The VIERNULVIER Collection
Although VIERNULVIER Arts Centre is known mainly for its support of musicians, theatremakers, choreographers and writers, over the years we have also invited visual artists to create work here. They have used De Vooruit as their canvas, resulting in some surprising interventions. Some of these artworks were created as part of themed festivals, while others were made in connection with the recent renovation works.
In this way, the artworks depict the arts centre’s rich history as well as its close relationship with this imposing building. The Feestzaal (‘Festivity Hall’) reopened its doors in 1982 after a major clean-up operation. The public were invited to don hard hats and take a tour of the building’s many rooms and corridors. This year, VIERNULVIER (formerly Vooruit Arts Centre) is celebrating its anniversary of exactly 40 years. To mark this joyous occasion, we’re proudly highlighting our VIERNULVIER Collection and welcoming you to (re)discover the monument.
The VIERNULVIER Collection is neither static nor carefully planned. Its lack of a clear line of development is made up for by its sense of movement: our Collection embraces chance and is a beautiful reminder of all we have been privileged to share with artists, staff and audiences here for four decades. It’s an eclectic mix of temporary interventions and semi-permanent work. Over the upcoming 2022-2023 season, you can get to know twelve permanent works and two temporary works located in and around De Vooruit. You will encounter old, familiar works as well as a number of new acquisitions.
With the VIERNULVIER Collection, we aim to gradually build a sustainable, multidisciplinary collection. In this way we offer a platform to (local) visual artists. The Collection complements the art centre’s individuality and accentuates its various artistic programme categories: performing arts, music, nightlife, talk, food, monument and residents. In the absence of traditional exhibition spaces, we are looking for other presentation possibilities that explore the limits of the building. In what ways can ephemeral, intangible or even invisible works be given a place? How do we approach digital apps and technological developments? With the launch of the VIERNULVIER Collection, some existing works are being paired with each other for the first time, but, most of all, what we are creating is a new platform, full of unexpected encounters for our building’s visitors and users.
2019
In May 2019, VIERNULVIER’s new entrance area opened, revealing a dazzling new floor. It was designed by Swiss artist and textile designer Christoph Hefti. For his creation of an inverted red carpet, he used 35,000 tiles, measuring 10 by 10 cm, in 11 different colours.
“The basic idea is a red carpet. Those who know VIERNULVIER know how colourful the place is. Which is why I felt that the former, grey entrance hall was not a good fit for the arts centre. I want to give visitors the feeling of walking into a theatre when they enter De Vooruit. The carpet has movement to it, as if it’s folded and hasn’t really settled into a permanent position. Which in turn symbolises VIERNULVIER, where everything is also in constant motion.” – Christoph Hefti
After studying textile design in Zurich and fashion at London’s Central Saint Martins, Hefti worked as a designer for the likes of Jean-Paul Gaultier and Dries Van Noten. He has worked for several fashion houses, including Lanvin, Balenciaga, Mugler and Acne Studios. Parallel to his career in fashion, Hefti creates video installations that can be seen in art spaces across Europe. Together with other artists, he is also active in the performing arts, combining music, costume design, video and live art.
2011
In 2011, Dutch artist Wouter Huis participated in ‘Summercamp Electrified’, a project by Timelab and VIERNULVIER Arts Centre that explored how art could play an inspiring role in reclaiming (parts of) the public space.
Huis’s work ‘Disclaimer’ refers to the message often seen in film credits that any resemblance between reality and what is seen in the film is purely coincidental. By engraving the text into a marble slab and hanging it in the public space, Huis adds an extra dimension to what happens on the street.
The work also bridges the gap to a festival that took place concurrently with Film Fest Gent at De Vooruit from 2006 to 2012. Almost Cinema challenged visitors to look at cinema from a different perspective. In addition to its film screenings and theatre productions, at the festival’s core was a surprising art trail that snaked through the building. In 2011, ‘Disclaimer’ was part of this exhibition.
