DOCU: international collective BRZ'NKO ŠTROÏ at Zinneke Parade

A first for this year's Zinneke Parade: we invited eight organizations from outside Brussels and Belgium to join us for an international Zinnode! Together with participants from Paris, Edinburgh, Prague, Roztoky, Rotterdam, Tilburg, Leuven, and La Louvière, we formed the BRZ’NKO ŠTROÏ collective. A colorful bunch of soundmakers from the four corners of Europe!

Oi Musica, Velvet Carnival, Masopust Parade, ICAF Rotterdam, EELT Collective, La Fabrique des Impossibles, MJ Indigo, and De Batterij. Spurred on by Jo Zanders and Vital Schraenen, this international cluster of socially engaged and creative organizations has merged to form BRZ’NKO ŠTROÏ. Colorfully masked and dancing joyfully, they combine drums, fuzzy gamelan-like instruments, trumpet blasts, all kinds of rattling objects, and other schmilblixs... Lost & found in translation, they celebrate their togetherness, despite waves of coronavirus, wars, crises, and Brexits.

This unique collective stems from a dynamic around the meaning of parades and artistic interventions in public spaces, which has been connecting artists from various European (capital) cities for several years. It began with an exchange in Edinburgh between Brussels jazz musicians and Oi Musica in February 2019. At the end of that same year, the participation of BRUiTAL (created during Zinneke 2018) in the Velvet Carnival once again triggered the artistic coordination of MetX: why not set up an international symposium on ‘community arts’ on the margins of the 20th Zinneke Parade? Plans were made, including with the organizers of ICAF 2020, but in the end, all these metropolitan events were canceled due to COVID-19. Ce n’était que partie remise…

We picked up where we left off in early 2023: First, MetX was a guest resident at ICAF Rotterdam in February. We facilitated workshops and presented projects such as Fanfakids (which originated from the 1st Zinneke Parade), Sheikhs Shikhats & B'net Chaabi, and BRUiTAL ft. DROM & New Moon during performances at Theater Zuidplein and in the surrounding streets. The setup of these projects and our general activities were subsequently documented in the thematic publication Sound of Change.

In June 2023, we expanded on this initiative. During the Brussels2030 Summer Academy, MetX and Zinneke brought their international networks together. With the support of Park Poétik and Kunstenpunt, we invited key figures from ICAF, Oi Musica, and Velvet Carnival, as well as La Fabrique des Impossibles (Paris), EELT (Tilburg), and Partôt Parata (Bologna) to an international exchange on participatory art forms in urban public spaces. This was the impetus for an International Parade Consortium, which gave rise to the concrete idea for an international Zinnode at the next Zinneke Parade.

Together with all the partners and designer Lisette Sivard, Jo and Vital then worked on the artistic content. From the end of 2023, the first international Zinnode, under the name BRZ'NKO ŠTROÏ, took further shape during five exchanges: in November at Velvet Carnival (Prague), in February at Masopust Parade (Roztoky), in March at MINI ICAF (Rotterdam), at the end of April at Rêvons Rue (Paris) and at the beginning of May, when several members of BRUiTAL traveled to Prague with the youth percussion group Mouv'2 Rue from La Louvière for a 10-day internship with the people behind Velvet Carnival as part of Erasmus+.

At the end of May, all participants traveled to Brussels for the Zinneke Parade, which took place on Saturday, June 1, in the city center.