Week-end #2 (31.07 & 01.08)

Former Godin Warehouses
158-159 Quai des Usines / Werkhuizenkaai, 1000 Bxl)
Tram 4 to Quai des usines / Werkhuizenkaai
Bus 47 to Quai des usines / Werkhuizenkaai
Night Bus N18- Jules de trooz, direction Gare du Midi / Zuidstation, last bus 02:29

In the south of Europe, in the heart of the garrigue, a dreamy space in Provence more Jamaican than ever... Mauresca Fracas Dub makes music that echoes and awakens the conscience.

http://www.myspace.com/maurescafracasdub
http://mauresca.free.fr

The South China Mall (SCM), which opened in 2005, is the world’s largest shopping center. It can accommodate 1,500 stores, several amusement parks integrated into landscape decors representing the most beautiful cities in the world, an interior tropical foret, an artificial river with floating gondolas, a Teletubbies center... everything you’ve ever dreamed of. Except that the SCM is also the largest ghost mall of the world, with an occupation rate of 0,8%. The administration can hardly bear to ask the 10 unfortunate stores that are open there to pay rent for fear they might leave...
Developed by real estate cowboys with a blind faith in the market and in consumerism, the SCM should go bankrupt. But the government, out of injured pride, insists on keeping it running, and is the project’s primary investor. It’s even gone so far as to offer stipends to those businesses that are willing to join the adventure. There are American consultants on board to lead the revitalisation campaign whose crowning achievement is the new name: New South China Mall. The managers still have hope! In the meantime, the resalers are tired of waiting...

The shopping center, aka "the mall", is an integral part of many people’s lives. Most of the time they’re full to the brim with ugly fountains and the same familiar logos surrounded by a motley of stands selling mediocre sustenance. It’s hard to believe someone invented these things! There are even meetings where people come together to design these spaces. These are the people captured in Harun Farocki’s film, people that uninhibitedly talk about the difficulty of putting a Greek restaurant with plastic columns in a "Miami Vice" ambiance, or about how to "force" shoppers to pass through specific parts of the mall so they see all the shops. A dantesque vision of these mini-worlds constructed by demigods torn between land register studies and aesthetic preoccupations, told by a bunch of verbose and efficient Germans dreaming of America.

The pink GuaGua van will once again join us for PleinOPENair. This time it will be transformed into an ice cream truck, where you can savor a creamy iced treat with psychedlic pepper flavor or a sorbet that audaciously combines coffee and lavender!

We already invited Pram to play once before, in 2001, and we’ve been wondering what they’ve been up to since, they’re so discreet. Pram is a band from Birmingham, founded at the end of the 1980s by Matt Eaton and Rosia Cuckston (vocals absent for this show due to maternity leave). Their music is a subtle mix of experimental soft-rock, psychedelia and toy instruments, for sensitive day-dreaming ears. Pram is the orchestra for a cabaret on the moon, where little girls hide epic secrets. The guitars, trombone, stylophone, theremin, clarinet, flute, glockenspiel, synthesizers, melodica and drums are enchanted objects that carve a soft and extraordinary dream. They’ll play a first set early on in the evening and continue after nightfall as the soundtrack to images by the collective "Film Ficciones".

http://www.myspace.com/pushthepram

Filmed primarily at night, Winkelhart is a promenade through the huge Hoog Catharijne shopping mall in Utrecht and along the nearby train station. A concrete jungle with blind alleys, tunnels, arcades that have a life of their own, pulsing with intermittent neon lights. The surrounding constructions gradually emerge like a kind of unstable organism, continuously used in shocking ways by junkies, streetcleaners, travelers and shoppers.

The film will be shown again in better conditions on Friday 7th in Cité Modèle, before "Cesky Sen", replacing the initially announced short film "Bonom"