Tuesday, October 9. 2007Agorafolly
One week ago I was awoken earlier than usual by the sound of what I initially thought was a chainsaw. This being somewhat odd and inexplicable, I made the effort to get out of bed and take a peek. It seemed workers had arrived to shut down the fountain and, from what I could tell at the time, they were starting to encase it in wood. Being a little too weird and therefore difficult to comprehend at the extremely unsociable hour of 7:30am, I went to vegetate under the shower and wake up. Once outside, I still failed to comprehend what exactly was going on here. 
As I was leaving, several wooden sticks had been planted on the perimeter of the traffic island. Confused and running late for work, I snapped a quick photo and left wondering what bizarre project the city had decided to undertake this time. 
By Thursday morning, construction moved along to the point where it appeared they were building a box over the fountain. Again I was perplexed, because that theory didn't really make any sense. No signage was available to help unravel this mystery. 
That evening, it was clear that the island was being converted into some sort of prison camp complete with a guard tower and barbed-wire fence. Obviously if this was the case, the only reason would be some form of controversial or politically motivated urban sculpture. What a miserable idea — what would be the point? It turns out all of this is a part of Europalia, a pan-European art festival, presented in many forms, here in Brussels from October 3rd until February 2nd of next year. Specifically this is the Agorafolly art walk, where “Agorafolly” is a presumably invented word that could be described as a “frivolous construction in public spaces”. The project comprises of 27 young artists from various countries, and in this case we're talking about Radovan Čerevka from Slovakia. The concept is supposed to be a Nazi Germany style blockade, while the statue contradicts the form by holding a white flag denoting surrender. Okay, good, fine. If you're feeling so inspired, you can take the Agorafolly Virtual Visit and have a look for yourself. This is number ⑦ on the walk. 
Some of the other parts of the walk I've seen have surprisingly been even more pathetic. On Place de la Vieille Halle aux Blés, the contribution from Greece comes in the form of “The Exchange Store” by Yota Ioannidou (number ⑯). It's a wooden box, lately starting to be filled with junk. Despite this, Ireland must take the prize for the stupidest artwork on Place Saint-Jean. Artist Seamus Nolan has created “Nature Reserve” (number ⑰), where by the square has been simply enclosed in a green wire fence and rendered inaccessible. Either a fence alone is now considered art, or our friend Seamus here was distracted by the Belgian beer. If you want something arty-farty yet interesting to look at, I suggest you look at Arne Quinze's Cityscape up on Toison d'Or. Arne makes impressive sculptures out of little tiny bits of wood, and I must say they are literally awesome. How does that rhetorical cliché go; “I might not know art, but I know what I like.” Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry
|
Calendar
Creative Commons |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
