From 29 March to 2 April, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg organised for the first time a national presence at the Brussels Book Fair, honouring Luxembourg’s literary creation, primarily in French. The “Livres du Luxembourg” stand brought together four Luxembourg publishers (Capybarabooks, Hydre Éditions, KIWI E.L.G. and PassaParola Éditions), which presented their French-language publications in literature and non-fiction.
This major event allowed the public to discover and meet the authors at book signings, including Antoine Pohu, Tullio Forgiarini and Nathalie Ronvaux, as well as the various Luxembourg publishing houses present.
In the margins of the fair, a networking event for Luxembourg and Quebec book actors was organised in collaboration with the Délégation Générale du Québec and the Luxembourg Embassy in Brussels at the Galerie Nosbaum Reding in Brussels to encourage and develop collaborations in the book sector. This event offered a unique networking opportunity to discuss possible new collaborations and projects with actors of the Quebec book sector.
« Osons l’imaginaire » (Let’s dare to imagine)
As part of the fair’s programme, a meeting/reading with Luxembourg authors Tullio Forgiarini and Nathalie Ronvaux (moderated by Valerija Berdi, journalist at Radio 100.7) was organised around the theme of “Transgressions and feminist perspectives”. On this occasion, Tullio Forgiarini read extracts from La ballade de Lucienne Jourdain (Hydre Éditions) and Nathalie Ronvaux from Moi, je suis Rosa! (Capybarabooks). The discussion gave the audience an insight into the authors’ writing practice and creative process.
The Brussels Book Fair was an opportunity to develop a new format to present Luxembourg publishers and authors on Instagram. Kultur | lx will continue this series of portraits over the course of the next few international fairs.
From 26 to 30 April, you can discover Luxembourg’s literary creation in german at the Leipzig Book Fair.
To mark the beginning of the season and of a year of support and promotion, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg invited the performing arts sector to meet and exchange ideas on 27 September 2022.
This sectoral meeting was an opportunity to present to about thirty professionals gathered at Rotondes the different support and accompaniment mechanisms offered by Kultur | lx, their evolution during this first year of existence and how they have been allocated.
At the same time, this preliminary assessment enabled the actions envisaged for the future to be outlined, while ensuring the involvement of the sector’s actors in their design and implementation.
Thus, two working groups were formed to reflect on how Kultur | lx’s mechanisms could respond to the needs of the performing arts sector and on the creation of events to promote the Luxembourg scene internationally.
It emerged that while Kultur | lx’s support mechanisms for internationalisation seem to be adapted (Support for mobility, research and career development; Tour support; Support for Participation in Fairs; Luxembourg focus programme, Promotion support), the sector’s needs involve aid and support at a national level for the development of artistic companies, the professionalisation of cultural professions (production, distribution, administration, mediation) as well as the mechanisms, between companies and artists, for the production and promotion of Luxembourg creations in international networks.
As an anticipated response to this last point, Kultur | lx has proposed to Luxembourg production managers to set up an annual programme for foreign professionals to promote the Luxembourg scene. Entitled Focus, and initiated in December 2021 with a Focus on Dance and in February 2022 with a Focus on Theatre, this programme will consist in presenting Luxembourg’s performing arts venues and creators to international guests in order to create links that could eventually lead to collaborations.
The next Focus Performing Arts will be held from 23 to 25 March 2023 and will be repeated in the autumn from 2024.
In addition to the coordination of the Luxembourg selection in Avignon taken over by Kultur | lx and the national stand “Dance from Luxembourg” at the Tanzmesse presented in cooperation with Trois C-L, Kultur | lx is committed to develop new opportunities on similar platforms such as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the CINARS biennial, the Performing Arts Market Seoul and the Yokohama Performing Arts Market.
Furthermore, Kultur | lx proposes to continue exploring the territories of our neighbours with annual programmes of encounters with those who bring the performing arts to life in Germany, France, Belgium, but also in Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Finally, as part of its missions, Kultur | lx will contribute to reinforcing the professionalisation of the sector through a series of webinars and workshops.
It remains to be noted that all these projects could not exist without the important collective cooperation of all the actors of the sector at whose service Kultur | lx positions itself.