The following year, in 2012, Huis’s ‘Performance #1’ was also featured at the festival. For this work, the audience was invited to sit on chairs in an empty garage. The performance began as soon as the garage door was opened and spectators got a view of Ghent’s quiet and ‘unspectacular’ Savaanstraat, which had been transformed into a cinema screen.
2021
In 1927, Edward Anseele Jr. made a colonial expedition to the border region of Burundi and Congo. Like his father, Edward Anseele Sr., co-founder of the Vooruit cooperative, Anseele Jr. was active within the socialist movement at the time. He was tasked with identifying the land most suitable for expanding Vooruit’s network of ‘red’ factories. Anseele Jr. was seeking locations for a cotton plantation, a mining site, a brewery and a tobacco factory, among other operations. The trip would only be made public after the fact, raising many questions from the Belgian Workers’ Party. But there were no consequences beyond a commission of enquiry and some tiresome debates. When the Bank van de Arbeid went under in 1933, documents relating the trip disappeared under dust for a long time.
Artist Deogracias Kihalu drew inspiration from these forgotten events for ‘Carnet de route’. He viewed the documents, processed the information and let his own history be his guide. ‘Carnet de route’ consists of a poem (translated into Dutch by Andy Van Kerschaver) and a ceramic sculpture. In doing so, Kihalu casts a twenty-first-century eye over this colonial piece of the Vooruit cooperative’s history.
Deogracias Kihalu is a Congolese painter, performer and video artist. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa in 2008 and has been part of the Sadi artist collective there since 2010. Kihalu currently lives and works in Ghent, where, alongside his other activities, he is involved in the open house KAPOW, a melting pot of art, music and street culture.
Like Teletext’s work in the VIERNULVIER Café’s Winter Garden, ‘Carnet de route’ is part of ‘Kunst Veredelt’, an audio-guided walk through the history of De Vooruit. Creators Adriënne van der Werf, Katinka de Jonge, Leonore Spee and Sascha Bornkamp theatricalise the facts, complementing them with contemporary perspectives and creating new stories. As a listener, you travel from room to room and witness conversations between historical socialists and contemporary thinkers, progressive artists and feminist historians, activists and Café regulars.
Only occasionally is this audio tour available to experience in its entirety. Keep an eye on the VIERNULVIER website for updates. Want to hear more right now? You can listen to the audio from ‘Kunst Veredelt’ in full via our website.
2001
On Sunday, 10 July, 2001, US experimental rock band Sonic Youth played De Vooruit’s Theaterzaal. It was a performance in connection with their album ‘Goodbye 20th Century’, which featured performances of works by avant-garde composers such as John Cage, Yoko Ono and Steve Reich.
The band also recorded ‘Piano Piece #13 (Carpenter’s Piece) for Nam June Paik’ (1962) by George Maciunas . Maciunas is one of the founders of the international art movement Fluxus, which played an important role in the 1960s and 1970s by questioning the limits of art. Among other things, Fluxus organised low-threshold ‘happenings’ that brought together visual art and music.
The performance began with Coco Hayley Gordon Moore, the six-year-old daughter of Sonic Youth band members Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, playing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ on her toy piano. Closing act was ‘Piano Piece #13’, in which the band members took turns pounding 15cm nails into the keys of the piano. Not a toy piano this time, but a real one.
The performance began with Coco Hayley Gordon Moore, the six-year-old daughter of Sonic Youth band members Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, playing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ on her toy piano. Closing act was ‘Piano Piece #13’, in which the band members took turns pounding 15cm nails into the keys of the piano. Not a toy piano this time, but a real one.
The band has played ‘Piano Piece #13’ live only four times worldwide. The piano has remained at De Vooruit ever since as a memento of this memorable performance. On our website, you can watch a video in which Thurston Moore – who visited again in 2011 for a Democrazy concert – is reunited with the piano and reminisces about the performance. For those who can’t bear to see a piano come to harm, there is also an audio recording of the performance, which you can listen to on our website.
