Festival

Les Brigittines and Recyclart – two neighbours – have joined forces for the Urban Rituals Festival. Over three evenings, the festival will present music that is “hard to situate in terms of time and space”. It features some unusual concepts, including a Bach cantata performed by deaf singers and fascinating combinations such as hurdy-gurdy music and electronica.

Vintage is hot, zeker in combinatie met de ravissante looks van Valerie June. De Amerikaanse singer-songwriter mag de twintigste editie van Les Nuits in stijl aftrappen.

From 15 to 17 November, Les Halles Arts Centre is presenting a new festival called Europe Refresh. Through this initiative, Les Halles aims to support projects that contribute to a more imaginative and open society, and a sustainable economy. Art, fashion, ecology, education, health: any and every discipline and sphere of activity are allowed, on the condition that the applications focus on concrete contributions to improving our daily lives. The festival is being supported by KissKissBankBank, a platform for crowd funding through which visitors can support projects financially if they choose to. The guest country of the first edition is India. Candidates who wish to participate may register until 11 September via www.halles.be.

(Mont Blanc)

In zes clusters van meerdere kortfilms heeft het Brussels Short Film Festival haar Nationale Competitie  moeten onderbrengen. Onder de indruk van het niveau dat heel wat Belgische kortfilms halen, plaatst AGENDA een Nederlandstalig en Franstalig talent voor het voetlicht: Gilles Coulier, die Mont Blanc straks mag voorstellen in de officiële selectie van Cannes, en Emmanuelle Nicot, die dankzij de vele prijzen voor Rae voorlopig niet in een fastfoodrestaurant moet werken.

(The Hole, New York)

Wednesday 17 April, the first edition of Art Brussels under the new director Katerina Gregos was kicked off. Your curious AGENDA team went to preview the - very amusing and dynamic - annual look and buy festival of contemporary art – yes, all 187 galleries and over 2,000 artists from across the world –, and came back with this sample of the abundance our eyes feasted upon!

(Pascale Henry : Alice au pays des mer(d)veilles)

Trouble, 9^e et dernière édition ! Le festival pionnier de la performance, organisé annuellement par les Halles, subventionné en partie par un programme européen, termine son contrat. Toujours aussi internationale, la programmation concoctée par Antoine Pickels plonge à nouveau dans cet art du risque audacieux, sans format défini et personnel à l’artiste.

The Balkan hype ended a few years back, but the Balkan Trafik festival keeps demonstrating that Balkan music is still very popular. The festival is being organised for the seventh year running at Bozar, and in addition to a wide variety of Balkan music, it offers food stands and regional wines, workshops, and, for the first time, debates.

If you are between 15 and 25 years old and, most importantly, you play in a wicked band, keep reading! Ending the EU Youth Week with a bang, the Youth Forum organises the third edition of their annual event YO!Fest and is giving local emerging bands the opportunity to win a spot in the concert line-up! Enroll in the YO!Fest Emerging Bands Contest before 25 April and who knows you’ll be rocking the main stage on the esplanade of the European Parliament!

(© Stephan Balleux)

Black Milk de la danseuse-chorégraphe Louise Vanneste ouvre le festival de danse Compil d’Avril à la Raffinerie (Charleroi-Danses). Sur scène un duo féminin, une chorégraphie ultra-blanche et un principe de base : la symétrie évolutive.

“The once sleepy Brussels art scene is making some noise,” T, the New York Times style magazine opined at the end of last month. The easy-going character of the city, the lack of a well-defined identity, or the absence of a museum for modern art do not hinder Brussels from gaining cultural importance internationally. And with a new female director, Katerina Gregos, there is a fresh breeze blowing through Art Brussels as well. The annual look and buy festival of contemporary art brings together 187 galleries and over 2,000 artists from across the world under one roof. We dropped by three Brussels galleries – the brand-new C L E A R I N G, the eight-year-old Alice Gallery, and the long-established AEROPLASTICS contemporary – in full preparation for the fair.