Organised on the initiative of Plan d’Est and Kultur | lx, the first meeting between visual arts professionals of the Greater Region took place on 8 September in Belval in the presence of some forty organisations and institutions of the Greater Region dedicated to the visual arts. The objective of this day was to better understand the diversity of the actors in the field of visual arts in the Greater Region and to evoke avenues for collaboration.
Plan d’Est, the visual arts cluster of the Grand Est, a professional association, Kultur | lx and the Région Grand Est imagined a light hearted social event where professionals from the visual arts domain could exchange and meet in an informal setting. Numerous organisations had come from France, in particular from Alsace and Lorraine, but also from Germany from Trier and Saarbrücken, as well as from Landau. The participants consisted mainly of art centres and associations, but also institutions that support the visual arts, such as the Région Grand Est and the Drac Lorraine, had come.
Some organisations had already had specific ideas for collaboration, such as the Mulhouse Biennial, which wanted to open its calls for applications to create a cross-border residency on the theme of the climate and was looking for European partners, or Accélérateur de particules, an association based in Strasbourg but operating in the Grand Est region, which proposes to organise the opening of artists’ studios on a cross-border scale. The Künstlerhaus of Saarbrücken proposed to the participants to create a cross-border residency between the different territories and reminded them that the Andrea Neumann art prize is a cross-border art prize.
A number of art schools in the Greater Region were represented, in particular ENSAD Nancy, which already has projects with Casino Luxembourg, and the Europäische Kunstakademie Trier. This was an opportunity for them to present their teaching and research areas, and to show their know-how, as ENSAD accompanied the group during the visit of the RESPIRE exhibition, curated by the art school in the framework of Esch2022. The Kunstakademie Trier has participated in numerous projects within the framework of Esch2022, including bus tours of contemporary art venues in the Greater Region. It also participates in the European Month of Photography (EMOP).
In addition to Esch2022, which hosted the event and enabled the group to visit the exhibitions at the Möllerei and the Massenoire, Luxembourg was present through three organisations: the CNA and the Rotondes, which already have a fine cross-border arsenal, and the Reuter Bausch gallery, which wanted to discover new horizons and shed light on the artists it represents.
For Kultur | lx, this day was a first step towards nearby territories that constitute the first milestones of an international career for Luxembourg artists. The artistic emulation that reigns there and the numerous places dedicated to contemporary art, without forgetting the media that accompanies them, constitute undeniable assets on our doorstep. Kultur | lx will accompany these regional movements as part of its mission to support the development of careers and the dissemination of creations.
Continuing its series of Visual Arts “Repérages”, Kultur | lx hosted a series of meetings with Berlin professionals and actors in the visual arts field from 20 to 22 July 2022, on the fringes of the Berlin Biennale. The group started its journey with a visit to Lisa Kohl, a Luxembourg photographer and video artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien since 1 July.
Following a first Visual Arts Repérage hosted in Kassel in June, Kultur | lx focused its “Mobility, Research and Career Development” support scheme on the city of Berlin, offering support to artists who wished to explore this art scene or deepen existing relationships. During three days, artists and curators from Luxembourg were invited to meet with directors of residencies, gallery owners and curators present in Berlin. Six artists were able to benefit from this specific programme.
Residencies with variable sizes
The first meeting took place at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien with Christoph Tannert, director, and Valeria Schulte-Fischedick, curator and coordinator of the international residency programme. The Künstlerhaus Bethanien GmbH, Germany’s top artist residency (founded in 1974), has been located in a former Lichtfabrik near the Kottbussertor underground station in the heart of Kreuzberg since 2009. Since it was founded in the former Bethanien hospital, it has welcomed more than 950 artists in some thirty studios.
Lisa Kohl, winner of the residency programme at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien initiated by the Focuna and taken over by Kultur | lx in 2022, opened her studio to us where she was still getting her bearings. This 6-month programme will enable her to develop her project Shutdown dreams | Angels in fall, to show her work in a group exhibition which will be launched in mid-September, to participate in studio visits or open days, and to benefit from a critical article in Be Magazin, a newspaper which publishes critical essays on the work of the residents, commissioned by the Künstlerhaus Bethanien.
The group then had the opportunity to meet Isabelle Parkes, coordinator of the Callies International Residency Programme, a venue that opened in the Wedding district in 2020, initiated by an American artist living in Berlin. This second venue welcomes artists from all walks of life, with practices ranging from writing and performance to dance and music. Callies is open to unsolicited applications all year-round and offers great flexibility to aspiring residents.
