Arts in Brussels: Kunsten Festival des Arts

The Kunsten FESTIVAL des Arts was founded by its director Frie Leysen in 1994, with its first edition. This year it will present music, theatre, dance and other art performances in Brussels between 4 and 27 May.

The conviction that created the KunstenFESTIVALdesArts and is still cultivated by it today is that each one of the realities is complex and cannot be compartmentalised without being damaged. The international festival of contemporary living arts is not built around a pre-established theme or a single artistic discipline, and even less so around a single community, region or country. Its programme brings to light the artistic personalities tackling the complex features of our contemporary societies, and the beauty with which they freely shape current forms to make us hear what they have to say about the present day - without complicating what is simple or simplifying what is complicated.

This is the KunstenFESTIVALdesArts' ninth encounter with the public. It is still a new festival. It asserts the radical choice of not conforming to the tacit borders that often divide up cultural life and our own existences. In Brussels, the symbolic capital of Belgium and of Europe, it offers: - the contemporary work of artists from outside Europe in order to put into perspective the Eurocentric cultural vision with which we are saturated, in spite of ourselves - a high quality selection of current projects by European artists who all too rarely have the opportunity of being discovered by Belgian audiences - the presentation of Belgian artists in an international context - an all too rare platform of encounter for French-speaking and Dutch-speaking artists and audiences in Brussels - dialogue between various contrasting generations, aesthetics and writing, motivated here as elsewhere by the same exacting concern of bearing witness to the present day - a free selection of artistic disciplines - musical theatre, theatre, performance, visual arts and film - that are often blended together to enable the most appropriate language for each contemporary vision to flourish here. Having an international outlook and complementing the existing artistic offerings in Belgium, the KunstenFESTIVALdesArts endeavours to play what it considers to be an essential role of 'bringing together' and 'confrontation'.