Playground
Live art festival
8–11 November 2012
STUK
Naamsestraat 96
3000 Leuven, Belgium
M Museum
Leopold Vanderkelenstraat
283000 Leuven, Belgium
www.playgroundfestival.be
www.stuk.be
www.mleuven.be
Since 2007 Playground has been a meeting point for performing arts and visual arts. The black box of theatre and the white cube of an exhibition inspire one another more than you would think. Artists love breaking through the boundaries of their own discipline, and that’s where exciting art emerges. Playground looks for limits, unravels codes and stimulates encounters between different worlds of art.
The performances staged during Playground are looking for unique ways to translate text, situations or experiences to a live event on stage. The starting point for Orla Barry‘sperformance Mountain is the notion of improvisation and how language shapes our world. Her work and this new live performance play with speech, monologue, interview, poem or song to create unplanned and intriguing cross-overs. Christian Rizzo (L’Association Fragile)‘s An over-protected eye always gets sand in it reflects on the personal history of Turkish dancer Kerem Gelebek, presenting several sequences, comparable to studies or sketches. The new creation of Begüm Erciyas focuses on the notion of repetition and conclusion. 18 Pictures and 18 Stories by Isodoro Valcarcel Medina starts from pictures made on the streets of Madrid that seem re-enactments of earlier actions by the artist. Three speakers, Dora García, Myriam Van Imschoot and Koen Brams, are invited to tell a story based on one of the pictures. In Private View, Claude Closky explores how text and language have been used in the visual arts since the ’60s. Quotes from many known artworks are detached from their original context to propose a new reading on stage. STUK also presents a solo exhibition by Gisèle Vienne, consisting of Last Spring and Through their tears. They research the artist’s fascination for troubled adolescents and their urge for self-deconstruction.
M presents a solo exhibition with Yael Davids, offering an insight in her recent work and ongoing interest in the notion of performance. Davids is also curating a performance afternoon: on November 11, Davids will present a new performance with André Van Bergen. Snejanka Mihaylova‘s lecture performance Pracical Training in Thinking looks at how the world is constantly being created through thought. Jeanine Durning‘s Inging prompts to contemplate the mystery of communication and meaning by presenting a nonstop flow of words.
Lynda Gaudreau presents Out of Grace adapted to the permanent collection of M. In collaboration with the Académie Royale des beaux arts and a.pass, a group of performers will combine dance, choreography and movement in line with the artworks on view. The M Forum is transformed into a cinema showing Wendelien Van Oldenborgh‘s new film Bete & Deise, staging an encounter between actor and politician Bete Mendes and musician Deise Tigrona talking about their role as public figures. In the entrance hall, Helvet Underground by Clédat & Petitpierre is presented. Their figurative sculptures, dressed in costumes that schematize the body, are activated during live performances.
The opening night on November 8 offers a double bill evening in M and STUK where several performances can be combined in a unique joint programme.
Playground is curated by Eva Wittocx and Steven Vandervelden.
The performances of Orla Barry and Isidoro Valcarcel Medina are commissioned by Corpus (CAC Brétigny – If I Can’t Dance Amsterdam – STUK (Playground) Leuven – Tate Modern Londen) and co-funded by the European Union. The performance of Orla Barry is also supported by Culture Ireland. The performances of Christian Rizzo and Begüm Erciyas are presented in collaboration with 0090.
The work of Yael Davids, André Van Bergen, Snejanka Mihaylova and Wendelien Van Oldenborgh are supported by the Mondriaan Fonds. The performance by Lynda Gaudreau is supported by the Académie royale des Beaux-Arts Brussels and a.pass, the Commission mixte permanente Québec-Flandre and the Canada Council for the Arts.
More information: www.playgroundfestival.be.