Germany-Luxembourg hops
One of the highlights for our 6 participants was the meeting with Lidiya Anastasova, curator at the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (NBK) and director of the NBK’s art library collection, a collection that can be borrowed by anyone, consisting of 4,000 original works, including Marina Abramović, Victor Vasarely or Thomas Schütte, which allows Berlin-based artists to benefit from regular commissions, notably in the context of screen printing editions. Lidiya had participated in the studio visits of the Visual Arts Focus in May 2022 and met a large number of Luxembourg cultural actors.
The six artists also visited their compatriots who had a current exhibition in Berlin. On 20 July, Catherine Lorent gave a talk at the Kunstverein Tiergarten Berlin on the issue of gender in art in the context of her exhibition Relegation ~ via. Voice:over II. On 22 July, Eric Mangen launched a duo exhibition with the Ukrainian artist Artjom Chepovetskyy at the Jarmuschek + Partner gallery.
Finally, the Berlin Biennale, orchestrated this year by the artist Kader Attia (FR), provides the backdrop to these meetings. The 12th biennial takes place in contemporary art institutions and museums but also in informal places. Its title, Still present! invited us to consider individual and societal traumas from the perspective of Mending – that of objects and individuals, but also that of time and history. The exhibitions visited formed a coherent and rich whole, perfectly reflecting the commitment of the artistic team involved in the project. After the documenta, a completely different way of placing art directly linked to societal commitments, which was a source of inspiration and provides food for thought to the group.
The next Visual Arts Repérage will take place during the professional days of the Lyon Biennale on 12 and 13 September.
Taking advantage of the last days of the exhibition Hacking Identity, Dancing Diversity co-produced by Esch2022 – European Capital of Culture for the Möllerei, Kultur | lx organized from May 13th to 15th a focus on the artistic scene of the south of Luxembourg for the German-speaking professionals of contemporary art.
During three days, the German professionals moved between visits of postindustrial venues, art centers, museums and artists’ studios.
They were able to discover the diversity of Luxembourg’s creative industries and the dynamics that lead to the reconversion of former industrial sites into cultural venues. They visited the 1535° – creative hub in Differdange and the exhibition Craft 3.0, curated by the association De Mains De Maîtres, before going to the Ferro Forum in Schifflange where they attended the first caramel pouring of the Kamelleschmelz installation by Trixi Weis, a real miniature blast furnace producing small berlingots with a taste of coca. They also visited the VEWA site in Dudelange, newly inaugurated and entirely renovated thanks to a participative process implemented by the artists and members of the DKollektiv. After the visit of the exhibition Archaeological Manufacturing by Hisae Ikenaga presented at the Rotondes in Luxembourg, this first tour, centered on the industrial south of the territory and its current evolution, ended with the visit of the exhibition Hacking identity, dancing diversity co-produced by Esch2022 – European Capital of Culture and the ZKM Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe.
As for art centers and museums, German professionals discovered with great interest the installation The Everted Capital (Katabasis) by Fabien Giraud and Raphaël Siboni, presented at the Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain in the company of Kevin Muhlen, curator of this long-term project. During a privileged visit to the Konschthal Esch, they were also able to see the exhibition Instant Comedy by Filip Markiewicz, in the presence of the artist and the director of the place, Christian Mosar. Finally they penetrated the Garden of Resistance by Martine Feipel and Jean Bechameil, then saw the exhibitions Fly In League With The Night by Lynette Yadom-Boakye and To the River by Zoe Leonard before attending the performance-installation Deary Steel by the choreographer Cécilia Bengolea, commissioned by Mudam and Esch2022.
For this Focus, Kultur | lx called upon a French curator, Margot Delalande, in charge of the collection at the Frac Lorraine, to select a few portfolios and propose a series of studio visits to our German guests. Six artists opened the doors of their studios or homes to guide visitors into their singular worlds: Justine Blau, Bruno Baltzer et Leonora Bisagno, Lisa Kohl, Nathalie Noé Adam, Suzan Noesen, and Claudia Passeri. Moments of intimate and deep exchanges that allowed each of them to confront another view of their work and other horizons of expectation.
