- Built between 1922 and 1929 by visionary Belgian architect Victor Horta, the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles has long been seen as a link between the art worlds of past and present. A true bastion of European Art Nouveau design, its capacious halls represent a time when Belgian architecture was at the forefront of a design movement, and its continually forward-thinking artistic program has meant that the venue's doors on Rue Ravenstein do far more than connect the lower and higher sections of the city, but rather aid Brussels in maintaining a footing in the wider European fine art landscape.
Phonetically re-branded as BOZAR in 2003, the centre has since given birth to a number of different departments: Bozar Expo, Bozar Theatre, Bozar Architecture, Bozar Dance and, more recently, Bozar Electronic. The latter was born in the aftermath of the Brussels Electronic Music Festival, a more house and techno-centric festival that was curated at BOZAR by ex-Statik Dancin' DJ and promoter, Darko. Following the final BEMF in 2010, Bozar Electronic events became a regular feature in the venue, diving progressively deeper into the world of electronic music, with a booking policy that focused both on and off the dance floor. Perhaps in an attempt to finally solidify Bozar Electronic's aim of bridging the gap between electronic music and the art world, 2012 saw the birth of the Bozar Electronic Arts Festival—in their words, an "audio-visual cross-fertilization between the arts"—that aimed to bring together all forms of art at the intersection of artistic expression and technological innovation.
Photo credit: Camille Blake
As with previous Bozar Electronic events, this year's festival took place throughout the venue in rooms both seated and non-seated, with the "headlining" concerts taking place in the 2200 capacity Henri Le Boeuf Hall—BOZAR's principal hall, and a venue primarily used to house BOZAR's classical music program. Hosting three concerts over the course of the festival weekend, the Henri Le Boeuf Hall—named after the Belgian financier and artistic patron who is credited with coordinating the finance and organization of the original Beaux-Arts project—had, like the rest of the venue, received somewhat of an upgrade for the festival weekend; two event-specific Funktion-One speaker stacks hung from both sides of the intricate art-nouveau detailing of the hall's ceiling.
The acoustics in the Henri Le Boeuf Hall were so good, in fact, that the introductory passages of the festival's opening concert—a highly anticipated performance of Ben Frost and Daniel Bjarnason's Music for Solaris—were somewhat tear-inducing, and while the performance ultimately failed to maintain its moments of initial intensity, it nevertheless remained a highly effective festival opener.
Also performing in the Henri Le Boeuf Hall were Belgian audio-visual collaborators Peter Van Hoesen and Yves de Mey appearing as Sendai, and Norwegian avant-garde "voice artist" Maja Ratkje. There is a general sense that Van Hoesen has re-invigorated Belgian electronic music, both through his work as a producer and DJ, as well as through his label Time to Express. His dark, uncompromising take on techno continues a lineage of Belgian electronic experimentation very much in the same vein as the industrial leanings of EBM pioneers Front 242 and The Neon Judgment (both of whom Van Hoesen's love is fairly well-documented). The visual element of Sendai's audio-visual "experience" left something to be desired, but the audio was strong. Van Hoesen's music is most effective when at its most relentless, as demonstrated by the moments when his signature rhythms broke through the quieter moments of Sendai's set, and by the depth of his festival-closing solo DJ set on the Saturday night.
Photo credit: Camille Blake
Performing directly in advance of Sendai, Maja Ratkje's live act seemed to divide the audience. Part Raster-Noton, part Björk, part Rahzel with Mike Patton at the controls, Ratkje fed live vocals into a heavily processed signal path, triggering various air-controlled sound devices with her arms, all within the shadow of the jittery, yet highly effective visual accompaniment of fellow Norwegian HC Gilje's cage-like backdrop. Soaring pulse waves broke through collections of sampled screams, 8-bit noise and music concrète experimentation, and while there were numerous tense moments of silence in between her haunting vocal reverberations, there were as many unfortunate instances when the sound of audience members moving in and out of the hall took prominence.
In another section of the building, the Terarken Hall was the closest that the festival came to having a traditional "club" space—the room's depth, combined with its bare white walls provided a suitable blank canvas of which artists could take aesthetic advantage. Resident visual mapping in the Terarken Hall was provided by VJ duo Orchid Bite, whose visuals occasionally got lost in the sheer scale of the room, but intermittently shone through—particularly during Boston-native Time Wharp's set, whose codeine-soaked slo-mo rhythms trawled out of the Funktion-One sub, his dance floor psychedelia a solid festival discovery.
