I have been posting photos on Facebook during my Incubate weekend at rates beyond both my usual pace and what the good taste dictates, so I felt that I need to provide a more complete account of the events from the past few days. People who are paid to look knowledgeable in social media trends told me that the best place to share a narrative is tumblr so there I was. Sadly enough it is not the right platform for me so I decided to explore WordPress copying this story as a first attempt to see how it works.
PreIncubate
Incubate is a seven day festival which started last Monday and ended on Sunday. The “annual celebration of cutting-edge culture” takes place in the southern Netherlands city of Tilburg and hosts about 200 artists giving a “diverse view on indie culture as a whole, including music, contemporary dance, film and visual arts”. A seven days festival is hardly doable if you do not happen to be one of the 200 artists or at least local. So my experience was limited to 24 hours – Saturday 9 p.m. / Sunday 9 p.m.
In order to calibrate my underground taste buds I decided to explore some of the available offerings in Brussels on Friday. A small research brought me to an Evangelista concert in Les Ateliers Claus. Les Atelier is located under a bridge which separates the red light district from a square hosting some Sheratons, Hiltons and Crown Plazas. Very conveniently, across the street free beer was available at an opening of a weird and uninspiring design exhibition. Shoes, scattered books, wooden wheelbarrows and a sea of VENDETTs. I do not drink beer but it looked like the right thing to do.
The group that we faced back at Les Atelies was an explosion of sound. Keiki – a fresh iteration of Sonic Youth meets Siouxie and The Banshees. The duo defined their style as ‘satanic pop’ appear on Cheap Satanism Records. The cute vocalist sold us a 10€ T-shirts with …well Satan. She was quite happy with my Siouxie comparison.
“I’ve listen a lot of Siouxie records in my youth. I am quite influenced I guess. But people rather compare me to PJ Harvey.”
I cried: “Ah-grrr this totally sucks!”
“I know” she said, handing the T-shirts.
Another round of high art and free beers. I try to convey my new-found excitement with Keiki to a group of young school teachers from Ghent, but they are unmoved. They’ve came for Evangelista. They like the music scene in Brussels. I ask about Antwerp’s and this infuriates them. Living in a foreign country, one needs to respect rivalries between cities. I am obviously still learning my ways around so I am pardoned, but the people from Antwerp are not.
Evangelista starts and although I can see myself loving the performance I am put off by the vocals of Carla Bozulich.
Tilburg
It was hard to leave Brussels. The beers from yesterday needed half a day to settle down. Another half day was killed in waiting for the waiters in a pretentious St Kathrine restaurant. Luckily Tilburg was quite close to Brussels at less than an hour and a half. As the web site of the festival has suggested the accommodation options were quite limited. We nevertheless managed to book an inexpensive hotel from the “fastest growing chain of hotel positioned next to highways in Netherlands”. Since the city was quite small it takes about 20 minutes to get from its edges to the center. The hotel promises good sleep and food and in facts delivers. A schnitzel.
The red drapes in the room and a small cut in the sheets make me imagine truckers and hookers poking the bed covers with high heeled red shoes. There are no trucks though and safe for the red drapes the place looks impeccable and quite decent. In regards to the hotels and service in general I distinguish between two type of countries. Netherlands falls in the value for money category. You will rarely be surprised in your expectations based on price. It feels solid. As Austria or Germany. Belgium is on the other side of the spectrum.
Yann Tiersen performing.
Of course we are late for the first concert. Of course it’s the most important in the whole festival. And of course we cannot find the right hall, because “this is not Yann Tiersen”. After half an hour of running around and not believing anyone that this is actually him I overhear a violin solo which is vaguely reminiscent of Yann Tiersen. It was him in the end but packaged in some tired, unimaginative indie. A pedagogical pathos have settled where simplicity and freshness used to reside.
Between the 013 concert hall and the only Gothic church in the city there is a streak of lively bars, restaurants and cafes. Most of them are hosting events from the festival. Seminars, discussions on music and capitalism and groups performing black metal, Kosmik rock and everything in between. After sampling several of the acts we go back to the 013. In front of the hall there is a cinema in the open. About 20 people sitting on yellow buckets are giggling at a cartoon bird, who cannot fly because of a giant erection.
A group whose name I did not remember playing Kosmik music on a guitar and some small bells. Really boooring.
Con-Dom (Control-Domination)
*Picture from internet.
This guy is scary. He was leaning between two microphone stands. On the screen somebody was flocking a naked behind. At some point there were horses riding in an infinite loop. Than the behind again. Power electronics was pouring over the heads of the 30 strong audience, mostly clad in Con-Dom torture T-shirts. He started screaming and hitting people from the audience. They were not shocked, or anything. At some point a lady with ugly face expression dressed in a dark green military raincoat jumped behind me and started making her way kicking and screaming through the crowd. She happened to also have a whip in her arm and she started flocking the poor Condom who was bending on the floor like a spring caterpillar. It was going on forever. It was horrifying because you can see scars appearing all over his body. On the other hand it was comical and awkward.
I needed fresh air.
