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Art-1
About us

About

Its international dimension, the discovery of unusual architectural spaces, innovative programming, the multiplicity of viewpoints linked to the questioning of Nature / Culture and above all the convergence between music, theatre, circus, dance, fashion, culinary and visual arts make ARTONOV a dynamic and optimistic tool.

The project

The ARTONOV Festival is inspired by the international Art Nouveau movement, both for its philosophy and its implementation, but also by the Japanese sensorial and multidisciplinary art. Its goal is to generate a convergence between the performing arts - music, dance, theatre - andfashion and visual arts, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and creation in Art Nouveau and Art Deco houses and other venues of remarkable architecture in Brussels.

The Festival presents a dozen original and innovative artistic performances featuring young people and professionals. It aims to offer artists, and primarily emerging artists, the opportunity to develop their artistic projects in a spirit of collaboration between generations, nationalities and artistic disciplines.

ARTONOV also organises artistic workshops in kindergartens and primary schools in Brussels, develops cultural mediation with youth centres and establishes partnerships with art schools such as the Beaux-Arts, La Cambre, ARTS2, the Royal Brussels Conservatory, INSAS, etc.

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The philosophy of Art Nouveau and its venuesthe starting point of our festival, leadus to in-depth research about the spaces of other periods while keeping a common thread: to awaken the senses in a common artistic gesture between performance and architecture.

The particularity of the festival lies in the unique multidisciplinary creations inspired by distinctive locations. It brings buildings and spaces to life and magnifies the ordinary by offering a different view of the city. It allows the rediscovery of heritage through a different experience. Architecture becomes part of  of the performance’s "ritual".

The ARTONOV Festival’s ambition is to reconnect with the concept of ‘total art’, as Henry van de Velde understood it: to unify music, visual arts, architecture, dance, design, theatre and video and to offer our young Europeans a workspace that fosters  their creativity, curiosity and professional emancipation.

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EDITORIAL

Beauty of the Threshold, aesthetics of Limits

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning roads, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

Italo Calvino, Invisible cities

 

For its ninth edition, the Festival ARTONOV will focus on the concept of beauty of the Threshold and aesthetics of Limits. 

In the East, especially in China and Japan, the notion of ‘setting limits’ is crucial to the conception of space-time and underlines the architectural aesthetics of homes, sanctuaries and even the design of gardens, landscapes and paintings.

In the West, the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements embraced this concept to develop a whole new architectural style. In 2023, a year dedicated to Art Nouveau, we thought it would be particularly interesting to ask our guest artists to focus on this notion.

This year’s programme then can be seen a sort of perambulation through the ideas of interior and exterior, between venues and artistic disciplines. What constitutes the ideal abode? What does the ‘elsewhere’ or the landscape represent in architecture? Posing these questions leads us to rethink the world around us.

As always, the Festival will offer an array of unique venues and creations by artists across a variety of disciplines. These include new works by Tomoko Sauvage and Elise Peroi at the Maison Hannon, creations in two buildings designed by architect Strauven (House Saint-Cyr and his personal home) as well as performances by Silvia Costa at the Mercerie and at BOB361, a magnificent architectural complex designed by the Belgian architects Goedele Desmet and Ivo Vanhamme.

We open with Horizon, an acrobatic performance by Chloé Moglia in in the Galerie Ravenstein, an exploration of the frontier between gravity, suspension and the infinite possible variations on emptiness.

This edition will see a new collaboration with the fondation blan, whose poetic philosophy is very much in tune with that of the Festival. The extraordinary architecture of this venue will serve as the perfect backdrop for Extant, an in situ creation around dance and cinema. This year also marks our first collaboration with Les Brigittines, with a creation by the Xenakis Trio and visual artist Vivian Daval. 

This year once again, the Festival will organise creative workshops open to all as well as an initiation to the performance Les Souffles, combining dance, music, performance and installation art in the École n°13 de Schaerbeek, a jewel of Art Nouveau architecture.

The Festival will close on a high note with La jeune fille à la fenêtre, an early 20th century symbolist masterpiece by the Belgian composer Eugène Samuel-Holeman. 

Join us for the ninth edition of the ARTONOV Festival to cross the Threshold and uncover the fascinating and vibrant universe that lies beyond.

 

Vincenzo Casale Artistic Director