For the very first time, for ICAF 2023, we will be hosting a Festival Resident. The idea behind our Festival Resident programme came from a larger discussion around how to programme and present organisations who have a broad, and wide-ranging practice that cannot be explored in a single workshop or performance. As such, we decided that moving forward, for each ICAF festival we will now select an organisation and/or artist with a diverse range of projects and an expanded community arts practice that merits an array of programmed moments throughout the festival weekend to truly showcase their work and impact.
We are proud to present, in line with this Edition’s theme of “The Sound of Change” MetX as the first ICAF Festival Resident.
Brussels-based MetX is a production house made for and by musicians. In close collaboration with artists coming from the different horizons, they create original repertoires and music bands. Their mission is twofold: firstly, they produce and promote groups like Mâäk, BRUiTAL, Remork & Karkaba or Fanfakids, which each present an idiosyncratic and context-led music practice. Secondly, they share the repertoires and knowledge of the musicians for others to build on it through workshops and participatory performances.
Their acoustic universe integrates elements from both the Western jazz and improvisation culture as well as from Urban Ethno, traditional music sustained by the different cultures you can find easily in a metropole like Brussels. Once merged with mutual respect by our musicians, this artistic material can evolve into a completely new musical culture. Sometimes loud, sometimes soft, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly. Never smooth. Always exciting.
For ICAF 2023, MetX will present an array of programme items including a workshop, a city-based intervention and performance, a main stage performance, and a family-day spectacle, each of which will focus on a different area of their wide-ranging, musical methodology.