PSR Bâtard Festival Amsterdam 2018
Bâtard has been a festival in Brussels for 14 years. In recent years, it has developed under the direction of Dries Douibi and Michiel Vandevelde into an international festival in which the discursive context surrounding the works of the young artists occupies an important place. The festival is artist-run; Dries and Michiel were previously artists themselves at Bâtard. Anne Breure (Veem), who completes the artistic team from Amsterdam, was also an artist in 2013. This edition of Bâtard was special, because the entire artistic team will be renewed from 2019 onwards.
For this edition, the team was reinforced from Brussels with Bryana Fritz and in Amsterdam the festival was reinforced by Marga Kroodsma (as replacement for Anne Breure who had to be absent due to an accident) and for the context program: Lara Staal.
During the festival, exchanges took place on various layers. First of all, there was a lot of attention for exchange between the makers. We organized this exchange between the artists by organizing a preparatory weekend in PAF (Performing Arts Forum, St. Ermé, France). PAF is an artist-run residence spot in France. The preparatory weekend served to stimulate the participating artists as co-organizers, co-carriers, co-designers of the festival. Together they thought about both the concrete and the theoretical / discursive context in which their joint work would best fit. The makers gave a presentation to each other about their work and their practice and had a conversation about it. In doing so, they shared stories about the context in which they work and what their work practice looks like.
In addition to showing performances together and working with the same makers, there was a joint 'soup moment' for the audience between the performances and a bookshop with sources of inspiration from the artistic team and the makers. The disappearance of the Something Raw festival also gave cause to think together with a young group of curators during Bâtard about the festival of the future and to make proposals for it.
With Bâtard we bring together a group of contemporaries from different contexts and countries. Different performers every day with a joint soup moment in between.
The Bâtard Brussels - Amsterdam 2018 exchange included the following artists:
Day 1
Anne-Lise le Gac - Action / Tradition / Couvercle
Mario Barrantes Espinoza - A sequence III
veem.house/program/batard-festival-amsterdam-2018-day-1/
Day 2
Anne Reijniers & Rob Jacobs - Echangeur
Neighbors - Blue Skies Forever
https://veem.house/program/batard-festival-amsterdam-2018-day-2/
Day 3
Clara Amaral - In our eyes, a cascade. (co-production)
Bryana Fritz - Indispensible Blue
veem.house/program/batard-festival-amsterdam-2018-day-3/
Day 4
Eunkyung Jeong - Self Life Drawing
Lisa Vereertbrugghen - Softcore - a Hardcore Encounter
Matthias Ringgenberg aka PRICE - Where do you wanna go today
https://veem.house/EN/batard-festival-amsterdam-2018-day-4
Day 5
Sarah Hamadeh - Wandering of a flaming body
Nienke Scholts / Veem House for Performance - Words for the Future
veem.house/program/batard-festival-amsterdam-2018-day-5/
Other activities
Preparation weekend artists PAF
Soup moments between performances
What is the new festival? - curators led by Lara Staal
Veem House Dinner # 3
Launch of second newspaper: How to stay with the trouble
Veem House for Performance looks back on a special but also precarious edition. Precarious because the organization of the festival got off to a late start, as Anne Breure fell out due to an accident in the run-up to the 100 Days of the Veem House for Performance. In addition, the organization of a festival, within an ongoing 100-Day program, deserved just a little more attention than the House could offer at the time. Another cause of the precarious situation was the late award of the subsidy from ‘Fonds Podiumkunsten’.
The success of this edition can mainly be derived from the fact that all individual makers have been able to develop further. From the inside out, in different places. The weekend in PAF deepened each other's work and getting to know each other. The editing and premiere of some (co) productions took place in Brussels and in Amsterdam the makers could show the same work again or a different work with a new audience.
A highlight in the program was Blue Skies Forever van Buren and the collaboration with the French Anne-Lise le Gac who previously showed work at Bâtard in the Veem and now again attracted attention with her performance Action / Tradition / Couvercle. Anne-Lise is a strong, smart, opinionated and committed maker. It stimulated Veem to introduce Anne Lise le Gac to the platform of Life Long Burning the next year.