More from Liége than ever, he has just left directing and this world in which he no longer recognized himself to open, a stone’s throw from home, with his wife Elisabeth Ancion, and partly thanks to the heritage of his father-in-law, Jacques Ancion, The Electric Blanket Theater, a Liège puppet theater. Pure short circuit. He rejoices in this connection with the past, with 19th century puppets, with a very different tradition and ecological model. The second season promises to be under the best auspices, with 1,000 tickets, at 6 euros, sold out in 12 minutes!
Bouli Lanners opens a puppet theater with his wife Elisabeth Ancion
Established now for 40 years in the Cité ardente, Bouli Lanners is full of praise for the evolution of the city, its redevelopments and its rediscovered elegance: “The city has changed a lot visually. In the 80s, it was a real construction site, with Place Saint-Lambert, which was nothing more than a huge hole. It was total urban planning chaos. The city was completely disfigured in the 50s and 70s. It was the drive-thru policy. The idea was to bring the highway to Place Saint-Lambert. We escaped the worst. We no longer had access to the Meuse, we could not see it. The city has become very beautiful again. It is being redesigned with the arrival of the tram, planted trees, pedestrian areas, cycle paths along the Meuse… We have started to return it to the inhabitants. For me the results are positive. We have come a long way. Liège remains very pleasant to live in. Her punk side has disappeared a little, she has calmed down, it’s true, but you can’t win on all counts.“
Bouli Lanners opens up about the harassment he suffered
New betrayal
The arrival of the tram led to the debates and disappointments that we know and insecurity, linked among other things to drug trafficking, remains a concern for the people of Liège. But here too, Bouli Lanners tempers.
“Before, Liège was a cam hub. Today it is part of society. We need to legislate and take care of it because the drug addicts in Liège are not the dealers but those who are at the end of their rope, on the street. They must be taken care of. In any case, with the petty thefts that we have all suffered because of drugs, we are already paying a sort of toxic tax. So you might as well have the courage to take charge of this problem. We need more shooting rooms. Drugs will become part of society like Asian hornets. We have to break the market. It’s a pyramid that is based on an ultra-liberal model and it’s the cartels that are getting rich.”
In debt since the end of the War, during which it was bombed, Liège also lost the resources linked to the metallurgical industry and coal mining. “It was the banks and especially Crédit Communal that speculated on the debts of the city of Liège and we are still suffering the consequences, he states bluntly. The city of Liège was regularly fooled. Charles the Bold had it burned in the 15th century, hence its name Burning City. We were fooled by the Walloon government which decided to stop the expansion of the tram for budgetary reasons. This is a new betrayal. The idea of the tram at the start was to connect Seraing to Herstal and then there was this political twist.“
“A masterstroke”: The art of fraud according to Bouli Lanners
3 years ago, we remember, floods devastated the Vesdre and Ourthe valley. The artist immediately rolled up his sleeves. “Many people were in absolute distress. They were truly war zones, but there was a huge outpouring of solidarity. It was a turning point in my life. I realized that even in a rich country, everything could change. We are going to be confronted more and more with these events, but we continue to do intensive agriculture, to be dependent on those who want to get rich at all costs.”
