Fast and Furious Artistic Direction and Curation
Groupshow with Nicolas Momein Willem De Haan, Walter Wathieu and Xavier Mary
Doel Festival
31/08/24
Doel, Beveren , BE
On 31 August, Doel becomes the scene of the Speed and the Fury. We've already signed off for the Sound. It's the last day of this summer month, and it'll be one last round of happiness. We say « make the rounds » to gather, walk, and dance with summer and all its sensations that return every year. 31 August is therefore a rendezvous with time. The city is always moving forward: in September, our eyes are riveted on the clock, once again. We have to move furiously fast in the other direction, delay the end of summer, make it last. That's the starting image, playing speed against speed, going against the flow of time, slowing down the unstoppable « progress », letting summer run.
Because as the speed increases, the distance between us contracts. Three hours by plane from Brussels to Athens, eight hours from Paris to New York. It's a well-known fact that spaces contract as we go faster. Antwerp is the great hub of European trade, whose rapid expansion engulfs everything. So, what do we do with all these economic choices and what they've already made of us? Our spaces have been contracted, we’ve been outpaced by contracts, so the question is: how can we come together and contract something different? How can we contract without giving birth to worlds we wouldn't want ?
The round begins with « Cul-de-Sac » in which Nicolas Momein, who reuses utilitarian objects, finds a new sense of desire in a van, somewhere between a refuge and a cave. The work is aptly named after a blocked situation for which we need to furnish the impasse and rethink the path.
We may need to find lines of escape, like the "Emergency Exit for Daily Life" that Willem De Haan places a bit everywhere, pointing to the need to be able to get out of the situations we've been put in.
We are indeed born preceded by all these speeds that stretch and propel us forward, and something must be done with these roadsides and dead-end paths. Brutalism, roaring objects, Xavier Mary belongs to that generation halfway between raves and road trips, a generation that imagines new fictions to live in the ruins of a past dream once called « progress ». With progress, there's no question of slowing down; yet that’s exactly what we do in an effort to create a sense of duration. The festival isn’t merely about speed—it’s about learning to savor the time that remains. This remaining time can take on surprising forms. With his ectoplasmic steel sculptures, Walter Wathieu rebuilds the ruins of a future that have already settled among us, like traces of times yet to come. Time marches on—August 31st, almost September, a new beginning; it’s time to set off again, to get moving, or to recover from the motions of summer. Perhaps everything hinges on maintaining the fury, despite the speed.
Text by Noé Gross
© Eline Willaert