2021
2021
Just like VIERNULVIER, our German friends and colleagues at the arts centre Kampnagel in Hamburg are also celebrating their 40th anniversary this season. To highlight the connection between the two arts centres, the video performance ‘Taking to the Streets’ will be on display in De Vooruit’s central stairwell until the end of 2022. To do so, however, you must first download the [k] to go app from the Google Play Store or Apple Store app.
The [k] to go app was developed during the corona crisis. This allowed cultural audiences to continue discovering new performances in a completely corona-proof way. Once the app recognises one of the special QR codes, an augmented reality movie starts playing automatically on your smartphone.
The videos show four dancers (Pascal Schmidt, Marcelino Libao, Ricardo Urbina and David Rodriquez) from artist collective House of Brownies engaging in self-discovery through movement. In this series of short stories, they depict real-life scenarios in different dance styles. In this way they face up to a cis- and heteronormative society, amplify their inner voices and embrace the beauty of their individuality.
House of Brownies includes six dancers from around the world (Nepal, Colombia, Mexico, Philippines, Brazil, Zimbabwe) who found each other in Hamburg – not only through dance, but also through their shared experiences as Brown and Black people in Germany. They are on a perpetual journey of discovery through their queerness and use social media to share their art.
Kampnagel is an international production house that presents contemporary theatre, dance and performance, in addition to concerts, conferences and various festivals and themed programmes. The six Kampnagel stages, in the halls of a former crane factory, showcase the work of the local Hamburg scene as well as that of international artists.
2018
In May 2018, Swiss playwright Pamina de Coulon took up artistic residency in and around the VIERNULVIER Café. During her stay, De Coulon painted and fabricated large coloured banners, with slogans referring to various historical revolts. The banners were on display in the Café during the festival.
In a struggle or revolt, banners are the perfect medium by which to protest, make demands or call to order. Banners and protest signs play an active role in the social history of writing and are a rare example of the use of non-commercial language in public spaces. They provide a caption and commentary on current events, documenting the things we do or indeed fail to do.
‘THE MAY EVENTS’ was an interdisciplinary focus programme, organised in collaboration with Kunstenfestivaldesarts and curated by Italian researcher Silvia Bottiroli. It explored the possibilities and forms of revolt and protest, seeking to investigate what the revolutionary moments in our contemporary society might be and where they might be found.
Fifty years after May ‘68 and the call for ‘poetry on the streets’, the European art world finds itself in a deep philosophical crisis. Faced with rising populism and an ongoing commercialisation of art institutions themselves, artists are trying to reorient their practice around a changing social landscape. Is political art dead, or is there still a role for the political in art?
2013
Sit quietly on the steps and watch the scene on the stained-glass window above the Winter Garden. Grab a pair of headphones and listen to ‘Het Werkmanskind’ (‘The Workman’s Child’) from Teletext, a song describing the tragic fate of a working-class woman.
Teletext are Dutch playwrights Leonore Spee and Sascha Bornkamp. They make music and performances, give workshops and create location-specific projects. Since 2019, they have been investigating the significance of folk music in the urban contexts of Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent and ‘s-Hertogenbosch, among other places.
‘Het Werkmanskind’ is a musical adaptation of Jules Jouy’s poem ‘Fille d’ouvrier’ (1895). It was originally set to music by French composer Gustave Goublier and was often to be heard in Parisian cabarets and cafés chantants during the belle époque. In 1868, Dutch cabaret artist Eduard Jacobs provided a Dutch translation.
Like Deogracias Kihalu’s work situated at the VIERNULVIER ticket desk, ‘Het Werkmanskind’ is part of ‘Kunst Veredelt’, an audio-guided walk through De Vooruit’s pivotal moments and forgotten histories. Creators Adriënne van der Werf, Katinka de Jonge, Leonore Spee and Sascha Bornkamp theatricalise the facts, complementing them with contemporary perspectives and creating new stories. As a listener, you travel from room to room and witness conversations between historical socialists and contemporary thinkers, progressive artists and feminist historians, activists and Café regulars.
