On the 21st of December 2021, we celebrated the winter solstice with a festive walk punctuated by surprises that linked La Bellone to Marché des Abattoirs.

« During the darkest days of the year when the coldest wind is sneaking through your clothing and the humidity is conquering territory until it reaches your bones, and the grey rain is invading your gloves…
During those days the city normally builds up to a spectacular light show, that together with glühwein and strange sausages creates an alienating epicenter of togetherness.
What also appears is an immense shadowland where already forgotten streets seem to disappear into depressive darkness.
In that shadowland we will float sublimely and silent. And leave undefined traces up to each of you to decodify.»

The winter solstice marks a major turning point: the longest night of the year. Literally and figuratively, the winter solstice exalts the triumph of light over darkness, the hope of a better year and better times; it’s the return of the victorious Sun. Let's start the countdown to this transition together.

A gesture of pure enchantment that is both funny and phantasmagorical, a humble and absurd performance that conveys good mood and empathy.
This winter, Micha Goldberg offers you a gift: light and hospitality, the great invariants of the last festivities of the season, be they religious or pagan.

This Mobile Light Poem is a festive surprise for Brussels’ inhabitants, passers-by, children, young and old. It is also a caress and a provocation, a poetic diversion from a period of materialistic overconsumption. It is an artful intervention in the city, one that plays with the urban environment and recreates mysticism.

Despite the difficulties of the present times, a shared memory and a secret hope become a public message: poetry and humour will win.

To know more → go and read Anna Czapski's text on the subject in the dossier Cifas-Arts vivants dans l'espace public in Alternatives Théâtrales number 148

Rendez-vous

We met at the start of the light flotilla, which set off in a new direction each day to shine in the 19 municipalities of Brussels.

The meeting was given just before the departure of the scooters, at 4.45 pm in front of La Bellone to share a hot apple juice, in order to form a guard of honour for the departure of the scooter drivers. The scooters took with them a GPS tracker that allowed us to follow them every evening to find out their route and eventually find them.

On Tuesday 21 December, we organised a festive walk punctuated with surprises, to reach the Abattoirs market and warm up with a meal cooked by Cultureghem. The walk was punctuated with various poetic surprises, curated by Micha Goldberg: poems written and read by poet and slammer Joëlle Sambi (BE/CG), a sweet football juggling show by Cultureghem volunteer Hamza (BE/MA), bengal fires creating poetic confusion near the canal with Micha Goldberg himself, a hilarious dance in traffic by Sophie Melis (FR/BE), rap by Dada (Cultureghem). On arrival at Les Abattoirs, we devised an evening in partnership with Cultureghem, under Les Halles, where Micha did his final poem Vincent Kompany and where we invited DJ Sahra (Antwerp) for a festive dance party. This evening combined the public that had followed us from the Bellone with the public formed by the volunteers of Cultureghem, thus allowing a meeting of different backgrounds and a mix of worlds.

Credits

Design: Micha Goldberg
Luminous flotilla: Mohamed Amine Benâzzou, Gabriel Camtigi, Mustapha Chafi, Daniel Dashi, Aïcha Nedzmie Haskoli, Melissa Haskoli, Aïmane Karroua, Chahinaz Karroua, Kato Van Hoof.
With Joëlle Sambi, Hamza, Sophie Melis, Dada, DJ Sahra and other poetic surprises.
Costumes: Frederik Willems
Production: Cifas
Partnership: Cultureghem
Support from the City of Brussels and the Municipality of Anderlecht
Thank you to all the communes of Brussels-Capital, to La Bellone, to Kunstenfestivaldesarts, to all the enchanted eyes and to all the elves that make up the city.

Photos: Matias Mattéo & Bea Borgers