Playground festival

Playground festival

STUK
Naamsestraat 96
3000 Leuven, Belgium
www.stuk.be

M Museum
Vanderkelenstraat 28
3000 Leuven, Belgium
www.mleuven.be

Since 2007 Playground festival 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. It seems simple, though: stage projects have certain parameters. Spectators do not move around, the duration is limited and you experience the performance as a group. Visiting an exhibition space, however, is an individual experience: visitors stay for as long as they like and can look at the piece of art from all possible angles. But artists love breaking through the boundaries of their own discipline, and that is where exciting art emerges. Playground looks for limits, unravels codes and stimulates encounters between different worlds of art.

For this fifth edition, Playground takes a giant leap: it is no longer only the ‘playground’ of arts centre STUK, but of Museum M as well. Together, both houses of art give an even better insight in the zone between performing arts and visual arts. In museum M, you can visit an exhibition and discover the work of several live performers. STUK shows performances that incorporate concepts typically used by visual arts.

The performances staged during Playground are often looking for unique ways to translate text, situations or experiences to a live event on stage. Guy de Cointet‘s performance Five Sisters is a surreal scenerie in which ordinary, daily events are linked to specfic objects, colours and text in a lucid way. In Ivana Müller‘s Partituur the roles of participants constantly shift and everybody takes place in the creation of a unique ‘score’. Lundahl & Seitl offers a unique one on one experience where a voice guides you through a series of enigmatic encounters. Alexandra Bachzetsis researches in A pieced danced alone the line between the orginal and the copy, like in a house of mirrors with endless reflections.

Several young artists experiment with lecture and performance and create a fascinating setting for their live stories around objects and experiences. Ellie Ga‘s The Fortunetellers is a meandering path of research, recollections and metaphores that stage her five months expedition to the North Pole. Hedwig Houben discusses the doubts and considerations on creating a work of art and talks about the roles the object has played. Marcelline Delbecq‘s live readings trigger our imagination with minimal means. Adva Zakai brings four parts of her Solo Solutions in which she starts from what is available: a person, a text, a table and a space.

STUK also presents the (ongoing) videoinstallation Contagious! by Pauline Boudry & Renate Lorenz, a work in which they reflect on historical epileptic dances and ‘café concerts.’

In M Playground presents a solo exhibition with Mika Rottenberg Cheese, Squeeze & Tropical Breeze, offering an insight in her videoinstallations focussing on the notion of performance from several different perspectives. M also presents two ongoing performances: Wannes Goetschalckx and Ruben Kindermans present Spel F, a sort of absurd, ongoing game with chocolate coins amids the historical collection of the museum. The House of our Fathers by Jan Lauwers and Needcompany is a museum-like labyrinth of an installation in which actors, dancers and musicians constantly perform. Artist Audrey Cottin will present both in M and STUK her Leuven Clapping Group, a reflection on the historical act of handclapping that will appear on different moments and venues without an exact purpose.

The opening night on November 3 offers a double bill evening in M and STUK where several performances can be combined in a unique joint programme.

More information: www.playgroundfestival.be