Only occasionally is this audio tour available to experience in its entirety. Keep an eye on the VIERNULVIER website for updates. Want to hear more right now? ‘Kunst Veredelt’ can be heard in full on our website.
Realisation: Teletext
Production: Alan Van Rompuy (A z e r t y klavierwerke)
Sound mix: Jasper Segers
2021
Greek avant-garde artist Ilan Manouach was a guest in our Balzaal for three residencies amid the Covid-19 pandemic, in 2020, 2021 and 2022. As an artist in residence, he invited performers from different musical backgrounds to explore how sound could be stimulated by touch. They began working with ‘Shapereader’, a universal non-alphabetic communication system developed by Manouach for visually impaired readers and comic book creators with the ambition of supporting them in the creation of tactile stories.
Through a simple ‘reading principle’, the system can connect tactile symbols with meanings, which are independent of ethnic or indigenous alphabets or Braille writing. The design, based on simple principles and easy-to-remember shapes, is intended to be accessible to all, regardless of nationality, language, education level, life situation, or visual impairment.
During Manouach’s time at VIERNULVIER, the system was translated into an architectural wall installation. Workshops then took place where musicians used ‘Shapereader’ as an alternative musical score to write new compositions that are not be read visually, but literally felt.
Consisting of 28 panels, the installation in the Brugzaal can be read as an abstract monochrome artwork, but is at the same time the residue of a unique project at the intersection between visual art and experimental music.
Ilan Manouach is a researcher, musician and multidisciplinary artist with a particular interest in conceptual and post-digital comics. Manouach received his PhD from Aalto University in Helsinki and is currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University. He is the founder of Echo Chamber, a Brussels-based non-profit organisation whose mission is to document, archive and fund radical artistic practices in contemporary comics. Manouach works as a librarian for the Conceptual Comics Collections at Ubuweb and Monoskop, has been appointed as an expert in experimental comics by the Belgian government for its national public funding programme (CCAP), and works as a strategy consultant for the Onassis Foundation.
2022
To meet the needs of our kitchen crew, and after thorough assessments, it was decided to move the kitchen of the VIERNULVIER Café, which was bursting at the seams, to the historic Majolicazaal. We were conveniently able to take advantage of the mandatory closure in corona times to install a brand-new kitchen that meets all the current energy and sustainability standards.
Up until March 2020, the Majolica, with its colourful majolica tiles and beautiful stained-glass windows, was used as a dining area for staff and artists. To commemorate this special meeting place, which also overlooks the Café and the Winter Garden, Irish artist Fiona Hallinan created the work ‘Canteen Pending’. This delicate embroidered cushion is wrapped around one of the pillars of our new catering space, ‘De Doorloop’.
VIERNULVIER team members were invited by Hallinan to share their Majolica experiences. To help stimulate their memories, Hallinan gave them a drink containing cinnamon, cloves and cocoa. Using the ‘Schwartz’ interview method, she invited everyone to lie on the floor in the darkened former dining room. They were then asked to describe a Majolica moment from the past but using the present tense.
The cushion invites the audience to pause and rest, to allow themselves to be unproductive for a while. The headrest broadcasts an audio piece about the former Majolica canteen. The project is part of Hallinan’s doctoral research into the development of the concept of ‘ultimology’, the study of endings. Based on existing grieving and care practices, ultimology makes space to collectively pay attention to the end of the Majolicazaal as a meeting place for VIERNULVIER artists and team members.
‘Canteen Pending’ is on display during the 2022-23 season. Unfortunately, the work is not open to the public, but the audio piece (with sound design by Diana Duta) is available on our website.
