From 2014 to 2018, Horst Arts & Music took place on the idyllic Castle grounds in Holsbeek. It grew into an internationally renowned platform for showcasing cutting-edge electronic music, inventive in-situ art, and architecture. Horst aligned a three-day immersive music festival with longer-term trajectories in which architects were invited to create unique stages and dancefloors, and in which contemporary artists were commissioned to enter into dialogue with their surroundings through site-specific new productions.
This new chapter builds on the insights from over the past five years but touches wider than ever before. As a first expression of our new ambitions, Horst will unfold into a cutting-edge Lab, an Exhibition with new in-situ artwork and a three-day Festival momentum. With these initiatives, we strive to further develop young and creative talent and positively impact spaces and cities where we operate.
The new Horst originates in Vilvoorde, Brussels
In 2019 Horst will focus on ASIAT - a former military site with two iconic cooling towers as a backdrop - and part of Vilvoorde, a suburb north of Brussels. The ambitions for the site share a common ground with Horst's mission to develop spaces and cities. In time it will grow into a new city district with various facilities and public functions, meeting the needs of the fast-growing population. Horst will use art, architecture, and music as instruments to activate a district in transition and stimulate the development of ASIAT. The ASIAT site comprises 6 hectares of urban space with over twenty warehouses, all shaped in different sizes and arranged within a maze of corridors, green, urban spaces and two iconic cooling towers as a backdrop. It is the ultimate, blank canvas for Horst. It reminds us of a long lost power structure, almost irrelevant in today's society. A space to be activated and infused with artistic, creative and urban initiatives.
“Fallen empires and refound desires” (Horst Exhibition / July 14 - September 15, 2019)
Our generation is getting ready, preparing itself, getting armed to battle the pessimistic and apocalyptic zeitgeist that continues to suffocate and dominate our everyday reality and colonises our imagination. Rather than succumbing to a nihilistic cynicism, and to surrender to useless emptiness - this apocalyptic mood entails the promise of a new start, and stimulates a resurgent force of optimism to retrieve our own agency.
Evelyn Simons -Horst's in-house visual arts curator- brings together artists who redefine their fear for the future as an exploratory optimism. They explore how we can reclaim our own body and sexuality. They retrieve old myths, reconfigure folkloric tales and are empowered by ritualistic practices. They look at the botanical, but also at the cosmic. They are able to cope and find new existence within a technological waste-land. Or they simply find comfort and poetry in our daily surroundings. Overall, they celebrate the power of collective transgression, and the romance brought by decadence.
Atelier Tomas Dirrix (NL), Benni Bosetto (IT), Caroline Mesquita (FR), Christoph Meier (AT), Emeka Ogboh (NG), Fala Atelier (PT), Lito Kattou (CY), Maarten Van Roy (BE), Manolis D. Lemos (GR), Philip Janssens (BE) and Michele Rizzo (IT) as participating artists.
In the context of the Festival, the Exhibition will be expanded with a stage by Brandlhuber+ (DE), and performances by Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (BE-DE), Amber Vanluffelen (BE) and Nicholas Hoffman (US).
Title
Horst: The Festival That Blends Music, Art, and ArchitectureType
Festival / BiennialWebsite
Organizers
From
September 13, 2019 10:00 AMUntil
September 15, 2019 11:00 PMVenue
ASIAT, Vilvoorde, Brussels, BelgiumAddress