From Martijn van Dalen:

Dear Artfriends

Friday from 19:00 till 20:00 my mobile sauna will be participating in this huge trafficjam in the rue de flandre in downtown brussels.. It’s a vision of the future, where cars loose their purpose of transport and become our homes and bussinesses in a never ending trafficjam!! u all are welcome to come and have a sauna-session while driving slowly through Brussels.

Greets,

Martijn van Dalen

Websites here and here.

POSTCARD / PERFORMANCE n°7
The City Center

Friday 27 May 2011
19h00 – 20h00
Rue de Flandre
1000 Brussels

More info after the break:

Congestion as a living utopia
“The seventh chapter of Postcards from the Future is dedicated to the city-centre of Brussels and to one of its predominant populations, the car drivers and their vehicles. On 27 May between 19pm and 20pm, a giant traffic jam will block the Rue de Flandre completely. This congestion is staged with the participation of a sixty-fold cars and their drivers, inhabitants and shop owners of the street and half a dozen key institutions of Brussels’ mobility sector.”

“Realized in the framework of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts 011, this performance is a life size enactment of a science-fiction scenario inspired by a short story of the Argentinean writer Julio Cortazar (“L’Autoroute de Sud”, 1966), as well as by extreme traffic congestion scenes as they can be witnessed in certain large African cities, or more recently in China, where car drivers remain at times until several weeks stuck in their vehicles.”

“We imagine a future Brussels in which the density of vehicles has not ceased to increase and reaches its ultimate apex: the last car has been added to the traffic and the whole road network comes to a definitive halt, without any hope of turning back. In such a situation, how would the motorists react? How would the pedestrians react, the inhabitants, the shop owners react? What would we do with the useless cars which have lost their primary function as means of human mobility? Is a harmonious co-habitation with the traffic jam possible?”

“On 27 May, during one hour, the inhabitants, the users and businesses of the Rue de Flandre, joined by a long row of voluntary car drivers as well as by the festival’s audience will attempt the impossible: to make use of the traffic congestion as an unique opportunity for a re-invention of the city life, instead of considering it a pure calamity and to remain its passive victims.”