Kultur | lx thus intends to stimulate circulations and exchanges between the national scene and foreign scenes with an attention payed to reciprocity processes. This time of meetings often makes it possible to take distance with its own practice to consider it from a more distant point of view, while offering to the professionals in return an outline of the questionings which work the territory in depth. The next Focus will take place from November 8 to 10, 2022. The whole Kultur | lx team is already looking forward to it and would like to thank the Luxembourgish artists and professionals who have nourished these days with their commitment and their professionalism. Let’s bet that this will be a collective pollination for the future.
Within the framework of the State Visit of Luxembourg to Portugal, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg initiated a multidisciplinary professional meeting bringing together a delegation of cultural professionals from the Grand Duchy and their Portuguese counterparts.
At the heart of these meetings between programming and producing institutions from Luxembourg and Portugal: the discovery and development of new collaborations and new horizons of coconstruction and exchange between the creative scenes of the two countries.
The Luxembourg delegation was made-up with: Ainhoa Achutegui (neimënster), Carl Adalsteinsson (CAPE), Bernard Baumgarten (TROIS C-L), Jean- Marc Dimanche (De Mains de Maîtres), Frank Hoffmann (TNL), Roland Kayser (Editions Phi / Fédération des éditeurs luxembourgeois), Victor Mayot (Kultur | lx), Kevin Muhlen (Casino Luxembourg), René Penning (Kulturfabrik), Valérie Quilez (Kultur | lx), Francisco Sassetti (Philharmonie), Marc Scheer (Kulturfabrik), Diane Tobes (Kultur | lx), Giovanni Trono (Kultur | lx) and Michèle Walerich (CNA).
During a professional day on May 11, organized at Culturgest, the Luxembourg delegation met with some 40 Portuguese professionals from the performing arts, music and visual arts sectors, as well as with many directors of multidisciplinary venues and artists’ residency programs.
The professional day was set up with a program of visits to venues and cultural institutions in Lisbon according to the issues formulated by the Luxembourg participants. They also took the opportunity to organize their own series of meetings.
The Luxembourg delegation and the Portuguese professionals are very enthusiastic and positive about this new format of meetings.
We hope that these meetings will lead to future collaboration projects and artistic invitations. One thing is already certain, Portugal will be honored during the Biennial of De Mains de Maîtres in 2023, and might be followed by an invitation of Luxembourgish art craftsmen in Portugal.
As part of its mission to disseminate and promote the Luxembourg scene, Kultur | lx is taking over a music:LX project by joining forces with the CCRD opderschmelz for the Like a Jazz Machine festival, which will take place from 12 to 15 May.
The two structures have indeed worked on inviting a delegation of professionals from the international jazz scene to give them the opportunity to discover the projects of Luxembourg’s artists performing at the festival.
This year, it will be possible to discover the end-of-residency concert of the Pit Dahm – Michel Reis 4tet featuring Zack Lober and Ben van Gelder (NL). Maxime Bender will also present the new album of his project Universal Sky. The Minor Majors quintet, consisting of saxophonists Paul Fox and Jitz Jeitz, trumpeter Georges Soyka, pianist Arthur Possing and bassist Laurent Peckels, will be playing their album release concert at the festival and will be presenting their musical vision based on joy, groove and energy. Finally, bassist Stefano Agostini will show his project Point Cloud Echo, featuring Pol Belardi, Pit Dahm and others, for which he has developed new compositions. This new music develops around a series of experiments that form delicate sheets of vibrant sound within the sonic realm of new music, avant-garde jazz, pop culture and algorithmic processes.
See you from May 12th to 15th to discover, among other things, these Luxembourgish projects.
To check the full line-up of Like a Jazz Machine, click here.
On 3 March 2022, Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg invited the Visual arts sector for a convivial moment of exchange at the Konschthal in Esch-sur-Alzette. This sectoral meeting was an opportunity to review the various support offered by Kultur | lx, as well as to present the actions planned for 2022. The event ended with a visit of the exhibition Instant Comedy by Filip Markiewicz (presented until 22 May 2022).
More than 35 professionals gathered in the Konschthal to discover or rediscover the support offered by Kultur | lx to the Visual arts sector.
Kultur | lx offered support to encourage mobility (mobility aid for career development; tour support; support for participation in fairs) and increase renown (Luxembourg Focus programme; promotion support) of Luxembourgish creation.
