Recently, I visited the Brussels streetlight museum. I found this experience to be a great example of the city’s absurd, yet endearing, charm.
Brussels does effortless self-performance really well; it exudes this elusive, surreal quality in a cheerful, unstudied way. It’s a city with croissant shops that sell out at 9 a.m. and refuse to restock; with scaffolding that needs its own scaffolding (yes, that’s a thing, see here); and bureaucrats that laugh when their entire computer system crashes. “You could wait around for a bit, or you could come back another day. Heaven only knows how long it will take to fix this.”
Somewhere, I believe there’s a machine puffing out the kind of things that end up on Belgian Solutions or Weird Things in Brussels. Meanwhile, the average Belgian shrugs and goes on about their day. No wonder that Brussels became a hotspot for surrealist artists. Our flat, grey landscape wafts out dreamy fumes, birthing poets who sing of depressed canals and apologetic skies.
If the country is an experiment in the unexpected or incongruous, then the streetlight museum fits right in. Consider its online description: I was promised a “curious” artistic experience; “a poetic and harmonious ensemble,” if you will. In person, it turned out to run from numbers 75 to 87 of an ordinary, peripheral residential street.
In typical Belgian fashion, the “museum” was humble to the point of self-effacement. There was a label on GoogleMaps, but once there, I couldn’t spot any obvious plaque or sign. I guess no one has time for something so ostentatious and user-friendly.
The recommended time to go is after sunset, when the lights are meant to go on. Out of the ten or so, three appeared out of order when I visited. They had barriers around them which bore peeling, half-vanished lettering giving a few historical details. To try to read them, you had to manoeuvre around the motorcycles that people had locked up there.
It was an ordinary Monday evening in early November. There were trash bags out for collection, cars parked, and people passing by on their way home, or popping into the pharmacy across the road. I walked the hundred or so metres and looked up at the different lamps. It was cold and dark, so when I had admired things sufficiently, I turned back toward the metro station.
One day some twenty years ago, someone thought this installation was good and important. Now the “harmonious ensemble” is subsumed into the landscape, untended and mostly ignored.
Could this be Brussels in a nutshell? It seems just as ridiculous and endearing as large rubber duck sculptures in a fountain without water, or huge green apples atop buildings. This could only happen in a city that would invite the King to celebrate the minor extension of a local tram line, in a solemn ceremony complete with purple carpets and ribbons. And let’s not forget that staircase we built so that the highest point in the country would be a nice, even number…
As delightful as all of this is, I do think it can lead to an overall level of complacency. But also to a city that seems almost … huggable, in a way rife with creative inspiration. I want more untended museums on random streets. Brussels can keep on cranking out absurdity, and I’ll embrace it full on as I walk across this damp, misty stage. Maybe the city will turn me into a surrealist artist.
