Recyclart Holidays: a village in the city

(The Germans)

Once again this summer, Brussel-Kapellekerk/Bruxelles-Chapelle is a good place to stop off if your cultural taste buds are up for something more than just any old all-you-can-eat option. With a mix of dirt-cheap club nights, free café/bar concerts, exhibitions, and workshops, it’s all highly accessible.

There’s even a barber and a baker: Recyclart Holidays really does offer a village in the city. Here, too, diversity is the name of the game: there are workshops, for example, where visitors can learn how to bake traditional peasant bread or ciabatta and/or Moroccan bread; during the KWAF PUBLIK, they can ask the star barber Phil for a Courtois, Nainggolan, or Fellaini hairstyle. You can have your T-shirt pimped by the Polish designer duo AHAHA, and in the FOTOMATON you can have yourself immortalised while dressed in clothes associated with the other gender. The more sportive can join in the JOGGING DES MAROLLES, but if you want to burn up some calories, it’s the nights with regular Recyclart Holidays guests that you want.

(Kwaf Publik)

(AHAHA)

EXHILARATING CLUB NIGHTS
If you have a soft spot for dark bass sounds, then get yourself down to the party on Friday 26 June organised by dubstep hero MALA, focusing on his own Deep Medi label. We are particularly looking forward to the infectious Arab rhythms of ISLAM CHIPSY & EEK, who will conjure his electro chaabi out of a keyboard one week later.

(Islam Cheeky & Eek)

At night, moreover, you can dance to dabke, characteristic wedding music from the Middle East in which traditional sounds are combined with electronic beats. At the turntables will be GONZO – not the purple party animal from The Muppet Show, but the London-based Portuguese DJ and label boss Gonçalo F Cardoso. Another absolute must is a night focusing on groovy African bailes, music from the former Portuguese colonies that often reaches us via Lisbon (17 July). The DJ duo CELESTE MARIPOSA mixes Cape Verdean funaná with Angolan kizomba and semba (early forms of kuduro, which is more familiar to us), gumbé from Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambican marrabenta. There will also be exotic live sets from CHALO CORRIA and TABANKA. The last club night (31 July) will also be dominated by African beats: it features the Kenyan singer OGOYA NENGO and UMEME AFRORAVE, who mix traditional soukous and percussion with synths and drum machines. By then, we will also have been introduced – thanks to the GOETHE-INSTITUT and the MEAKUSMA label – to some eclectic underground house from Berlin and Cologne (24 July) and the first 80BPM-160BPM PARTY will have been launched on 10 July in cooperation with the Dar youth centre. In the latter, the challenge is to start off with laidback rhythms and then speed up, athletically, with the number of beats per minute doubling by the end of the evening.

MUSICAL ADVENTURES
One section of the musical programming has been contracted out to LES NUITS DU BEAU TAS, a festival that in May, for the second year in a row, presented progressive and experimental sounds that don’t get much of a hearing on the commercial circuit. In July, they will be in residence every Thursday and Friday in Vitrine 5 at the Kapellekerk/Chapelle station. The organisers have invited, among others, the Belgian avant-garde musician and electronica pioneer ANDRÉ STORDEUR (2 July) and the Dutch sound artist Harold Schellinx, alias HAR$, who will present his String Quartet with Windows Open on 9 July. The latter’s contemplative blend of overlapping violin samples and random street noise lasts all day and was, as the title suggests, recorded with the windows open. At least as heady: the avant-drones of Brussels-based RAZEN, who create a primitive alchemy that draws on old instruments and improvisation (24 July). Recyclart’s own programming rocks a bit more and sounds wilder than the new sounds of Les Nuits du Beau Tas, as in the concerts featuring PUTA MADRE BROTHERS, a trio of mariachi punks, each with a drum and a guitar (2 July), the Ghent noise rockers THE GERMANS (9 July), and MANNGOLD, an energetic instrumental rock band with two drummers and some tight guitar-playing (16 July).

(Puta Madre Brothers)

PHOTOGRAPHY AND CASSETTES
As well as being an arts centre, Recyclart is also a neighbourhood project. This summer, the organisers have highlighted that fact in yet another station that most commuter trains pass through without stopping, Brussel-Congres/Bruxelles-Congrès. Two birds with one stone, giving them and us another district to explore and providing an extra base of operations for presenting new projects. The Brussel-Congres/Bruxelles-Congrès display windows (vitrines) will host a photographic exhibition, JAN KREDIET, DIE WOONT HIER NIET/LA MAISON NE FAIT PAS DE CRÉDIT (“We Don’t Do Credit Here”) (until 28 August), the result of a local project focusing on neighbourhood bars in the Marollen/Marolles and Congres/Congrès areas. In Vitrine 13 at Brussel-Kapellekerk/Bruxelles-Chapelle, you can see the work of a number of photographers under the heading EXTRA FORT.

(Extra Fort: Klaus Pichler)

The guest list includes EMILLE HALLARD from Paris, who found inspiration for her unvarnished nudes in nightlife, KOURTNEY ROY from Canada, who made a breakthrough with colourful, stylised kitsch portraits, the Viennese photographer KLAUS PICHLER, and the Antwerp artist RIA PACQUÉE. Quite apart from that, the Les Nuits du Beau Tas residency presents CASSETTE ART, from 8 to 12 July, a foretaste of an exhibition devoted to (hip again) audiocassettes that will be on show in (Cultural Capital) Mons in September.

RECYCLART HOLIDAYS
25/6 > 31/7, Th & Fr 19 > 5.00, Recyclart, www.recyclart.be