Playground
Live art festival
13–16 November 2014
M Museum
Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 28
3000 Leuven
Belgium
STUK
Naamsestraat 96
3000 Leuven
Belgium
www.playgroundfestival.be
www.mleuven.be
www.stuk.be
For the eighth time, Playground is exploring the captivating zone between various artistic disciplines. The silent aspect of the visual arts contrasts with the public nature of the shared live performance. Artists reflect on the ways they might transform their visual vocabulary within the parameters of time and space on the stage. Many of the performances invite you to question and explore themes and (artistic) objects in unusual, unconventional ways. Action or interaction predominates over the objective nature of what is presented.
In the new creation for Playground ‘That’s it’ (+ 3 free minutes) Joëlle Tuerlinckx transfers her visual universe into a performance experience that blends text, image and sound. M Museum presents a new commission by Alexandra Pirici & Manuel Pelmus. Public Collection uses enactment as a strategy to demonumentalize and actualize artworks using only a few human bodies. The performances by Béatrice Balcou bring intimate ceremonies for one single artwork. At STUK, Meryem Bayram presents a scenography that focuses on the mobile installation of large pop-up shapes. For the fourth time Playground presents unique performances by Guy de Cointet where objects, text, colours and forms result in absurd stories about everyday events. Two artists, Ellie Ga and Markus Schinwald, are presenting both an extensive exhibition at M and a live performance at STUK. Playground also presents works by Alexandre Singh, Paul Hendrikse, Julian Hetzel and Marthe Ramm Fortun.
The opening night on November 13 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 performance of Joëlle Tuerlinckx is commissioned and produced by Corpus, international network for performance practice. Corpus is co-founded by If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam, Playground (STUK & M), Leuven and Tate Modern, London, and is supported by the Culture Programme of the European Union.
More information: www.playgroundfestival.be.
Ellie Ga
Pharos
14 November 2014–25 January 2015
M – Museum Leuven (Belgium)
Together with Playground, Museum M opens Pharos, the first Belgian solo exhibition of Ellie Ga (b. 1976, New York). Her work combines narrative genres, such as the essay and travelogue, with an exploration of the limits of photographic documentary. Her projects require intensive research, through which she collects innumerable stories to demonstrate the relativity of facts and history.
In Pharos, Ellie Ga takes us to Alexandria in Egypt, where she studied the Pharos lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. She collected archival material, interviews and anecdotes in Alexandria, and even dived underwater to see the remains of the lighthouse outside the harbour. The videos, photos and documents she presents stand midway between history and memory, reality and fiction, word and image, perception and experience. Pharos evokes the journey of an artist drifting across the modern city, into its archives and libraries and among its underwater remains.
On November 14 at 7pm Ellie Ga presents the new performance Eureka, A Lighthouse Play at STUK. Based on her research and interviews with local experts, the performance investigates the history of the lighthouse from its construction to its ruin. A collage of images and voices guides us through facts and imagination, fabrications and myth. This almost hypnotising performance results from the impossibility of presenting an objective story.
M has the support of the City of Leuven, Province Flemish-Brabant and the Flemish Community.