Coming back to the same hall was like entering into another dimension. Green lasers, a dancing young crowd and two energetic local DJs playing Deephouse minimal tracks. Con-Dom, some bearded weirdos and an elderly lady with long pink hair were vividly discussing something in one corner. Their faces looked enlightened and not menacing anymore, their bodies much smaller. Than they sneaked out.
It was very dark to shoot during Con-Dom performance. Nevertheless this old Chinese movie has captured his wisdom.
Tour of the city
Sunday starts at 14:00 with a tour of Tilburg. The guide is a nice guy who loves his city and sort of managed making us love it too. It was not a hard task given his sense of humor and the fact that the group consisted mostly of local people and friends.
A map of the metro lines in Tilburg and a ventilation system. You can hear the trains leaving, peoples voices, rails squeaking. The network is more complex than the London’s tube. And fictional.
This statue guards another smaller gold-plated one, hidden between the two towers. Trying to steal it while drunk qualifies as one of the favorite local sports. It has only been stolen once, but those fallen after nearly reaching it are fondly remembered.
A figure from the Wilhelm II’s monument. The monument was moved from the one side of the central square to the other. They found a biography in the foundations but never published it. The guide believes that that was due to the strong homosexual content. According to him the city owns its fortunes to the king who spent most of his time here, away from his Russian wife indulging in sexual endeavors ignored by his family because of the low risk related to illegitimate heirs.
Currently the monument contains a 1994 laptop with a CD Rom with a ‘decent’ Wilhelm II’s bio.
The guide laments the development in the 60s and the demolishing of the city center. “They used not to have canalization and were packed by dozens in small houses, but had community spirits and beautiful streets.”
The small palace of Willem II was turned into a school where the young van Gogh studied drawing for two years, but was then expelled, because he lacked the discipline to follow the rigorous program.
Some of the inanimate objects from the time (including this skull) are still to be found there, alongside with a very modern drawing room where kids could draw with stilettos on touch screens. “It’s shocking. They instinctively know what to do. They seem born with computer knowledge. I on my part never use computers in my art” a museum guide tells us showing proudly a picture of his last work – a 9 by 2.5 drawing of an airplane composed of color blotches, that will be used in a theatrical performance produced by our very own guide.
We make a small pause for a beer and a chat. Of course the elections from the past week. What government will there be. A middle aged lady tells us that old people were struck hard by the crisis. A lot of them does not have pensions and rely on social support amounting to 800 Euro, 200 of which they have to hand back for some insurance. She is not happy also with the ideas to restrict the access to coffee-shops. “It was something we fought for in the 60s. They cannot take it back from us.”
The coffee-shops in Tilburg are open only to club members, but most people do not register as users, because they fear that the social services will withhold their money if they do. 90% of the clientele has just vanished since may when the new rules were enforced. “People are buying from the scooters,” she says, “they can deliver the stuff wherever you want and its even cheaper, because they have less running costs.”
Sadly we can not make it for the second part of the tour. Have to run for a U.V. Pøp concert.
U.V. Pøp Just in time for “No Songs Tomorrow”. This is one of my favorite dark wave bands from the early 80s. I was quite surprised and excited to see them in the program. They performed some of their best songs in a stunningly accurate manner – exactly as I remember them from the tapes that I was listening on auto-reverse as a teenager. I was totally overwhelmed until the moment when they started playing some new material. It sounded like a really old brit-pop. Had to leave before sadness takes me over.
Running to a Genesis P. Orridge movie.
There is something to see on every level of the festival. This penguin hails the visitors of the subterranean toilets in de NWE Vorst hall.
15 minutes late. Genesis is preaching dressed as a woman with Hitler mustache something about the limitations that society imposes on his image. Looks hilarious and everybody laughs. Than the laughs give way to genuine dismay. He meets Lady Jay and instead of creating a kid which will be a combination of their features decide to have series of plastic surgeries which will make them one and the same person. Then they are both blond and with tits. Then she dyes. He is sad and improvises with his violin with some other weirdo violinist over a big red mushroom in a room filled with soap bubbles.
There is still some sun in the de NWE Vorst garden. Instead of enjoying we decide to run to the other side of the city for a doom metal concert.
Starve. Just in the time for the last second of their last song. After this picture, they just went out of the basement on the street with their small following of black clad head bangers, and “no this was not a break. we are not performing again, because you were late”
Laibach
Not really big fan of Laibach. Have not enjoyed their concert in Sofia either. But some acts you should not miss because of historic significance. To my surprise I did enjoy it this time and for quite a strange reason. The first part of the concert was entirely visually and conceptually based on the Iron Sky movie. I was never sure if the movie worked for me, but now seeing it as a background of a Laibach concert it totally made sense. The styling, the kitchiness, the humor everything came together neatly.
Short pass by The Telescopes concert. These guys redefine shoegaze. They were not only looking at there shoes, but also playing with their backs facing the audience. The lead guitar was also in the middle of the ecstatic crowd staring his guitar and avoiding any eye contact.
Sadly enough this concludes Incubate for me. This one seventh of the festival makes me want more for next year.
In Person 