For more information about the title, please click on the link above 'background'.

Commission: to use their flag-lane, banners on the street

this is a technical view of the banners:

click here to enlarge

1. Location

The Bondgenotenlaan is the most important 'income' to the center of Leuven. This connectingline between the train station and the Cathedral of the city is a typical 'events-route' of the old European cities. Although Leuven is constructed according to the typical cobweb-motif of medieval times, the Bongenotenlaan gives direction to city. It is since the Industrial Revolution that this lanes become a bourgeois place for parades and symbols. All events in recent history had their climax when taken to this avenue: military parades, carnaval, student manifestations, funerals... It is this symbolic side of the place that gives me the premise for the show: a banner gallery of welcoming and rejection, of status, commerce and anarchy.

For a detailed view of the Bongenotenlaan go to the 'fields' section.

2. Concept

There are 29 standards placed alongside the street. The idea is to divide the participants into domains of five or six banners. This would be not arbitrary done, but the purpose is to give the image time to settle into the wanderer. This means working with SEQUENCES. Every artist should work around this premise: an image (or text, or sound) that has a connection to the next one, in whatever logic needed, and that preferably can be read from right to left and back. Because the placing of the standards is not symmetric over the whole length of the lane (due to architectural environment), it will be not that rigorously divided. Some parts with fewer standards are nicer placed for some projects. This will grow along with the information I get from the participants

3. Artists and Materials

I tried to invite as many artists from as many different disciplines as I could. There are people trained as musicians, as painters or filmmakers, people who do lots of performing art and so on. This is what I personally find interesting: it is not a simple thing to create something with a commissioned infrastructure, so I do like the challenge of it and am very curious how everyone will solve the problem thinking it out from his or her own background. To see the results.

4. Catalogue

One of the most interesting things about this show is that we will be able to create a catalogue from the show. This catalogue will follow a bit the theme of the exhibition; starting from the sequence-idea it can become a logbook or script of either the work- in- process or the end results in their most ideal form. I almost forgot to tell that it is best to work towards reproduction, because the place is public and after all it is a student-city...