A new boss means a new broom: Tom Bonte, the new director of the Beursschouwburg, has constructed his first season around what he calls Focus programmes. The first looks at a truth that our neo-liberal way of life finds inconvenient: people can fail sometimes.
“There are lots of cultural centres in Brussels; I don’t think we can make a difference by working with a seasonal programme too,” says Tom Bonte apropos of the Focus programmes. In general, he believes there are too many festivals. “Maybe people would like to just go and see something now and then without feeling pressured to follow everything over two weeks. Focus is an in-between format, a long-drawn-out festival. Over two or three months we develop a framework with a number of productions from which the public can choose.”
“I Fail Good” is an interesting statement of principle.
Tom Bonte: It’s a bit jokey too, of course. But I do think it is important to say that I always want to take the artists as my starting point. It doesn’t have to be the case that we in the arts institution think up themes. Our themes match up with good projects and productions we’ve seen. Failure is certainly a theme that is important. I became aware long ago that it is something less and less open to discussion. In our performance-oriented neo-liberal society a flop is immediately hidden away.
Both collective and personal failure.
Bonte: We are, of course, getting used to society failing now: the economy, democracy, and so on are systems in trouble. Laura Kalauz and Martin Schick’s CMMN SNS PRJCT (5 + 6 October, 8.30 pm) is about that. The production is currently touring all over Europe and can be seen on our opening weekend. Kalauz and Schick create a microcosm involving them and the audience, but also directly criticise society. They do so
I fail (good), therefore I am
by constantly bringing about situations that set the audience thinking about what is being done to them in the political and social order. In the opening scene, for example, they distribute items from a 1-euro shop to the audience…but that unsolicited present soon turns out not to be completely for nothing, after all.
Personal failure has certainly become a taboo. At the end of this Focus we are organising a Night of Failure ft. YOU (24 November, 8.30 pm) and for that I am still looking for people willing to come along and talk about their own personal failure. Of the people I actually had in mind, however, none are willing so far. Talking onstage about your own sex life is apparently less problematic than speaking about your own failure.
In art, failure can sometimes actually be a selling point for something that really just isn’t good enough.
Bonte: It is true that there are still too few artists who dare to say that they have failed in one of their attempts. The sanctuary that the arts should be is, thus, also a victim of that neo-liberal pressure to achieve. By way of contrast, the Dutch artist Feiko Beckers has spent years working on an investigation of personal failure. He does seven- or eight-minute performances in which he “exhibits” failures from his own life. He had already worked on that with his mother, his sister, his girlfriend, and his friends when his father one day asked why he hadn’t been given an opportunity. Then he had to admit that it was because he thought his father could actually do nothing. So a little miniature philosophy took shape in relation to the question of whether you can also fail if you are actually incapable in advance of doing anything. That’s what his short performance No Chance of Success Whatsoever (5 + 6 October, 8 pm) – in which he is joined onstage by his father – is about. Later we will present a complete Evening with... (8 November, 8.30 pm) and our “I Fail Good Expo” exhibition (5 October > 24 November – now also open on Saturdays!) includes videos by him too.
Failure, after all, can also create real beauty.
Bonte: Panamarenko is a classic in the visual arts. We aren’t showing any objects by him in the exhibition, but there will be an old television piece in which he tries to get one of his flying machines, the Aeromodeller, to take off. There is beauty in that naive urge to get the thing into the air, whether he is pretending or not. The videos of Gino de Dominicis, in which, among other things, he makes an attempt to fly, are well-known too.
Is there room for self-criticism too?
Bonte: Dmitry Paranyushkin and Diego Agulló, a Russian and an Argentine, try to breathe new life into places that have or had creative and symbolic potential, but which everyone nonetheless just passes by. For The Humping Pact (5 October, 7.30 pm) they made video loops in which they present multiple versions of themselves as naked men literally screwing space.
Personal failure has certainly become a taboo. At the end of this Focus we are organising a Night of Failure ft. YOU (24 November, 8.30 pm) and for that I am still looking for people willing to come along and talk about their own personal failure. Of the people I actually had in mind, however, none are willing so far. Talking onstage about your own sex life is apparently less problematic than speaking about your own failure.
