Arts Nomades and Odyssée Karavana

 Born in 2003, Arts Nomades is a nomadic Belgian theatre and plastic arts company which offers original creations and builds customized projects on the national and international scenes.

Plovdiv 2019 and the convergence towards the CITI gathering seem to be an ideal trigger to provide our « poetic and anthropological » collection work with more visibility.

Rebinding, a real added value in terms of quality

The goal of the project is to provide “rebinding” and not simply to connect both territories through Odyssey Karavana  would help develop the notion of rebinding as a way of “sharing accepted solitude and exchanging on tolerated differences” (Edgar Morin). Providing a link and being a link through performances, artistic collections, sound performances networking, plastic artwork and moments of renditions in Plovdiv.

Y a de la Joie!

New play 2018/2019

Arts Nomades, specialized in artistic collection and in establishing a social bond

For several years, Arts Nomades has been developing multi-technical artistic collection projects. We navigate between patrimonial collections in the form of videos and photographs, electroacoustics and note-taking in sketchbooks. From embocallement of thought (encompassing thought into jars) to blogging, from artisanal collage to pictorial alterations. We cross and uncross, we wander between past and future. Doing away with borders of any kind is the mission Odyssey Karavana might undertake though its physical and artistic itinerary.

*Embocallement: an Arts Nomades specialty, which consists of artistically encompassing a collected thought, story of childhood foolishness, anecdote or story into a jar

Becoming complicit: our collections very logically lead us and the public to become equal partners. In this dynamic, we no longer consider them to be an audience, but rather a population. During each of our installations, we introduce ourselves as new neighbours that you get to know. This relationship entails that the audience must become complicit and provide an effort, which we want to maintain in Odyssey Karavana.

We have been to Quebec, Luxemburg, the Czech Republic, Russia, France, Germany, Morocco… Each time, we involved and trained local artists to become our partners on location.

The audience or audiences concept is constantly evolving

Terminology is evolving hand in hand with perspectives. We went from the concept of an audience to that of “audiences” or “non audiences” to finally reach the concept we want to put forward in Arts Nomades’ work: “population”. Indeed, for more than three years, Arts Nomades has been facing this new relationship with the audience and, at the intersection of our practice of plastic arts, theatre and electroacoustics, we position ourselves as memory collectors and transmitters through our performances. What we take, we give back. 

The European, cross-border aspect is at the heart of our project

Arts Nomades moves beyond borders of any kind, as we already mentioned. There is no division between artistic disciplines, borders and social level. Arts Nomades is willful but also experienced. We are not launching ourselves on this itinerary without any expertise.

We know the road and have imagined anchorage points to settle and “give back”. There are many possibilities in Belgium, France and Germany, but we also know the Czech Republic, where we already “infused” several times through encounters during the Mir Caravan. Cross-border contacts are our daily bread, they are our very creation and though process. Our cross-border artistic collections will take several forms: anthropological, creative and poetic.

Collecting testimonies, collecting dreams, collecting stories of childhood foolishness

« Loin que ce soit l’être qui illustre la relation, c’est la relation qui illumine l’être ».*

Social and territory infusion

To infuse: transitive verb (from Latin infundere, pouring into). Literally to communicate to someone; to instill or inculcate. In this logic of infusion, we will travel through lands by creating an agreement with the locations and the people we meet. The social dimension is included in the infusion concept because it can only occur through encounters.

Faithful to the nomadic spirit, many disciplines  are used. Like a Kaleidoscope. 

Electroacoustic sound and music, plastic arts, intimate theatre, object theatre, theatre, videos, photographs and writing.