Photo credit: Camille Blake
Hype Williams were also a clear highlight; their characteristically unpredictable live performance saw Dean Blunt seated firmly on a large black motorcycle at the front of the stage, clad in his trademark latex prosthetic mask, moving minimally throughout the performance—with the exception of when he appeared to be dodging obstacles on the road ahead of him and mock-revving the bike's engine. Inga Copeland, at the back of the stage, was without a motorcycle (apparently as a result of the organizers being unable to track down two identical black BMW bikes, as had been specified on the band's rider), disappearing both visually and audibly into a pool of sonic bass mutations, intense strobe flashing, and tripped-out dub samples.
When the performance's lighting broke away from single strobe-light flicker, there was a calculated equal amount of blue and red light sent out into the room, effectively dividing the room in half. Facing the stage at the correct angle, it gave the audience the impression that they were watching the show through anaglyph glasses—an impressive trick that only makes one wonder what effect would have been created had their rider request been fulfilled: the symmetrically placed pseudo-3D Copeland and Blunt menacingly driving towards the audience on motorcycles to the tune of the their Kelly Price W8 Gain Vol II opener, "Rise Up."
An equally impressive visual show came from Edition Mego's Robin Fox, whose "Laser Performance" could easily have veered off into psytrance live show territory had it not been a perfectly synaesthetic experience that made ideal use of the depth of the Terarken Hall. Recent Tri Angle signee Howse also demonstrated the power of a visual accompaniment—clips from Werner Herzog's unlikely classic from 1970, Even Dwarfs Started Small—a film shot entirely on the island of Lanzarote that features a group of dwarfs revolting against a group of captor dwarfs. The abstract imagery of the dwarfs wreaking havoc on the island acted as a perfect accompaniment to the darkness of Howse's beat-trickery, with the film's iconic closing scene of the solo spinning car acting as the ideal final image to close a live set that had consisted of equally poignant instances of mayhem, beauty and self-contemplation.
Photo credit: Camille Blake
Although previous Bozar Electronic events hosted music in the cavernous Horta Hall, a 500m2 marble hall with a ghostly amount of reverb, during the BEAF weekend it housed Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa's colossal audio-visual installation rheo: 5 horizons. Placing the dynamic of moving sound and images into the form of a diagram, the installation's layers of sound and image created a time sculpture in the cycle of an eight-minute loop that act as both a perfect alternative to an ambient shelter from the musical program that was taking place elsewhere in the building.
Additional activity to the musical program also came in the form of 3D printing demonstrations, presentations of Belgian label Vlek Records' newly-developed Beatsurfing iPad MIDI Controller, as well as free trials of Beat Bang and Archipel, two impressive media applications developed by the Media Library of the French Community in Belgium that respectively document the history of electronic and experimental music. While it would have perhaps would have been nice to see some sort of daily discourse series in the same vein as Berlin's CTM Festival, there was by no means of shortage of extra-curricular activity on offer throughout the weekend.
Photo credit: Camille Blake
With a three-day lineup that also included sets from The Haxan Cloak (who, it is worth noting, played a blinding set sonically in the realm between Sunn O))) and Manuel Götsching), Raime, Forest Swords, Silver Apples, a wide variety of Belgian talent and an audiovisual collaboration between Demdike Stare, Andy Votel and Swiss jazz/electronics mastermind Bruno Sporelli, it is hard to fault the overall bookings policy of the BEAF team, especially considering the relatively small Belgian scene, the size of the venue and the age of the festival.
Where perhaps some of the artists who played in the Terarken Hall would have been more appropriately suited to play in the Studio or Hall M, two smaller, more intimate seated rooms used at various points throughout the festival, the overall ambitiousness of the festival curators and their programming is commendable. At times there was a clear desire for the danceable acts—as made apparent by the size of the crowd during the sets of Gold Panda, The Field, Nguzunguzu, and even the droning groove of Andy Stott's unparalleled live set. But strong attendance at most events signaled that the cerebral, multi-disciplinary program was very well received. For a festival that has seen a number of instances of rebirth over the past few years, one can only hope that after the success of its 2012 edition, the Bozar Electronic Arts Festival will continue to flourish in its current state.