A resting place amidst the hustle and bustle: that’s what Almost Summer 2024 wants to be. We invite you to slow down together. With performances, gigs, and engaging installations, we briefly stop time.
As we know, modernity and postmodernity have championed speed and acceleration, in particular through the invention of technological means that are supposed to make us ever more efficient, when in reality many of them are alienating us and multiplying ecological destruction. In opposition to the supposedly unalterable structural triangle that combines competition, growth and acceleration, we propose to mark a pause in ‘business as usual’.
Against the compression of the present that leads us to do more and more things in less and less time, to the point of saturation and sometimes depression, this festival is an opportunity to experiment with slowing down and gently redeploying our attention. Each of the artistic projects on offer creates in its own way a place of symbolic and sensitive resistance to acceleration. They are all invitations to “resonate”, to use the term borrowed from the philosopher Hartmut Rosa.
What can you expect? We open with an up-tempo dance performance by Mooni Van Tichel that makes invisible violence visible. Then we turn our attention to the meditative deeds of Olga de Soto, before settling in for an equally amusing and critical pretend-auction by Jen Rosenblit. As the evening sets in, Anne Lise Le Gac and her companions measure the now in alternate ways by infiltrating a garden party with Operatiekwartier behind the turntables. Sirah Foighel Brutmann and Eitan Efrat hold up a family history, while Fernanda Silva turns the spotlight on an underrated punk dancer. And finally, time is stretched out through the visual distortions of Bruno Freire’s hypnotising evening dance and Lucia Palladino’s poetic walks. On the last night, we let the harmonious vocal installation by Myriam Van Imschoot and Lucas van Haesbroeck tuck us in.
We also make space for a research space for collective thinking. You can visit the White Garden (designed by Sara Manente), the exhibition of items collected by inhabitants of Kortrijk (Tamar Levit and Yaën S. Levi), and the free eco-feminist library. And make sure to attend dance and performance readings about the factory of longing (Norberto Llopis Segarra) and a society of 13th-century Beguines who were feminists before the term even existed (Goda Palekaité en Milda Januševičiūtė).
In the festival garden, you can slow down with a drink, catch up endlessly, exchange your personal artistic experiences and meet the artists.
All are welcome!
Mathilde Villeneuve
artistic director at arts centre BUDA
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