In between meeting, digging and eating: six years of hosting the Festival Belluard Bollwerk International

Abstract

We should be inventing new connections between artistic activity and a range of other human activities through the construction of a democratic public space, outside of the traditional spaces for art; a zone of ‘indistinction’ of life and art, that allows a knowledge exchange, and where collectivity and commitment can be reaffirmed. In this article I analyse my practice as the director of the Festival Belluard Bollwerk International, in Fribourg, Switzerland, from 2007 to 2013. How can an art festival function as an interface between art and everyday life, as an agora? I draw on the work of Jean Rancière to argue that we were thriving in a zone of indistinction of life and art, where the agency of the art projects we produced consisted within their presence and their disturbance of the everyday, rather than in making concrete political or social claims. Furthermore, the subject of community in artistic practice is developed in relation to useful art and the exchange of knowledge in an emancipated way. The ideas presented will be illustrated with different art projects produced at the Belluard Festival.

Keywords:

• public space
• political agency
• tacit knowledge
• community
• useful art

Notes on contributor

Sally De Kunst (Belgium, 1974) is the director of the artist residency ARC in Romainmôtier (CH). Between 2007 and 2013 she was the director of the Belluard Bollwerk International, an arts festival in Fribourg (CH). After a BA in Graphic Design at St. Lukas in Brussels (BE), a BA in Art History at the University of Ghent (BE) and an MA in Theatre Studies at the Universities of Glasgow (UK) and Ghent (BE), Sally De Kunst worked from 2000 until 2003 as a dance, theatre and film critic for the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. From 2003 until 2006 she was the dance and performance curator at arts centre STUK and the international festival international exchange platforms: Monsoon, an Asian-European exchange, which took place KLAPSTUK in Leuven (BE). In 2006–2007 she worked as a coorganizer for two in Seoul in December 2006, and Expedition, a residency in three stages for artists organized by Frascati (Amsterdam) in collaboration with Brut (Vienna) and Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (Paris). In 2010, 2011 and 2012 Sally De Kunst hosted Watch & Talk, a discursive residency-workshop for young artists at the festival Theaterspektakel in Zurich (CH). She has also been a contributor for different magazines and publication.

Notes

1. Rancière emphasizes our differences as the basis of our humanity rather than our commonalities and this leads to a politics of ‘dissensus’ rather than ‘consensus’.