Sideways
-- english below --
In 2012 organiseerde Trage Wegen het festival Sideways, een radicaal locatiegebonden en nomadisch initiatief op het snijvlak van hedendaagse kunst, geografie en ecologie. De ruggengraat van het Sideways festival bestond uit een 4 weken durende wandeltocht door België, van west naar oost, tussen 17 augustus en 17 september 2012. De expeditie werd afgelegd door een groep artiesten en stond ook open voor het brede publiek. Het eigenlijke artistieke programma met performances, wandelingen en workshops vond plaats onderweg en op 5 ‘rustplekken’ tijdens 5 opeenvolgende weekends (Menen, Herzele, Brussel, Turnhout en Zutendaal).
Between August 17th and September 17th 2012, Trage Wegen organized the acclaimed Sideways Walking Arts festival. Its backbone was a one month journey on foot, crossing Belgium from West to East, unfolding along a variety of urban alleyways and rural tracks. Considering these ubiquitous yet overlooked ‘spaces of going’ as a collaborative meeting ground, the festival invited artists and audiences to explore, rethink and re-imagine issues regarding space, time and movement, all while expanding notions of what art can be.
Conceptually, Sideways hinged on the phenomenon of ‘paths’ and its multiple significations: the line that crosses the territory (the path as a proto-architectural object), the act of crossing (the path as the action/performance of walking) and the tale of the space crossed (the path as story /narrative structure). Acting both as an itinerant residency and moving festival camp, the expedition gave way to more than 30 art projects in a variety of disciplines ranging from performance over storytelling to installation art.
Fairly removed from Belgium’s metropolitan arts centres, the month-long trek was conceived as an open-ended process of coming-into-being, of distraction and evocation, holiday and research, adventure and experimental praxis. The mundane walking experience tied the art works into the context of everyday life and blurred the habitual distinctions between the conception, production and presentation of art, allowing the production of new forms of learning and social imaginary. Through fortuitous encounters, different forms of spatial engagement - walking, gathering, camping, etc. - and a series of activities - workshops, picnics, games, etc. - the traversed landscape was touched upon, explored, documented and celebrated.