happy new ears

This weekend’s financial breakdown left us (me and my second half, i.e. boyf) strategically placed in Kortrijk without any hope of getting out for a day or two…so this is what we naturally, as well as strategically did – we walked around the city following the wonderful parcours of the Happy New Ears festival.
Happy New Ears is an annual event organised by the Buda Kunstcentrum. It’s a music festival which is interactive and innovative, the whole city is transformed into a playground for sound artists, or rather a battle terrain, well, at least that’s how it sounds. Harsh noises, claustrophobic spaces, dark medieval settings …and after playing noise instruments/installations of human height, climbing to the 5th floor to listen to the sound pillows (note to the Liebaert enthusiasts – don’t by the 20sq. metres of heated floor – just spend some time in the boiling hot air of the BudaToren (note to myself – write more on Liebaert project later)), getting a headache from the compressed air music aka Pneumatic Sound Field by Edwin van der Heide, I was quite relieved to find a quiet and discreet pulsating loud speakers that moved tiny bits of dust, fuzz, red pigment, connected by fragile threads, represented in drawings, all casually displayed on a simple untreated wooden table.

La Table by Bart Vandevijvere and Laurent Rigaut - not for those who expect to be bombarded with images and sound - you'll have to search for little treasures here, pedantic as you can get, finding out the charm.