In order to raise awareness of an artist’s work within the sector and among the public, and to foster knowledge of different artistic practices, Kultur | lx supports the production of an artistic portfolio with the porfolio grant.
Finally, four residency programmes are open to Luxembourgish artists in partnership with Kultur | lx, two are exclusively dedicated to the Visual arts sector:
– Research and creation residency for Visual artists at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin;
– Research and creation residency at the Darling Foundry in Montreal, Canada;
And two multidisciplinary residencies, open to artists from all sectors:
– Multidisciplinary research and creation residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris;
– Research and creative residency for architects, architectural researchers, illustrators and authors at Academia Belgica in Rome.
These support will also be reinforced by actions. In the first half of 2022, Kultur | lx will set up operations to strengthen the sector’s skills and its international connections.
On 6 April 2022, a workshop will be offered to visual artists, design and craft professionals entitled: Present your approach to the international art professionals.
In addition, on an international level, scouting visits will be organised during major international events in order to discover a part of the international scene. Curated studio visits will be set up in Luxembourg to create new opportunities and connexion for the Luxembourg Visual arts scene.
The networking event that followed the presentations highlighted the needs of the sector and reinforced Kultur | lx in its role of supporting the career development of professional artists.
During the “Theatertage Rheinland Pfalz 2022”, the international meeting “Crossing Borders” was organised on the initiative of the Staatstheater Mainz with the support of the Institut Français, the Flanders Arts Institute and Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg.
This two-days event was organised in order to allow 50 professionals, artists, independent collectives and production companies from the Grande Region, which includes Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Greater East, to get to know each other, to exchange ideas and to develop cross-border synergies.
During the first day, the participants have been invited to discuss the new modalities of cross-border work in the era of covid, to discover the financial support for culture existing in Rhineland-Palatinate, to be informed about the administrative procedures necessary for the creation and dissemination of foreign artists in Germany and finally to learn from an example of cross-border cooperation with the NEXT festival.
The second day was an opportunity for 8 Luxembourgish artists to present their projects for which they are looking for distribution or partners, to a group of professionals and programmers from Germany, Belgium, France and Luxembourg: Ian de Toffoli / Projet des Théâtres de la Ville; Saeed Hani / Hani Dance; Anne-Mareike Hess / Utopic Productions; Hannah Ma / The People United; Pascale Noé Adam / Bombyx; Tammy Reichling /Maskenada; Anne Simon / Volleksbühne; Dagmar Weitze / Kopla Bunz
Tiamat by Ian de Toffoli – translate in German – has been read by Luc Schiltz on 14 March to replace AppHuman by Ian de Toffoli, directed by Sophie Langevin, which was unfortunately cancelled due to Covid.
Finally, as part of the Theatertage, author Elise Schmitz joined a week-long writing workshop led by Chris Thorpe, bringing together authors from the Grande Region to discuss their work and address the issues of writing for the stage in a multilingual context, thus opening up the borders to contemporary dramaturgies.
In the frame of the Theatertage Rheinland-Pfalz, the Staatstheater Mainz organises, with the support of Kultur | lx – Arts Council Luxembourg, an exchange platform between performing arts professionals from Belgium, France, Germany and Luxembourg under the title Crossing Borders.
For two days during the festival, on 14 and 15 March 2022, various forums for exchange will be offered, which will deal with general questions and problems of cross-border work, including funding opportunities and information to help international mobility. 20 participants from Luxembourg will be offered a space to discuss touring opportunities in other countries and to look for co-production partners.
The festival will also honour Luxembourgish creation by programming AppHuman by Sophie Langevin and Ian de Tofolli on 14 March.
Elise Schmit is one of the six selected writers from Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Canada and Ireland participating in the Playwrights’ Workshop, led by renowned theatre-maker Chris Thorpe. This workshop offers them the opportunity to meet and talk with authors about their work and writing. The workshop will conclude with a public presentation to meet the participants and get an insight into their work.
As a preliminary, and in order to prepare performing arts professionals for these meetings, Kultur | lx initiates a new series of webinars mapping the German performing arts market.
Two webinars will introduce the specificities of the German theatre and dance markets offering an overview of the main venues, festivals and networks, the systems of production and distribution, the current aesthetic trends. They will also be a space to get advice on how to enter the market as a foreigner and ask questions.