2000
Since 2000, "Gelukstraat," a poem by leading Belgian writer, poet and essayist Stefan Hertmans, has adorned the facade of De Vooruit. The poem is part of the Ghent Poetry Route, which runs between the Poetry Center on Vrijdagmarkt and the S.M.A.K. in Citadel Park and has 20 locations. Until 2013, the poem (from the poetry collection "Annunciations," published in 1997) was displayed on the monumental south facade of the Feestlokaal, but the construction of the Terras forced it to move. Since 2015, it has regained a new permanent home at the entrance to our VIERNULVIER Terrace.
Ook in het gebouw is Hertmans een graag geziene gast. Hij schoof mee aan tafel tijdens ons maandelijkse literaire boekenprogramma ‘UITGELEZEN’ en kreeg de Prijs van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap voor Proza uitgereikt tijdens het ‘Mind The Book’-festival (2014). Zijn alom geprezen romans ‘Oorlog en terpentijn’ (2013) en ‘De opgang’ (2020) gingen in première tijdens boekvoorstellingen in De Vooruit Theaterzaal.
De Poëzieroute is een initiatief van het Poëziecentrum en wordt beheerd door de Stad Gent. Meer informatie over de wandeling vind je op literairgent.be/wandelingen
2022
In 2013, De Vooruit celebrated its centenary. The lavish festive programme, which spanned six months, concluded with the ‘Possible Futures’ festival. On and off stage, the festival sought answers to questions about the future. It united artists, designers, thinkers, scientists, activists and audience members with the goal of developing scenarios for ‘Possible Futures’: what might an arts centre – and by extension the city and the world – look like in the next century?
A group of students from the graphic design course at Ghent’s LUCA School of Arts also gave it some thought. Under the guidance of our designer at the time, Matthias Timmermans, they participated in a workshop that would result in a series of subtle poetic interventions on the Terrace.
This sticker is the only remnant of this, but it continues to capture the imagination.
In 2015, the festival was followed up under the new title ‘(im)Possible Futures’. Here the boundaries of the (im)possible were explored in collaboration with CAMPO and Ghent University. Because, in a world full of difficulties, the power of artists lies precisely in confronting us with impossible, unrealistic, impractical scenarios, whether utopian or dystopian.
LUCA School of Arts is a multidisciplinary teaching and research environment with campuses in several cities, where creative talent can develop artistically, performatively and technically. Like KASK & Conservatory, it’s an art school that VIERNULVIER regularly collaborates with to give young talent a platform.
2019
‘Crisis Of Masculinity’ is an installation consisting of a replica of the striking blue fence from Muscle Beach in Venice, Los Angeles. The fence, in its entirety, was part of the opening exhibition ‘Endless Exhibition’ (2019) at Kunsthal Gent. Since then, the work has been gradually cut into pieces to live a new life in other locations.
Muscle Beach is considered the birthplace of the fitness craze and played an important role in popularising and legitimising today’s body culture. Arnold Schwarzenegger started lifting weights there long before he was world famous. Still today, Muscle Beach is synonymous with toned, glistening (masculine) bodies. On both sides, there is a game of seeing and being seen. In doing so, the fence forms both a physical and a mental barrier: whoever enters, steps into the circus arena, so to speak. From behind the massive frame, the viewer watches the outward display.
Lifting the fence out of its original context like a readymade serves to draw attention to the materiality of the structure. This in turn causes its obstructive character to stand out: the visitor is restricted in their freedom of movement and forced into a certain relationship with the obstacle.
The notion of labour played an important role in the creation process of ‘Crisis Of Masculinity’. The realisation of the piece – from pouring concrete to welding – was done entirely by the artists themselves. The two artists committed to this feat without the training and routine that experienced builders would have to fall back on, but made up for it with their perseverance and dedication. This provided them an avenue through which to discover the beauty of a well-designed object.
‘Crisis of Masculinity’ is part of a long-term collaboration between Thomas Min and Egon Van Herreweghe. Both artists explore the coded language and stereotypical symbols attached to the concept of masculinity. A changing Western society is beginning to question masculinity. At the same time, social media provides yet another platform for the cult of the body.
