PERSCONFERENTIE 25 FEBRUARI 2014 KUNSTENCENTRUM STUK WORDT EEN ‘HUIS VOOR DANS, BEELD EN GELUID’.
PRESS CONFERENCE 25 FEBRUARY 2014 STUK ARTS CENTRE BECOMES A HOUSE FOR DANCE, IMAGE AND SOUND
I. INTRODUCTION During the last 6 months, STUK has worked hard to radically rethink its working. From the very start, the city of Leuven and cultural centre 30CC were involved in these new plans, together with the other cultural actors of Leuven. STUK wants to thank all the partners for their constructive attitude during this process. For a full understanding, this text should be read together with 30CC’s press release. During a joint press conference, 30CC’s artistic coordinator Koen Adams announced the cultural centre’s important engagements for word in general and theatre in particular. Denise Vandevoort, Leuven’s Alderman for culture, focuses on rethinking Leuven’s cultural space and illustrates the extensive complementarity of the city’s cultural organizations. At the base of this new artistic direction are three context analyses, summarized here to give the background for STUK’s reformation
II. CONTEXT OF LEUVEN, THE ARTS CENTRES AND THE DANCE FIELD In recent years, Leuven has welcomed a lot of new cultural actors (Museum M, Het Depot, OPEK), all of which do an excellent job in the fields of visual arts, music, performing arts and education. Then there’s cultural centre 30CC, more active and ambitious than ever, especially in the fields of theatre, literature, jazz, classical music and world music. In a couple of years, there will also be a new art house cinema on Vesaliusstraat, exploited by Fonk. STUK’s cinema, now Cinema ZED, will become their third (and only external) screening room. STUK is very happy with the developments, yet they also challenge us to rethink our own role. How does STUK combine its development-oriented function with its role as large-scale venue with a wide reach? If the other actors occupy the more accessible field, should STUK only engage in explicitly experimental work? And will the experiment not become very vulnerable by isolating it from a large inflow of audience? Isn’t it time for a new division of tasks in Leuven? Meanwhile, the art centres’ well-known model is no longer a unique form. Several city theatres, museums and cultural centres co-produce and present art in different disciplines, organize festivals and have a nice café. Furthermore, arts centres often choose explicitly hybrid work that has no direct link with theatre or dance. And good art today is of course hybrid by definition. When hybrid art tends too much to pure theatre or dance, the arts centres often drop out. Next to that, the flow between workspaces, arts centres, cultural centres and sometimes also museums and city theatres has somewhat stalled, turning arts centres into a closed circuit. Therefore, STUK feels the need for a new model. The dance field in Flanders shows a gap between large-scale work of choreographers known around the world and the exciting and electrifying material from workplaces that is not always ready for a large audience yet. For a lot of dance productions that operate between those two poles, there are few possibilities for presentation outside a handful of cultural centres and the odd arts centre. Moreover, the circuits of cultural centres, arts centres and the youth circuit are segregated. And yet there are lots of new impulses, like a renewed attention for pure dance-oriented work and choreography, a clear link between