For 11 days, The Gathering of April will be the occasion to think, invent, share and create together the individual and collective freedoms we need so much today… Between 18 and 28 April, les Halles de Schaerbeek invites you to create a new reality, a new horizon that will live up to the challenges that we must take up.
For 11 days, twenty-five intellectuals and artists, sixty students from art schools will come together to Les Halles. Together, they represent Canada, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Mali, Burkina, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium. They’re eager to meet you, exchange with you, collect your personal stories and whatever you want to share with them. They’ll eventually use this material to create collective artistic objects.
The resurrections of the idea of freedom; the question of the Greek debt; the complex twists and turns of the build up towards Democracy in Mali; fake consensus on the idea of austerity; the hijacking of spontaneous public upheaval; alternative development; Microsoft’s influence on strategic choices for further education… These are a few of the themes you’ll have the opportunity to discuss with the participants.
At 6:30 (PM), they’ll present their work; then, over diner – or lunch, the day after – you’ll have the chance to discuss with the participants. Each night, after the presentation, the students will perform ephemeral pieces on the theme of democracy and liberty. Their work will of course be nourished by their own inspiration, but also by the conversation they’ll have with the other participants and the material they’ll collect from you in Les Halles and all over Brussels.
As part of its brand-new Belgium programme for Global Citizenship Education, Africalia is committed to a five-year partnership with Les Halles. This collaboration has made it possible for two speakers, as well as young people from three artistic training centres in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), to visit in 2017.
Yacouba Konaté (Director of the Market for African Performing Arts - MASA, Ivory Coast) will reflect on the notion of cultural identities and on the relationship between art and politics in Africa (24 April 2017 at 6.30 pm). Adama Traoré (President of the Malian Coalition for Cultural Diversity, Mali) will retrace the building of democracy in Mali – a particularly complex process given the need to reckon with an old power that is a ‘specialist’ in human rights (25 April 2017 at 6.30 pm).
The young artists who will participate in this event come from the following institutions: the Institut Imagine (cinematography training), the Centre de Formation et de Recherche en Arts Vivants (drama training) and the Cartel (speech and drama training).
These exchanges will help to provide a platform for contemporary African art and its creators, who have the potential to be critical and emancipatory forces in both the South and the North.
The calendar and the full programme for the Gathering of April can be downloaded here.
Dates: 18/04 > 28/04/2017
Intervention Yacouba Konaté (Director of MASA, Ivory Coast): 24/04/2017 - 6.30 (PM)
Intervention Adama Traoré (President of the Malian Coalition for Cultural Diversity, Mali): 25/04/2017 - 6.30 (PM)
Place: Les Halles de Schaerbeek, Rue Royale Ste Marie 22b Koninklijke St.-Mariastraat, 1030 Brussels
More info: www.halles.be
