CON-FRONT was brought to fruition by a young international group of exhibitors, an artistic creation where past and present perfectly click into one another. CON-FRONT unites Western Europe with the Balkans. The shared European narrative of World War I is interpreted in a contemporary audio-visual manner. World War I raged over the entire European continent. We find the same hilly landscapes everywhere along the front line, all of them populated by people and their stories.
War has existed since time immemorial. History repeats itself, which often leads to sad and strangely coincidental situations. CON-FRONT uses music and images to tell the universal and international narrative of citizens who are affected by conflict and are therefore forced to leave their home country. During their residence, eight artists were inspired not only by the stories of the war front that cut through Europe from East to West more than 100 years ago, but also by WW2, the Balkan Wars and the current refugee crisis that is still troubling Europe.
Under the guidance of the Belgian Mathijs Bertal (Ansatz der Maschine), eight young Belgian, French, Slovenian and North Macedonian pop and rock musicians and visual artists created a composition in which music and images are inextricably linked. The various emotions accompanying a flight from conflict are explored in ten movements. Historical material literally infiltrates the creation. CON-FRONT subtly interweaves field recordings, archive material, animation and video into one magnificent unit, the music of which may be labelled as post-rock, electronic, neo-classical and film.
CON-FRONT is both cross-border and ground-breaking. Break lines fade away, genres melt, individual stories from both the past and the present crystallise into one painful universal reality. History continues to churn relentlessly, what seems to have disappeared forever may once again become a burning current issue.
The presentation is preceded by a screening Chiara Caterina’s documentary that portrays the creation trajectory.
CON-FRONT is a co-production by Muziekclub 4AD (Belgium), Le Grand Mix (France), Walk of Peace Foundation (Slovenia) and MKC (North Macedonia)
Supported by Creative Europe and Le Fresnoy
Total project duration: 1 May 2018 through 30 April 2020
More about the project: www.con-front.eu
