Burning Ice: the end of the ice age

In mid-November, it was twenty degrees warmer than average at the North Pole. Barely a week earlier, the World Meteorological Organization had presented an extremely worrying report on climate evolution at the Climate Conference in Morocco. In that context, the Burning Ice Festival, which provides artists with a platform to discuss socio-ecological crisis, is as relevant as ever.

The Kaaitheater launched the festival in 2008 because there was a clear need for a forum in which artists could give voice to their concerns about the climate, mobility, food production, economic reform, social reorganisation, and democracy. This year, the Kaaitheater is stopping the project after the tenth edition, but is due only to the fact that the themes have become so prevalent that a special festival is no longer necessary.

For the final edition, Kaaitheater has invited many of the artists who have visited the festival regularly over the past few years. Heike Langsdorf will open the festival in the main hall with the première of Mount Tackle. The Brussels New-Zealander Kate McIntosh is reprising her successful Worktable in which everyday objects are violently taken apart before the viewers are given the responsibility of doing something with those bits and pieces. With sixty audience members and as many lightbulbs, David Weber-Krebs is creating the installation Tonight, Lights Out!, in which a collective decision has to be made about when to turn off the light.

Els Dietvorst is presenting a video installation about the inhabitants of a small Irish fishing village that is on the brink of collapse due to the European fishing quota. Myriam Van Imschoot is bringing the sounds of nature into the theatre by having five performers reproduce a capella bizarre sound landscapes from across the world.

The new names at the festival are Niko Hafkenscheid, Pablo Castilla, and Hedvig Biong, as well as Benjamin Verdonck – whose We Don't Speak to Be Understood, created in collaboration with Pieter Ampe, reveals the confusion of the seasons based on Vivaldi's Four Seasons. And finally, Lotte van den Berg and Daan 't Sas will focus on the craftsmanship of conversation. In Building Conversation – Parliament of Things, they analyse conversation techniques from different cultures in order to discover what we can learn from them.

> Burning Ice #10. 03/12 > 10/12, Kaaitheater, Kaaistudio's, Brussel