After Doel Festival’s first edition, we immediately felt our terrain was too small. When looking at it on a map, the festival didn’t have any loop, which would improve how visitors move through the village, we only had dead ends. You cover an entire village, but of course its largest surface is taken by houses and their back gardens. The streets themselves are in the end quite limited in movable space. It was obvious we had to expand festival grounds.
Exploring the village again and studying our floor plan, we looked South, to the most remote area of the town, the far end of the Vissersstraat, where two rows of graffiti clad retirement bungalows sat completely overgrown by massive clusters of thorns and large bushes, making the street impassable. These bungalows were once part of a social housing project for the elderly, cosy one floor retirement homes, built together as one. A beautiful piece of underrated communal architecture. We had our local gardener Yves take a look and he said only the trees were supposed to stay, the rest is allowed to be cut and removed.
Tug and pull political play
So we had him do it and cleaned the entire street. Opening up the end of the Vissersstraat not only created space for a new stage, it also opened up a pathway to a fence all the way in the back, where you can spot and pet the horses that graze the meadow behind it. From that point on, we continued our maintenance of the street, along with other parcels of Doel, so it remains accessible throughout the year.
Our first idea for the stage itself was simple: reinvigorate the bungalows. The idea was to liven up the street again with minor additions, by implementing lights in the bungalow’s doorways, resembling door lights, attach new lights to the existing street lanterns that playfully flicker and place atmospheric lighting on top of the roofs. Also on the roof was a neon poetry art piece by Prosper Legault, an installation compiled from recycled neon and light box signage. It stood as a beacon that marked the entrance of the street, visible even from the other side of town. As for the actual stage, we put down stacks of sound and a booth and that was it. We fittingly named the stage Bungalow, as we do with all stages, their name reflects their immediate surrounding. The booth was made by artist Arnaud Eubelen in collaboration with Brice Dreessen, titled Altar. By day, you’d feel as if you were dancing on someone’s front porch, by night, an eerie yet enchanting feeling crept over, like being stuck in an alleyway that lead to another dimension.
Subsequently, to better visitor flow through the village, we removed the Vissersstage from year one and brought that sound over the bungalows, opening up a back alley which would connect the food court with the Vissersstraat, a fast track allowing for visitors to skip the Haven stage and a two way entrance for the Garage Box stage, which also changed in direction. We then had to changed the direction of the Pastorij stage as well, since otherwise you would end up in the back of it as you make your way towards Bungalow, which remains a decent walk, but in Doel, exploration is well rewarded.
The Bungalow in year two stood for revitalisation, bringing back a piece of the town that was lost and simply turning it on again. As if it was alive, as if the people were home.
In 2024, we decided to rethink the stage part, asking ourselves how can we integrate the stage into this narrow street in a way that it feels natural, as part of the bungalows. The first big change was the orientation of the booth, placing it against the bungalows in a 180° setup, since we wanted to increase and widen the area for dancers to claim in front of the artist, instigating a more energetic atmosphere. We looked at the existing architecture of the bungalows and extended one of the roofs. The bungalows are built in this sort of zig zag pattern, the extension would fill one of the corners in the middle. Underneath we made a patio style booth extending outwards from the respective bungalow, further covered up with the iconic metal plating seen everywhere in the village. We had Nawas, a well known tag name in Flanders and a dear friend of one of our build up crew, come over and spray the plates. The stage completely blended into its environment, to a point where some of the inhabitants actually thought it was always there.
Each stage at Doel Festival is in constant evolution. Stage locations are carefully chosen for their specific environment and each year we rethink how a stage can fit that space, slowly shapeshifting into their future form.
Our Bungalow stage in 2024 was built with the support of DIESEL. Their love for electronic music is no secret, they have been collaborating with NTS Radio since 2022, exploring the future of nightlife and club culture across the globe by commissioning radio mixes dedicated to local upcoming talent. Their SS24 Runway Show was a true rave in the rain and in February of 2023, VTSS walked for DIESEL’s FW24 in Milan. DIESEL’s garments have been fuelled by rave culture ever since creative director Glenn Martens came on board in 2020, who so happens to be from Bruges originally and graduated from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts, with Marten’s digging into the brand’s pop culture heritage and blending club references with a Y2K revival. Doel and DIESEL found each other in that culture, Doel is a place that was almost washed off the map, it has seen distress, much like DIESEL’s denim, and is now being reinvigorated through the power of music and art. DIESEL, for successful living. Doel, for successful raving. DIESEL didn’t ask for a large brand presence, so we made a small rusted plaque with their logo which hung on the side of the roof part. Did DIESEL have a store in Doel? Maybe it did.
Since the 2024 version of the blend in Bungalow stage was a first time success, it returns in form in 2025, albeit without the DIESEL plaque. We’re expanding with more low step podia to elevate the crowd in the back, finetuning the sound to an even better quality and probably add a couple of new tags.