In art, failure can sometimes actually be a selling point for something that really just isn’t good enough.
Bonte: It is true that there are still too few artists who dare to say that they have failed in one of their attempts. The sanctuary that the arts should be is, thus, also a victim of that neo-liberal pressure to achieve. By way of contrast, the Dutch artist Feiko Beckers has spent years working on an investigation of personal failure. He does seven- or eight-minute performances in which he “exhibits” failures from his own life. He had already worked on that with his mother, his sister, his girlfriend, and his friends when his father one day asked why he hadn’t been given an opportunity. Then he had to admit that it was because he thought his father could actually do nothing. So a little miniature philosophy took shape in relation to the question of whether you can also fail if you are actually incapable in advance of doing anything. That’s what his short performance No Chance of Success Whatsoever (5 + 6 October, 8 pm) – in which he is joined onstage by his father – is about. Later we will present a complete Evening with... (8 November, 8.30 pm) and our “I Fail Good Expo” exhibition (5 October > 24 November – now also open on Saturdays!) includes videos by him too.
Failure, after all, can also create real beauty.
Bonte: Panamarenko is a classic in the visual arts. We aren’t showing any objects by him in the exhibition, but there will be an old television piece in which he tries to get one of his flying machines, the Aeromodeller, to take off. There is beauty in that naive urge to get the thing into the air, whether he is pretending or not. The videos of Gino de Dominicis, in which, among other things, he makes an attempt to fly, are well-known too.
Is there room for self-criticism too?
Bonte: Dmitry Paranyushkin and Diego Agulló, a Russian and an Argentine, try to breathe new life into places that have or had creative and symbolic potential, but which everyone nonetheless just passes by. For The Humping Pact (5 October, 7.30 pm) they made video loops in which they present multiple versions of themselves as naked men literally screwing space.
Not in order to shock, but as a literal rendering of their attempt to give attention and vitality to those places. Thanks to their intervention, everyone has seen those spaces again and even looked at them in detail. The joke in our case is that they have also, eh, taken our much-talked-about red hall. We also sent the two of them out around the city to make a number of videos of places in Brussels.
And as a finale we will have a chance ourselves to bake failed cakes.
Bonte: C’est pas du gâteau! (6 October, 3 pm) is really accessible to everyone. People can come along and have a cup of coffee or tea and, if they want, take away a cake that is actually tasty, but that doesn’t have to be beautiful. There will be a cake-baking workshop for children too.
We are also keen to permanently remove the psychological barrier to our cafe. Art, after all, is not just about what is said in a venue, but also about what the public talks about beforehand and afterwards. Our cafe has to become that kind of meeting place again. So we are rearranging the entrance to the cafe from the street as a place where people can sit, in the first place. The rest can move through to the back, which we will tackle later. That’s one of the undertakings I have the greatest fear of failure about, but we’re going for it.
(Photo: Tom Bonte © Saskia Vanderstichele)
I Fail Good • 5/10 > 24/11, Beursschouwburg, rue A. Ortsstraat 20-28, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-550.03.50, tickets@beursschouwburg.be, www.beursschouwburg.be
And as a finale we will have a chance ourselves to bake failed cakes.
Bonte: C’est pas du gâteau! (6 October, 3 pm) is really accessible to everyone. People can come along and have a cup of coffee or tea and, if they want, take away a cake that is actually tasty, but that doesn’t have to be beautiful. There will be a cake-baking workshop for children too.
We are also keen to permanently remove the psychological barrier to our cafe. Art, after all, is not just about what is said in a venue, but also about what the public talks about beforehand and afterwards. Our cafe has to become that kind of meeting place again. So we are rearranging the entrance to the cafe from the street as a place where people can sit, in the first place. The rest can move through to the back, which we will tackle later. That’s one of the undertakings I have the greatest fear of failure about, but we’re going for it.
(Photo: Tom Bonte © Saskia Vanderstichele)
I Fail Good • 5/10 > 24/11, Beursschouwburg, rue A. Ortsstraat 20-28, Brussel/Bruxelles, 02-550.03.50, tickets@beursschouwburg.be, www.beursschouwburg.be
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