Kunsthal Gent is an experimental presentation and development platform for contemporary art. It has been housed in a monumental fourteenth-century Carmelite monastery in the centre of Ghent since 2018. In the ongoing exhibition programme ‘Endless Exhibition’, curators and artists add exhibitions without an end date. This creates an ever-changing environment in which (traces of) previous interventions interact with new additions. Kunsthal Gent functions not only as an exhibition space, but also as a meeting place and artistic hub.
A location-specific project was planned for spring 2020 by the name of ‘YALLA’, through which VIERNULVIER hoped to build further on its relationship with Palestine and its art world in particular. Together with partner A.M. Qattan Foundation we developed a programme around cultural exchange and solidarity. A Belgian delegation of artists and cultural workers would travel to Ramallah and Haifa for a seven-day programme full of concerts, workshops, residencies and more.
In preparation for the project, Ghent artist Sarah Yu Zeebroek travelled to Haifa in early 2020 to work on a creation with Palestinian artist Haitham Haddad. The corona pandemic unfortunately forced the cancellation of the entire project and also ended their collaboration.
To still make part of the exchange visible to our audience and to end the project in a more beautiful way, VIERNULVIER invited both artists to create a new mural together. In late September 2022, they collaborated here on a wall drawing featuring two different drawing styles that come together in a stylish symbiosis.
Sarah Yu Zeebroek is a Belgian artist, illustrator and musician. She studied fine art and illustration at Ghent’s LUCA School of Arts. Her work has a distinctively cartoonish and often absurdist style. She works both autonomously and on commission for newspapers, magazines, cultural organisations and bands.
Haitham (Charles) Haddad is an illustrator and visual designer from Palestinian Haifa. He studied fashion design at Israel’s Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art. He combines video, photography, illustration and animation to create his own visual language. This often revolves around identity and is inspired by the history of costume design, queer culture and religious iconography.
The current mural replaces ‘Pterodactyl noise I’ by Brussels graffiti artist Bonom, a work created in 2018 following the ‘Fly Over’ street party on Car-Free Sunday.
2015
A major renovation of the Concertzaal and VIERNULVIER offices was completed in autumn of 2015. To celebrate, Bruges-based visual artist Stefaan De Croock (aka Strook) created a work commissioned by VIERNULVIER. The colourful, abstract collage is a cross between a line drawing and Strook’s well-known assemblage technique. Composed of both digital and analogue elements (such as woodgrain patterns), it was eventually applied as a large sticker on the wall belonging to our neighbours at VOKA.
The work is only really visible from the top floor of the COOP, where VIERNULVIER’s offices are housed, which unfortunately is not publicly accessible. But not to worry: you can see another of Strook’s works from the Scheldeterras – one he created for the launch of Street Art Belgium’s cycling and walking route.
Stefaan De Croock studied at Ghent’s LUCA School of Arts and creates sculptures, collages, installations and paintings. The central theme within his work is that of time, which is reflected in his preference for weathered wood as a source material. His street art is internationally acclaimed. One of his characteristic portraits, made from reclaimed wood, graces the album cover of ‘Skepsels’ by Het Zesde Metaal.
1981
In 1981, as a final-year student at Ghent’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK), Carl De Keyzer directed a ‘docu-fiction’ film about our building, Feestlokaal De Vooruit. The 20-minute film, with camera work by his fellow students Dirk Braeckman and Marc Van Roy, captures both the beauty and the decay of the building. The once-bustling Feestlokaal was looking rather grubby and deserted. It had seen better days. The cause of this decay was the gradual de-pillarisation of Belgian society and the rise of a new entertainment culture. There was hardly any money for much-needed maintenance. By 1980, the building was hanging on by a thread.
‘Feestlokaal De Vooruit’ was featured in an exhibition at the Ghent’s Royal Academy. By exposing the decay, the creators from the school’s film and photography departments sought to draw attention to the architectural value of the Feestlokaal. Their goal was to bring about not only a restoration of the building, but a new hub of artistic activity.