Playground Festival

In November, M and STUK will organise the seventeenth edition of Playground Festival, a four-day playground for artists combining elements of the visual and performing arts into stimulating live performances.

Art lovers from all over the world come to Leuven just for this

Steven Vandervelden

General and artistic director at STUK

Steven Vandervelden is general and artistic director at STUK. He co-founded the festival in 2007.

"Playground started as a project by STUK. The initiative came from myself and Eva Wittocx – now head of Contemporary Art at M, but at the time she was still working with us."

"We picked up the idea at Performa, a biennial in New York that invites visual artists to do their thing on a stage. At the time, this was very innovative. Back then, visual and performing arts were still separate worlds. That approach really appealed to us, and we wanted to introduce it in Europe. Over the years, Playground has built a solid reputation and every year, curators and art students from all over the world come to Leuven just for this."

It is in fact simple

"In 2009, Eva went to work for the then recently opened M. That got the ball rolling and we started organising Playground together with M. The combination of an arts centre and a museum is ideal for an interdisciplinary festival. I have been head of STUK now for many years, but I still help programme Playground. I find it hard to let go (laughs)."

"People sometimes ask what Playground actually is but, in fact, it is simple. The festival revolves around three parameters: viewing direction, duration and group versus the individual. In the performing arts, those parameters are fixed. You watch a stage where a performance plays with a predetermined duration, and you do this in the company of others. In the visual arts, you set those parameters yourself. You decide if and how you look at a work, and for how long – 11 seconds on average, research has shown – and you do that all by yourself. At Playground, we start from the visual arts and then we play around with those parameters. For example, the viewing direction is often not fixed and spectators can move their chairs around the performers or just walk around. For some of the performances, there is also no set time sequence, they last for hours, and you step in and out whenever you want."

Exhibition view performance Grace Schwindt at Playground Performance Festival 2018 at M Leuven, photo: Robin Zenner for M Leuven

For the umpteenth time

"The festival runs every year, but we don't start a new edition until the previous one is over. This is quite unique, as most festivals are preceded by years of preparation. Sometime around New Year, the three of us will sit down together – Eva and Lore Boon from M and me from STUK – and draw up a longlist of names. Over the following months, we refine that list until we are left with about 15. We divide those between the two locations without any competition, we simply look at which performance fits where best."

"We don't start with a common theme, even though some kind of thread often appears afterwards. Above all, we are looking for a balance. Between visual arts and performing arts, between local, national and international talent, between well-known names and new ones we want to launch, between genders, between more niche performances and ones for a wider audience... We sometimes act as co-producers and offer artists a workspace and technical support for creating something new. We do programme performances that have already been seen elsewhere, but we would not serve reheated stuff. We aim for about three-quarters international or Belgian premières."

"We also like to arrange trajectories, with artists returning in different editions. Such as buren, an artist duo that does Playground for the, eh, umpteenth time (laughs). We did picked a different approach this time, not a new production but a residency over several weeks culminating in two try-outs at STUK – once with live music, once without. Twice different, twice unfinished."

Slapping whips

"It is not easy to pick highlights, but at STUK I am looking forward to Agnès Geoffray's 'Fléau': a short performance in which five players slap whips. This is a reference to a ritual from Switzerland for chasing away evil spirits after winter."

"'Stonework', by Espen Hjort and Mees Borgman, is a duet for a person and a stone. The work echoes a tendency in art to attribute human characteristics to things, and vice versa. Fascinating."

"At M, I am really curious about the Belgian première of 'IFIF' by Emily Mast, a visual artist from California. She creates a grid of 16 squares on the floor and, along with other dancers, performs a kind of choreography on this grid. They react to each other's movements, but the order is not fixed and they sometimes switch roles. The result is a combination of spontaneous and pre-rehearsed moves. Perhaps it sounds a bit abstract, but I think many visitors will really enjoy it."

"I am also looking forward to Ariane Loze inviting visitors to M to play a role in her performance, and to Judith Van Oeckel, a pure-bred from Leuven. She trained as a dancer but became ill so now she sells dance moves. If you want to know how she does that, then visit M!"

"But be sure to pop into STUK too. We opened again in June, after a long renovation. The building had been there for more than a hundred years, and it had aged considerably. We have made it more climate resilient and also more accessible. Many of the lights have been replaced by LED, and we have moved the toilets into the building. The rebuild was hard work, though. First, there was the pandemic and then we had the energy crisis and inflation... But we did it, and we are very proud of that. Even if we do say so ourselves: From now on, Leuven will have the finest arts centre in the country."

'Fleau', Agnès Geoffray, performance, foto: © Manon Gallois

Participating artists:

Emily Mast, Luísa Saraiva, Agnès Geoffray, buren, Dimitri Vangrunderbeek, Jivan van der Ende, Elize Charcosset, Wim De Pauw, Espen Hjort & Mees Borgman, Judith Van Oeckel, Ariane Loze, Alice Theobald, Meg Stuart, Diane Mahín & Manuel Groothuysen, Charlotte Bouckaert.