Featured: Belluard Bollwerk International (Fribourg, Switzerland)

Belluard Bollwerk International
6.24 – 7.2.2011
Fribourg, Switzerland

Belluard Bollwerk International takes a special position in the Swiss and European festival landscape through its qualitative, pointed program, its scale, unique location and inviting, convivial atmosphere.

Belluard Bollwerk International presents projects from the fields of theatre, dance, performance, music, visual arts, video, music en related art forms – in conventional or unexpected places, inside or in the public space. The festival offers discussions on a high level, and encourages reflection and cross thinking.

Belluard Bollwerk International is a multilingual festival, in a city on the crossroads of the German and French speaking part of Switzerland. It brings together artists from inland and abroad. It confronts local with international art practices and puts Fribourg in the centre of a global art context.

Belluard Bollwerk International is on the one hand a festival where both emerging and established artists can present work. On the other hand the festival has a yearly thematic contest and it is a producer of projects on the cutting edge of classic disciplines. It is a place where cook meets architect, spectator meets choreographer or orchestra meets theater group to walk unexpected paths “Today here the artists are invited, for who the festival lions will tear each other apart tomorrow”. (newspaper Basler Zeitung – July 2008). A reputation to be kept up.

Belluard Bollwerk International is a meeting point. From the old Belluard fortress to the new art centre Ancienne Gare or the public space: the festival takes over the city and changes it into a pulsating landscape. Here inhabitants meet visitors, professionals meet amateurs. Here one eats, drinks and discusses good.

Belluard Bollwerk International beat two records in the summer of 2008. The festival had for the first time more than 3000 paying visitors. And it could counts on a huge media scope, with nearly only positive feedback in both the regional and the national press, from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in the west to Le Temps in the east.

Belluard Bollwerk International is made possible thanks to structural subsidies from Coriolis, the Canton of Fribourg and the Loterie Romande on the one hand, and support from private foundations and sponsors on the other hand.

Belluard Bollwerk International is unusual, versatile, courageous and colourful. Or as the newspaper Freiburger Nachrichten titled: “Belluard is when its director programmes her hairdresser into the festival.” Fri-CUT is the mobile hair salon where peroxide-tinted after-show-discussions happen at this festival. (from festival website)

Note from the festival staff:
When the Festival Belluard Bollwerk International launched the call for proposals 2011 under the title HOPE a year ago, it seemed urgent to us to develop a contemporary understanding of the word. We considered that hope situates itself in the eternal now, as a subtle driving force in every situation, relation and ethical set-up we commit to, rather than dreaming of a bloody revolution.

One year later the world has changed completely… However, we believe that hope is just that: something that changes all the time, that is intangible and that implies actions, revolutions and movement.

Running a festival like the Belluard Bollwerk International implies to never stand still, to advance constantly, to feel the pulse of time, which motivates us. There is a risk involved in what we do, in producing and presenting atypical projects, either in their form, or their content. . Even though – after 28 years – we are institutionalised, we like to think that we are still a ‘small big festival’ that stays close to actuality, at the level of society and the arts. Every year, the festival’s programme allows us to receive a new league of artists and, with them, new ideas. For us, being ‘hopeful’ does not mean to accept the simple coherence of any activist position, we rather prefer to stay at the more undefinable level of unresolved poetics and questionings proposed to us by different artists from different backgrounds.

We hope you will enjoy the festival 2011. – The Belluard Festival team

Artists:
appel à la création 2011 HOPE
installation TIM ETCHELLS
design & cuisine KITCHAIN
théâtre FORCED ENTERTAINMENT
musée ELKE VAN CAMPENHOUT
installation & performance MARTIN SCHICK & VRENI SPIESER
performance KOSI HIDAMA & GOSIE VERVLOESSEM
installation & performance SHEILA GHELANI
documentaire live SAM GREEN & DAVE CERF
théâtre EDIT KALDOR
théâtre PIETER DE BUYSSER
musique ANTOINE CHESSEX, JERÔME NOETINGER & VALERIO TRICOLI
documentaire MILO RAU & MARCEL BÄCHTIGER
théâtre GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN
diner-performance CONFLICT KITCHEN
documentaire HUGUES PEYRET
performance musicale UNITED SORRY, ERIK LEIDAL & MARTIN SIEWERT
performance PATRICK BERNIER & OLIVE MARTIN
performance THE GREAT PUBLIC SALE OF BRILLIANT BUT UNREALIZED IDEAS ©
performance & music ALEXIS O’HARA
musique TINA C FROM TENNESSEE feat. TRIO FROM HELL

Festival Website–>