Zinneke Parade: disorder takes over the city!

The seventh edition of the Zinneke Parade will take place on Saturday. It will be a feast of scents and colours, animation, music, theatre, dance, crazy costumes, and home-made floats. It is organised by and for all ages and all races, but watch out, they are planning total chaos!

At the Zinneke Parade, decisions are made democratically, even the annual theme is chosen via a competition. This year, the theme is “Désordre/Wanorde” (“disorder”), which will occur in all its forms. These forms will take concrete shape at the Zinnodes, the various creative poles across the city where artists and locals join forces. For example, Zot Herbe Fol from Etterbeek and Schaarbeek/Schaerbeek will colour the city green with weeds that creep out from under the tarmac and cover the city. “We have built a three-metre high bulb, a kind of giant onion with a flower on top. Sporadically, the Queen of Nature will appear from inside the bulb and exhort her followers to overrun the city,” a Zot Herbe Fol (“crazy herb”) tells us. Would more greenery in the city really cause more chaos?

Walloon zinnekes
Bestiarium, a collaboration between Molenbeek and the Walloon villages of Longchamps and Tamines, also works on metamorphoses, though they focus on the cocoon as social camouflage. What first appears to be a monotonous grey mass will burgeon into an elated motley crew. Outgrowths and colourful efflorescences of characters that escape to their own mythological realms. Cute children that hand out sweets to the crowds but then transform into scary creatures that spew poison on the sweets. The Grim Reaper surrounded by vampires that leer like vultures at their prey. Percussionists who will make their followers burst out of their cocoons to the rhythms of the djembe.
“It is great fun, but the end of the parade on Saturday brings a lump to your throat,” Molenbeek resident Lieven Soete, one of the regular photographers of the Zinneke Parade, tells us. “After months of intense collaboration, everybody realises that they will not see one another anymore. Especially in this Zinnode because there are participants from Wallonia… And then the tears come. It is wonderful to see the intense participation in the Zinneke Parade.”

Spontaneous integration
Lieven Soete’s enthusiasm is unstoppable. “I am retired and have the time to do all kinds of things, though I prefer social-artistic projects. They are the perfect opportunity to meet people from my area. To achieve something together, you have to cooperate, which requires a whole range of skills: respect, discipline, patience, willingness to listen… A great, spontaneous form of social integration. I have lived in Molenbeek for 10 years, so I still have to integrate here too. A lot of people have lived here much longer,” Soete says, referring to the large community of people of Moroccan heritage that settled here almost half a century ago.
Soete keeps track of the Zinnodes in Molenbeek. “Collaborating on an artistic project without too much discussion and dedicating oneself to a common cause; these are the strengths of the Zinneke Parade. You get the best out of the differences between people here: everybody has different skills; senior citizens, very young children, people who are otherwise-abled, different languages, different races, etc. Together, they create something beautiful. This whole process is fantastic, every single time.”

Destruction and construction
La Ruinatje, the Zinnode of Molenbeek in which, among others, the community centre De Vaartkapoen, Foyer de la Jeunesse, and the Foyer Integration Centre are involved, consists of an army of pawns that will chart the urban chaos of the canal zone. “The architecture here in the canal zone is a complete cacophony: houses stand beside old, abandoned factories and brand-new buildings. We show the old city, the demolition, the reconstruction, the residents, some people flee the chaos…,” a participant tells us.
“On the order of architects, the pawns will build a city. Everything seems under control, until the graffiti artists and thinkers get to work,” says Amandine Léonard, the artistic coordinator of La Ruinatje. “After consultation, the thinkers resist the instructions and escape. The graffiti artists opt for direct action by coating the old city, and it must thus be demolished by an unsparing crane in order to build a new city. And the natural city cycle begins all over again.”
“Ruina” is the Arabic word for chaos. “On va faire la ruina” is an expression youths in Brussels use to mean “we’re going to have some fun”, an associate of the Foyer des Jeunes tells us. “That is why we take part in the Zinneke Parade, so that we can all have lots of fun!”

Mongrel
But there is much more to it than that. Setting up such a Zinnode requires intense collaboration that takes over a year, which is why the Zinneke Parade only takes place every other year. “We organised five studios: a construction studio for adults to build the sets and a studio to make the costumes. For children, we had dance, music, and visual arts,” Amandine Léonard says. Léonard moved to Brussels six years ago to study scenography but she already feels like a born zinneke. A zinneke is a bastard, a mongrel, but it also denotes anybody who has ended up in Brussels, feels at home here, and is dedicated to the city. This parade is thus very aptly named.
Léonard herself worked in a metalwork studio the Zinneke non-profit organisation organised for the Zinnodes. “We made big installations based on the theme of cars and chaos. The week before the parade, they will appear at spots across the city to get everyone hyped for the parade. I used this experience to make vehicles for La Ruinatje.” A win-win situation, entirely in the spirit of the Zinneke Parade.

Zinneke Parade
19/5 • 15.00, gratis/gratuit/free
Verschillende locaties/Divers lieux/Various locations
02-214.20.07, info@zinneke.org, www.zinneke.org