Canal Festival

Abstract

The river Leie is a commercial waterway that flows from Pas-de-Calais to Gent. Between the cities of Armentieres and Mennen, it defines the Belgium-French border. Seven islands along this 20 km-long section are the product of canalization, introduced in the 17th century. Over the following years, this waterway developed into an infrastructural artery by the construction locks chambers in order to overcome height differences. By the mid-20th century, however, the canal went into decline, prompted by the slow demise of the industrial activities in the region. More recently, this wider area has been redefined not through industry but political bureaucracy, with the dissolution of permanent border controls. Ironically, despite this erasure of boundaries, the line of the waterway and its canal infrastructure has remained rigid – a register of a former industry, but one without any form of public, or indeed human presence.
The idea of the public festival is as old as the public itself. In the context of the Eurometropolis, Belgium has a long-existing festival culture, from the historic Flemish kermis to its more than thirty annual festivals. Similarly, France has historically delivered policies of access to culture for the masses. However, over the last 20 years, the seasonal musical festival, sited in large and typically rural areas, has emerged as an increasingly prevalent type, pulling the festival away from public, urban space. This move out of the city is largely because of the size of the audiences–a mass and density of people that would collapse existing urban structures. Based in International Standards, this audience is housed in temporal structures, but the effect of lacking permanent infrastructure is a forfeiting of its public function and responsibility outside the bounds of the festival. Architects cannot design the feast, the concert of the festival, and actual inhabitation cannot be designed; however, permanent elements can define how inhabitation might take place, and this does definitively fit within the remit of architects.
Since the ephemeral nature of the contemporary music festival deprives the festival of any architecture quality, laying foundations is the first, significant step towards an architectural scenario in this de-industrialized region. A festival ground forms the extension of a canal lock, and can simultaneously be seen as larger systematic strategy for the reuse of an underused waterway infrastructure. The lock’s only occasional use mirrors the essentially cyclical nature of the festival. At
the same time, its permanent infrastructure offer the opportunity to improve the logistics of the festival, such as the transport and storage facilities. The waterway is not only a scenario that actively attracts and hosts spectators in search of experience, but is also an infrastructural framework for public inhabitation. The multi-cultural and de-industrialized river Leie offers a scenario to re-think the preconceived rigidity of the waterway infrastructure.