Artist-builder Bert Jacobs fabricated, especially for HOOGTIJ/laagtij, some party objects with a twist: a peculiar piñata and a stove filled with 5kg incense. The public will ignite the latter, the transcendent tone for Gamelan Voices’s concert is set.

Gamelan Voices (23:00)

Gamelan Voices won’t bring a lying down concert, but a hybrid music set with 3 tapedecks, a space echo and an eclectic collection of cassettes right from the heart of Indonesia. A journey without travelling or moving, a ritual trance-evoking music experience.

Nienke Baeckelandt (18:00-00:00)

During HOOGTIJ/laagtij Nienke Baeckelandt lifts her performance ‘SNIP IT’ to metaphysical heights. Ten days long she locks herself in an atelier, armed with paper, scissors and a headphone that conducts the rhythm of her action.

Rutger de Vries (21:00)

The in-situ work of Rutger de Vries gives HOOGTIJ/laagtij a solemn allure. He constructed a splendid ‘paint chandelier’, which he sparks every day at precisely 21h in the entrance hall.

HOOGTIJ/laagtij

During the yearly citywide craze, Gouvernement pays tribute to the “Homo Festivus” and “celebrating” as such. HOOGTIJ/laagtij is a festival within a festival, a scaled-down metaphor for a city on the verge of insanity. An invitation to both total surrender and sobering reflection.

Around twenty artists have been invited as the Masters of Ceremony of this 10 day-festival. They are commissioned with the task of immersing the audience into their idea of jubilation, transcendence and related rituals. Their daily actions ignite from a visual, theatrical or musical spark and draw on well-founded ceremonial heritage. Just as well, interventions are flagrant, nonsensical bursts of euphoria & decadence.

All actions leave specific, physical traces all over the Gouvernement-site. These will eventually lead to the formation of a ‘Gesammtkunstwerk’ and become a visual guideline for a reconstructive exhibition in the aftermath of the festival (27-30.07).

Forensic investigations reach a final stage with the release of publication by Jelle Martens and Raimundas Malašauskas (autumn 2017).

*with the support of Vooruit, Stad Gent & Vlaamse Gemeenschap

“The necessity for reversal is so important that it had, at one time, its consecration: there is no constitution of society which does not have, on the other hand, the challenging of its foundations; rituals show it: the saturnalias or festivals of madmen reversed the roles.”

Georges Bataille, Inner Experience (1943)