and now lives in Antwerp, Belgium. She is currently working on The Ghost Light for the Barbican Theatre, London (opens Nov 24th). She was working as an interim dramaturg for KVS when Frédérique and Ewout worked on VITA SIYO MUCHEZO YA WATOTO https://www.theatrereconciliation.org/vita-siyo.

Today we went to decoratelier to talk about the underbelly of the city, failure as the only option and how to be nice to people. Bie Vancraeynest is coördinator of Vzw Toestand, an organisation that reactivates forgotten or empty buildings to temporary and autonomous sociocultural centres. Before that she was coördinator of the participatory art festival ENTER Brussels (2018). She’s also writing for Mo magazine and has a past in youth work in the Chicago neighbourhood in Brussels. Jozef Wouters is an autonomous artist in residence with Meg Stewart’s multidisciplinary theatre company Damaged Goods. For the last 5 years he has based various projects here in Molenbeek at Decoratelier, a collaborative space in the heart of the city.

With Elly and Chris we talk about embracing failure, the succes of being not even close to organised and the sometimes improbable motivations for participants to be there. Chris Rotsaert is at the artistic helm of Manoeuvre, arts place for craft, co-creation and diversity. It’s located in the heart of the Rabot neighbourhood of Ghent. manoeuvre opts for a co-creative art practice with local residents, artists, creators, thinkers. Elly van Eeghem has been involved with video, photography, interventions and installations in public space. Since 2012 she has been City Resident at Vooruit where she often engages in collective projects with community residents. In 2017 she founded CAMPUS: a collective design studio for public space in the South of Ghent. She’s an artistic researcher and lecturer at KASK School of Arts Ghent.

Today Ewout Dhoore talks with Lotte van den Berg and Wouter Hillaert about the failure of the left, taking away the notion of failure and being both the racist and the anti racist. Wouter Hillaert is a freelance culture journalist. He initiated Hart boven Hard and is one of the central figures at rekto:verso. Lotte van den Berg is a Dutch theatre director and one of the driving forces behind building conversation.

One week before the premiere of a covid-safe version of Le Grand Banquet (and not the Grand Manqué as I’m saying in the interview) I talk with Patrick, Lisa and Franka about being a family group, having fun as a non negotiable condition, end ending up doing things you always thought you were not going to do. Jovial Mbenga is a theatre director from Congo that has been working with this group of people since they all collaborated on Parc Belvedère for the ENTER festival in 2016.

We went down to Globe Aroma (Brussels, BE) to talk with Simon Van Schuylenbergh and An Vandermeulen about playing it out, soft zones and other types of organizations taking over. An Vandermeulen has been artistic coordinator of Globe Aroma fro the last couple of years and worked at Beursschouwburg before that. Simon Van Schuylenbergh graduated in 2017 at the Drama department of KASK School of Arts and is one of the central figures of NeMosquitoPas.

Kasper Demeulemeester and Vincen Beeckman are talking with us about being behind the lens, simply having a nice moment with people and playing ping pong. Vincen Beeckman is a Brussels based photographer working on community projects in the center of the city. Connection and story telling are his main topics. He’s currently developing the Lokal Fototek Foundation, a contemporary archive of Brussels photography. Kasper Demeulemeester is co-founder of the Local Fototek Foundation. He researches the concept of belonging through photography, text and publication making. He also works with storytelling on the canal of Brussels-Willebroek, in a series of workshops around collective photography and forgetting.