This Book is Great

Thanks to everyone who has pledged money to make THIS BOOK IS GREAT!

We’ve got one final offer in the closing hours of the campaign.

Have you heard of Belluard Festival’s LAST MINUTE ticket deals? Every day between 3pm and 4pm there are a limited number of tickets that you can snap up from just CHF 5.- for a show the same evening.

So, in the spirit of the festival, you can now enjoy Sally De Kunst’s famous PEPPERED STEAK with friends!

That’s right, for CHF 750.- YOU AND 3 friends will be wined and dined by Sally, Martin and François.

And for CHF 1000.- the FOUR OF YOU will also receive a signed copy of the recipe along with your dinner.

This is a very limited offer – there is only ONE chance to pledge at each amount.

So what are you waiting for?

Just 2 days to go and just CHF 40.- left to raise. LET’S MAKE THIS!

One last donation of CHF 50.- will take us to our target and get you a kiss from both Martin Schick and François Gremaud – at the same time!

Your support has been incredible so far, one last push.

Belgium artist GOSIE VERVLOESSEM is one third of the DOMESTIC SCIENCE CLUB trio commissioned by Belluard to create BIG FAT FAILED BEGINNINGS.

Armed with home, garden and kitchen materials they will cook up meteor collisions in a microwave oven, volcanoes of baking powder and vinegar, tsunamis based on the power of yeast, plasma squeezed out of grapes with the help of a sewing machine.

Every day during the festival from 15h – 22h, with workshops each day at various times.

After an incredible day yesterday we are now only CHF 100. away from our target of CHF 5’000.

We are so close – please help us reach our target today!

Swiss photographer and performance artist CHANTAL MICHEL from Thun performed at the Belluard Festival in 2002.

«Perched astride an eighteenth-century chest in a sumptuous room or limbs flailing inside a piece of industrial machinery, Michel both transforms her bizarre surroundings with her presence and, like a casually placed vase or forgotten handbag, becomes one with them. Always wearing gorgeous party clothes (the artist allegedly owns two thousand dresses and three hundred wigs), Michel is both a woman yearning to be the wild little girl with the run of the dress-up box and the good girl encouraged to be attractive yet not stand out too much from her environment.» (from LENSCRATCH)

4 days to go on our We Make It campaign and only CHF790 more to raise! Thank you so much for your support so far, one last push and together we can make THIS BOOK IS GREAT.

You can still take part in our project at an event in our Bookshop during the festival for CHF 120 or come to a BAD ACTING workshop for CHF 200.

And don’t forget the amazing PEPPERED STEAK ! One person supporting the project with CHF 750 will practically reach our target in one go – and get you an intimate and delectable dinner with François and Martin!

Musician JAKOB AMPE chose the Burt Bacharach Anthology as his book page. He’ll be performing in the Belluard with his brother Pieter on 4 July.

You can watch a video clip here:

10 days to go until the festival begins. We’re ready – are you?

We have entered the last week of our We Make It campaign to support the printing costs of Belluard Festival’s jubilee publication THIS BOOK IS GREAT.

KLAUS HERSCHE, pictured here, is one of the people who founded the Belluard Festival in 1983.

Since then, the festival has attracted local and international artists in the performing arts, always remaining dynamic, exciting and different.

THIS BOOK IS GREAT celebrates the 30 years of the festival using contributions from artists and collaborators who have participated over the decades.

We are only CHF 1’185 away from reaching our target and we need your help. If we don’t reach CHF 5’000 pledged then the projects receives nothing. So please spread the word and donate now.

Thank you. YOU ARE GREAT!

PASCALE GRAU is an artist and cultural theorist currently living in Basel.

She performed at Belluard Festival in 1990 with «Wie Eine Frau Has A Cow» by Gertrude Stein.

She says of here artistic practice:

«My works are intended to get under the skin, and I mean not just intellectually, but physically too. I would like to awaken emotions with the actions on and with my body and the use of my voice, but also the staging of images and atmospheres. Especially in the live performances I try to make my bodily presence in the room so powerful that nobody can evade it, and that a transfer to the public takes place.»

Her inspiration, Austrian artist BIRGIT JÜRGENSSEN (1949-2003), was one of the most outstanding feminist avant-garde artists in the world. Starting with the liberating potential of Surrealism, she developed a dialogue with her generation’s discourse of social critique, leading to the production of a multi-layered, stylistically multifaceted kind of art in the late 1960s. The female body and its metamorphoses were the focus of her work, which was predominately made up of drawing, painting, and photography.

Meet NICOLAS FIELD, a London born and Swiss bred sound artist.

Nicolas will be in residence throughout the length of the Belluard Festival 2013 as part of WATCH&TALK.

Watch&Talk is our special programme that gives 7 emerging international artists the chance to experience the festival in its entirety. Residents watch all of the productions, meet with the artists presenting work at the festival and build their skills of critical engagement and debate.

We asked Nicolas to send us a page from a book he thinks is great. He chose HERZOG by SAUL BELLOW.

Have you read it?

We now have 2 new ways to support our project.

For 85.-chf you receive a hug and a kiss from Martin and François, and a copy of the book.

And for 120.-chf you get to be a part of our anniversary celebration through an event at THIS BOOKSHOP IS GREAT during the festival. Plus you receive a copy of the book.

What are you waiting for?!

We’re nudging towards 3000.-chf and we’d love your help to get there today!

MARIA GUGGENBICHLER picked STUPIDITY by AVITAL RONNELL as her book of choice.

Maria will be performing at Belluard Festival for the first time this year, having been selected as one of the FUTURE NOSTALGIA commissions. Every year the festival selects a handful of new projects from hundreds of applications, bringing exciting new artists to the Belluard audience.

Maria’s project explores the theme of Future Nostalgia by re-imagining our relationship with time and revisiting lost ideas, forgotten knowledge and unrealised traditions.

∞ will run throughout the festival (28 June – 6 July). It will be a different event every day, with the programme announced on our facebook page, at the box office and around the festival.

You’ve probably been hearing BONAPARTE’S brilliant new single «Mañana Forever» all over the airwaves and at festivals across Europe.

Well, we’ve also been keeping an eye on Bonaparte since they played the closing concert of Belluard Festival 2008.

And we asked them to contribute a page to THIS BOOK IS GREAT.

Mr. Bonaparte’s choice: GRAPEFRUIT by YOKO ONO.

But if you want to see which page he chose and who else is involved, you’ll have to «Back this Project!»

Last week we announced our exciting programme for the 30th edition of the Belluard Festival.

We have a hell of a party lined up so block your diaries, book your train tickets and join us from 28 June to 6 July!

The Belluard Festival 2013 features:

• ONE city
• TWO ways to enjoy the delicious Kitchain food: Ready-Made and Do-It-Yourself
• a THREE day event bringing together international programmers and Swiss artists
• FOUR Swiss premieres
• FIVE projects selected for our «Future Nostalgia» call for proposals
• SIX free events
• SEVEN international artists on our Watch&Talk residency
• EIGHT evenings of DJs and cocktail shakers to keep you dancing into the early hours
• NINE new Belluard productions

All across TEN amazing days this summer.

Thank you for your support! We look forward to seeing you in Fribourg for Festival Belluard Bollwerk International. 28 June – 6 July

Thanks to some lovely supporters, we have already raised 670.-CHF for THIS BOOK IS GREAT.

BUT… We still need to raise another 4330.-CHF.

Please spread the word to friends, colleagues, fellow art lovers and carnivores.

And to wet your appetite, here is a photo of the delectable PEPPERED STEAK – food with attitude!