October 8, the Europalia.China festival was officially launched in Brussels with the usual line-up of politicians, state heads and royals, and in the next months, a massive amount of cultural events on China will open all over and beyond Belgium. Check www.europalia.eu for all the details.
Theatre in Motion prepares a residency project with young Chinese performing artists in the beginning of 2010 within the Europalia framework, and was involved as independent expert on a few of the contemporary projects of the festival.
This weekend, BOZAR opens the main contemporary art exhibition of Europalia.China, The State of Things.
With the advent of art for the sake of art, it was believed for a while that artistic practise could escape the mundaneness of society. But is art not always its reflection and a concentrate of society?
It is this thought that the contemporary artists Ai Weiwei and Luc Tuymans focus on for the big contemporary art exhibition of Europalia China. Through a discerning selection of recent topical works from Chinese (Chi Peng, Jing Kewen, Wang Xingwei, …) and Belgian artists (Ann-Veronica Janssens, Wim Delvoye, Ana Torfs, Francis Alÿs, …), the organisers will question this Faustian pact that today unites the artist and the art industry, creation and marketing. They ask how artists respond to this in an evolving China, caught in all its contradictions, and in the Lilliputian Belgium. This project should be seen in the context of the debate about large-scale exhibitions that bear witness to shifting hegemonies in the art world.
Monday 19 October from 19:00 on, BOZAR hosts a roundtable talk in the sideline of the exhibition. Check the bozar.be website for full updates.
In November and December more exhibitions and performances are announced, among them a new media exhibition at the Buda Arts Centre and Broel Museum in Kortrijk, an installation-performance with documentary screenings by Living Dance Studio and Wu Wenguang in BOZAR, Brussels, and a solo show of conceptual Chinese artist Xu Zhen in S.M.A.K., Ghent. We keep you posted.