The art collective HeHe dropped a massive high-voltage electricity pylon into the canal at Oud Sint-Jan (Old St John's). A crackling, flashing sculpture, that tackled various metropolitan issues such as noise, light pollution and unsustainable energy use.
A Place Beyond Belief was originally created for New York after 9/11 and refers to the need for the city to reinvent itself. The new work, Palace, consists of five radiant words that could be interpreted as a motto for Bruges.
This experimental housing concept integrates the social class pyramid into one single building. Tenants who live off state support are housed free of charge on the ground floor and above them increasingly better-off social classes are placed, each time paying the rent of the class below them. It provides opportunities for social integration and upward mobility.
[O+A] opened our ears to the peacefulness and beauty of Bruges. They decoded the city's acoustics and offered a new, sensual approach to designing the city of the future as a creative space.
Rainer Ganahl's installation on the Burg is a chocolate sculpture with the words 'UBER CAPITALISM' rotating above it. The growing ambivalence towards the seductive new face of capitalism in our time is at the heart here.
An artificial storm ravaged a floating Gothic crow-stepped gable house, disrupting the picturesque image of Bruges. Romy Achituv denounces the strict regulations related to heritage conservation, which prevent evolution and future dynamics.
Above a monumental bonsai sculpture, made from recycled windows, 'Wu Wei' can be read : a concept of Taoism that means 'doing by not doing'. Song Dong plays with the tension between the unstoppable growth of megapolises and the treatment of heritage and nature.
Studio Mumbai designed a bridge house that unites different potential functions: you can live, eat, sleep and hide from the prying eyes of passers by. But the one thing that you can't do is to cross over the water.
The Bruges Beguinage is a place that exudes peace and tranquility. In the courtyard, surrounded by ancient houses and the church, Tadashi Kawamata installed a dozen tree houses. As guardians, they watch over the Beguinage and all who pass there.
In the Poortersloge, where centuries ago an international group of bankers and merchants would meet, the video installation MASQUERADE functioned as an AHI- or ART HOUSE INDEX publicity film. Vermeir & Heiremans transformed their house-as-artwork into a financial instrument.