ARGOSFESTIVAL 2003

From 17 until 25 October the audio-visual arts run rampant in Brussels with the argosfestival 2003. Seven cultural locations in the capital – argos, Cinema Nova, the Film Museum, Recyclart, Kaaitheaterstudio’s, Etablissement d’en Face Projects and Kanal 20 – /foam/tmp/ – provide room for film and video, concerts, exhibitions, lectures and debates, performances and encounters.

One of the keystones in the very hybrid programme is offered by the concept of borders – both in the literal, political sense as in a rather figurative reading. The film and video programme Nations, Pollinations and Dislocations: Changing Imaginary Borders in the Americas gives an account of the dire and often harrowing current issues looming around the border territories on the American continent. The participating artists do not hesitate to pass beyond formally aesthetic limitations. The same is true of Politics of Noise, a concert and performance programme which questions the social impact of sound with sonory extremes, more often than not in defiance of good taste. Nor does Harun Farocki, of which a recent installation and an outline of his copious body of film and video work will be presented, show any reverence for sacredly held ideas: his highly personal, essay work constitutes an indirect attack on mainstream media.

Furthermore the argosfestival 2003 offers the programme Flashing into the Shadows: The Artist’s Film in America 1966-1976. It investigates the roots of the artist’s film, with pioneering works by the likes of Dan Graham, Mel Bochner and Richard Serra. Recent works by the Dutch artistic twosome Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij and by the French Pierre Huyghe refute the clichéd patterns of narrative cinema and of popular culture. In Coded Interference performances, an exhibition and a symposium on new media, the attention goes out to creative possibilities on that boundary when (external) jamming stations derange existing codes. Above all the argosfestival 2003 discloses important works and artists which are seldom shown in Belgium. A continuation of this is Belgian Focus, a selection from the recent domestic audio-visual production and work surveys of Claudia Pazienza and Joëlle de la Casinière. Seldom heard, yet powerful voices are presented with a stage.

Subevents

• Flashing into the Shadows: The Artist's film in America 1966 - 1976
• Nations, Pollinations and Dislocations:Changing Imaginary Borders in the Americas
• Coded Interference
• Politics of Noise
• Belgian Focus (2003)