ARGOSFESTIVAL 2004

From 15 to 23 October 2004 the audiovisual arts will find a free port in Brussels with the argosfestival 2004. Various cultural locations in the capital – argos, Beursschouwburg, Comptoir du Nylon, Etablissement d’en face projects, Film Museum, Maison d’Art Actuel des Chartreux, Matrix Art Project and Petit Théâtre Mercelis – will accommodate film and video, concerts, exhibitions, performances and encounters. In several other places in situ projects are set up.

With regards to content several lines of forces can be distinguished in the otherwise widely varied festival offer. Three themed programs, for instance, brought together by as many curators, mark out a kaleidoscope trajectory of ideas around metropolitan urbanisation. At the same time they shed a light on the enormous diversity of contemporary audiovisual media, in an attempt to read our overly mediatised outlook on reality.

The project Excessive, dense, speedy, complex, empty… but humane by Hou Hanru shows how well both issues interlock with each other: the exhibition points at connections between urbanisation and the rise of the medium of digital video. Sven Sterken’s four-part film and video series New Stories for Brussels elucidates on the metropolis of Brussels through the intuitive, conceptual, reminiscing and surreal glance of the artist. For Ive Stevenheydens’ This Place is Dreaming (sound) artists scrutinized the capital over the past summer months, from an architectural, urbanite as well as social-cultural viewpoint, leading to three days of concerts and performances and a trajectory of installations in the inner city. A fourth curator program is more specifically medium-targeted. In the film and video series Document(all) Berta Sichel calls our approach of the artistic documentary into question.

Furthermore the argosfestival 2004 offers a subtle perspective on the audiovisual work of three renowned artists with three retrospectives: Michel François, Ken Jacobs and Roman Signer. Belgian Focus finally, each year the central meeting place of the festival, compiles recent audiovisual work by Belgian artists.

On the occasion of the festival two publications are issued. The festival catalogue contains essays by Michel Assenmaker, Hou Hanru, Brandon LaBelle, Mark McElhatten, Laurent Gutierrez, Jacinto Lageira, Ou Ning, Valérie Portefaix, Berta Sichel, Sven Sterken and Ive Stevenheydens, along with a quire amplifying on a selection of recent Belgian audiovisual art productions. Parallel to This Place is Dreaming a CD-compilation by the same name will appear, containing tracks by eighteen participating artists, texts by Ive Stevenheydens and a photo-essay on Brussels by Jan Kempenaers (more on www.kraak.net).

Subevents

• Hou Hanru: Excessive, dense, speedy, complex, empty… but humane - contemporary creative Activities (digitally) facing the post-planning urban World
• New Stories for Brussels. Strategies for a Dissident Reading of the City. On the image of the Belgian capital in recent video art.
• Ive Stevenheydens - This Place is Dreaming : Rethinking and Transfiguring the Sites and Sounds of Brussels
• Berta Sichel - Document(all): A nonconformist Way to tell Stories
• Bits and Sparks. The videos of Michel François
• Time after Time – In and around The Nervous Magic Lantern and Nervous System of Ken Jacobs
• Time Sculptures – Roman Signer’s concise Aktionen
• Belgian Focus (2004)