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Artistic vision

The city of Tilburg isn't big or beautiful, but it is vibrant. If you want to, you can quite easily start your own event/initiative. It is also a relatively young city, in search of its culture and identity. In 2005 Incubate started spontaneously. Maybe there was the need for a festival that focuses on the identity of the town: experimental, in development and bottom-up. It was a combination of vision, guts and good luck. Now it's a multiple award-winning event (amongst others 'Tilburg Trakteert' and the Think Ahead Award).

With a passion for the unknown the festival serves as a creative hub in Dutch province. Characteristic for a cultural network organization like Incubate, is that also collaboration with and between local education, volunteers, start-ups and the business sector emerges from this network.

Incubate is driven by artistic development. It's not about trends, prestige or the next big thing. Artistic development is the backbone of Incubate. It is an artist-run festival on Independent Culture. Artists might be in different stages of artistic development, but all have a specific impact on Independent Culture. It could be as inspiration, could be as a conceptual initiator. We try to push the limits of the performing and visual arts.

Incubate is aware of the difficulties and traps, we don’t want to become an entertainment only festival nor do we want to become one of those highbrow art festivals with a lot of chin rubbing and no fun. It's a delicate balance. We always keep in mind the working ethics of the artist and the artistic criteria of the festival. With different and explicit themes and projects we try to reflect on what's happening in contemporary culture. These themes also work as a visitors guide in an affluent program.

Ethics
Incubate is a festival on Independent Culture. We don't call it underground because that term has a negative ring to it. We don't consider ourselves a counter-culture festival. Independent Culture is a positive force in the research and development of contemporary culture within our society. Independent Culture is an artistic and economic working attitude that runs through different disciplines, genres and styles. It's a construct that tries to define rapidly moving scenes, but it also helps to define the ethics connected to it. According to scientific research (by T. Heesterbeek, University of Maastricht, 2002) that attitude can be defined by the slightly three muskateer-esque values freedom, equality and brotherhood;

- Freedom is the autonomous attitude of the artist towards work and expression.
- There's equality among artists and between artists and audience.
- Brotherhood is seen in the fact that artists create their own network. They release music on each other’s labels, perform at each other’s functions, design artwork, master recordings for each other. Together they are building a social network in which the social capital is as important as the economic capital. Some would call this DIY or Do It Yourself.

Criteria
By resisting obvious programme and modes of production and distribution wherever possible, Incubate triggers a wide set of emotions, thoughts and conversations. In selecting which artists, themes and projects are interesting for Incubate , we think about the following criteria:

- Is the artist's work attuned to their particular time and place, to the extent that this affects the work that they make and the way that they make the work?
- Is the artist investigating, testing and practicing artistic risks in the interests of creating work that is authentic to the present?
- Is the artist relying on established ideas and forms only to the extent that they are pertinent to this task?
- Does the artist have a wider awareness of current and past developments in their discipline in particular, and in culture and society more generally?
- Incubate never books an artist twice. But sometimes an artist changes position in his or her artistic work field, and can for example become a guest curator or a participant in a special production attuned to their development.

Artistic board
Development is one of the key concepts in Independent Culture. Incubate is a part of this discourse. The choices we make come about through discussion. The artistic board provides the artistic director with input on projects and input on the long-term artistic plans.

The board consists of people with knowledge on different fields of artistic development. They are: Sascha Roth (artistic leader of WORM, Rotterdam), Sjak van Bussel (Antenne Record shop, Thu20, Trigga), Ad van Rosmalen (coordinator at Avans - St. Joost Art Academies), Steffan de Turck (musician, Dim Records, Vatican Analog), Sonja Augart (Fragmenta, choreographer and performance artist) and Koen Delaere (visual artist, Whatspace). Next to the general artistic board, there are specific groups that advise on individual projects. They are selected according to the topic and discipline of the project.

Evaluation
It is unlikely that all critics will like all of the works Incubate presents, but to some degree that is precisely the point of our practice: to challenge, provoke and assault conceptions. Incubate monitors its impact by means of feedback from the community via artist and visitor surveys, social media and the feedback of the artistic board. By using media partners Incubate also gets a lot of guaranteed critical feedback. This helps us to develop a rewarding place for artists, audiences and partners.

Je_Suis_Barry	Latest page update: made by Je_Suis_Barry , Dec 29 2010, 2:28 AM EST (about this update About This Update Rename - Je_Suis_Barry No content added or deleted. - complete history)
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