Lieven De Cauter delved into the background, whilst taking a critical look at how things are progressing.

The Brussels 2000 project was started up in 1995, as part of the Regional Development Plan (GeWOP). The fact that the plan paid little attention to the cultural dimension was compensated by Brussels’ nomination as European cultural capital. From the start, the selected theme was ‘The City’. The preparatory stage or ‘pre-project’, led by Bernard Foccroulle, the director of the Munt Theatre, got going in June 1996. In September 1997, after a year of numerous work groups, tentative negotiations, sketches for projects, a round of sector-by-sector enquiries, large-scale dialogue with those involved, and so on, the team emerged with a report resolutely opting for the city, not for the short-lived festival. ‘Not the product, but the process’ was the underlying philosophy. According to the report, Brussels 2000 would be ‘a long-term investment in people, culture and financial resources, rather than a year of pomp and circumstance and pure amusement.’
The basic idea is that there has to be some benefit for Brussels if the project is backed by the city’s cultural practitioners and inhabitants. You can’t force a project on people, it has to grow in a dialogue with all manner of groups in the Brussels community, so-called guest workers included. Dialogue and bridge-building across the many boundaries between languages and cultures traversing the city became the thrust of the project. ‘In addition, the entire population of Brussels and the thousands of commuters have to be motivated. After all, they must be involved in a project which concerns all those living and working in the city.’ This is less naive and rhetorical than it sounds, and is explained elsewhere in the report: ‘In reality, Brussels is image-deficient at four levels: for the inhabitants, in Belgium as a whole, in Europe, and at a tourist level – which also explains its scant public appeal’. The project is intended to do something about that negative (self-)image.
The stakes are high. The report suggests ‘that a cultural city project can act as a high-powered dynamo’. Apart from culture, there were to be considerable boosts in the material, economic and touristic sense. But, ultimately, it remains a cultural project. In that respect the premise is ambitious, idealistic, based as it is on an absolute faith in the artist’s emancipatory powers. The focus will be on youth, guest workers, upgrading of public space by means of street furniture, architecture, art. In concrete terms, the plans include ‘introducing schools to art in all its forms’, a centre for urbanism and a centre for world cultures (intended to heighten the prominence and accessibility of immigrant cultures for the Belgians themselves). The project hopes to build bridges, confront one type of art with another and with the city – for example, ask choreographers to design city squares. It is possibly all a little over-optimistic and idealistic, but the report is brimming with good intentions and the projects it gives as examples seem promising.
With this report, Brussels 2000 has opted for the ethos of the urbanite: a hedonistic commitment to urbanity, density, pluriformity. It all depends whether the critical mass of this species of new urbanite is great enough to give the city as we know it a chance in the new millennium (a clutch of metropolis-crazy bohemians is hardly up to this task, which is why artists won’t save the city and neither will art festivals.)
This report rounded off the pre-project, whereupon the ‘real’ team was lined up. Its manager was Robert Palmer, the man who is said to have made a success of Glasgow ’90, a project that did much to help revitalize that city. Four directors were appointed to assist him: an artistic director, a socio-cultural director, one for finances and one for communications. And then everything went quiet. Between September 97 and April 98 the project was shrouded in mist. Internal pressures paralysed it for eight long months. Of course, a few projects were being prepared, but nothing was approved officially. There was no clarity, but plenty of parallel diplomacy and evasive measures. The cultural practitioners became impatient and in March several people published an open letter to Bernard Foccroulle, in both a Flemish- and a French-language newspaper (De Morgen and Le Soir). They expressed their concern about the ending of the dialogue, and feared that the city project would be abandoned. They invited Brussels 2000 to resume the dialogue. On 24 March Bernard Foccroulle replied in the same newspapers. He wrote in no uncertain terms that if Brussels 2000 continued muddling along as it was, ‘it was heading for a catastrophe’. His open letter rudely shook the political world awake. The burgomaster promptly asked him to resign. Exit Foccroulle. Consternation among all those with any sense of involvement in the project. A protest petition followed, the only effect of which was to convey to political circles that large numbers of practitioners backed the fundamental choices of the pre-project (known in some quarters as the Foccroulle-Palmer-Minne line). Meanwhile the executive committee had asked Palmer to take over from Foccroulle as chairman. He demanded greater autonomy vis-à-vis the political faction, and was granted it, on paper at least. In the following weeks a drawn-out conflict with the artistic director came to a head, and the Board was dismissed collectively. So Palmer had to manage without directors. Project managers, advisers and a ‘council of five’ have been considered as an alternative. Palmer has now to come up with a new structure and a new team himself, possibly with some of the former members – you can’t start again from scratch at this stage.
Friction and problems are not uncommon in projects like this, Robert Palmer assured us when he addressed the worried parties on 4 April, listing countless examples of such difficulties. Thessaloniki got through four managers and Madrid ended up with a pair of projects operating in parallel. Behind the scenes, they are saying that the recent clearing up counts as a battle won but that the problems are by no means solved yet. Nevertheless every effort is being made to finalize some of the projects quickly. Let’s hope the city project really will take off. Perhaps it isn’t too late. Mr. Palmer, go for it!
It remains to be seen whether Brussels 2000, with its patchwork of injections, infusions, impulses and its revamped image, will succeed, as a ‘high-powered dynamo’, in saving the city, or transform it once and for all into a touristic theme park. Looked at this way, the whole idea of cultural capitals is problematic in the extreme. Our ‘society of spectacle’ – which is so all-pervasive that the term sounds like a jaded taulogy – has now taken possession of the cities. This is city-marketing in the era of transcendental tourism, mass restyling of the city into a cultural theme park. It is not inconceivable that cultural tourism will ravage the old weary metropolis like a Biblical plague of locusts.
One thing is clear: there’s no point, absolutely no point in holding an ordinary festival. It would merely be a cracker amidst the major fireworks that will be lighting the skies from London to Paris, from Rome to New York. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to go into hiding in 2000. I really and truly believe that in that year the world will succumb to a flood of cultural fireworks.