New Year's Appeal to the Authorities
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picture: rubble from empty houses in Doel |
2009… May Art Save the Village of Doel?
The economy is sagging. Congested roads impair mobility. Smog is in the air. The world economy is about to reach its ecological limits. Excessive consumerism is exhausting the planet. The economic growth model generates material prosperity but reduces personal wellbeing.
More materialism, less wellbeing. The number of people who question this lifestyle is rising. Many of them become depressed, try to escape or drop out. Is this the way we want to go on?
Dan Pink, the visionary speechwriter of Al Gore, the former US vice president and maker of the award-winning film An Unconvenient Truth, wrote in his bestseller A whole New Mind that the era of technicians and statisticians is over and that the 21st century will be marked by six new aptitudes: empathy, inventiveness, game, design, symphony and meaning.
Why must a historically valuable village like Doel be demolished now that the economic context has changed, the growth model is increasingly being questioned and mentalities are changing?
Why can our political leaders not review their narrow economic approach and open their minds to imaginative solutions that will benefit society as a whole?
The port is currently sponsoring prestigious cultural projects in Antwerp (the Philharmonic Orchestra, the Singel concert and theatre hall, the new Museum at the Stream), because culture is to bring the port closer to the people. KunstDoel welcomes this rapprochement. Yet, right in the heart of the port is a village with a long history, culture and tradition that is slowly being suffocated… A village with a heart that is still throbbing and a population that would love to stay. A village that is visited by numerous one-day tourists in the summer. A village with a tremendous aesthetic power that could become a tourist mega-success if only the authorities were willing to have a visionary mind and make a relatively small infrastructural investment. A village in and for the port and the city, not against. A village allowing the port authority to show its genuine concern for society and culture in an authentic, warm-hearted way.
Municipal authorities of Beveren,
Port Authority and City of Antwerp,
Flemish Government,
The old village is no more and will never come back, but art and culture could give Doel a new destiny and future. There is no doubt about that,
But:
MAY ART SAVE DOEL?
This is the urgent New Year's appeal that KunstDoel is directing to you because the village's fate is in your hands.
With us, many people from Antwerp and Flanders are hopefully waiting for your reply….
eva van tulden
For KunstDoel