Wim Willaert

"Bollo Smieto Flamenco" might not immediately ring a bell, but most people have played this game at some point. Bollo Smieto is the typical Flemish Flamenco carnival attraction where you throw a ball at empty cans ("smieto") to knock them down.

I thought I had this folk game figured out. I wasn’t bad at ball sports in general, and I had learned from the winners of the game by observing them. "You need to throw overhead at the middle can and put a lot of force into it," I told myself confidently, as if I were an expert in the game of Bollo Smieto. I believed I could score, but in reality, I was standing on the top of the mountain of fools. From a distance of two meters, I managed to miss all three cans with my three chances. Shameful.

This experience got me thinking about people who believe they know everything, standing on the peak of the mountain of the foolish, proclaiming their expertise. I want to talk about and muse on what happens when a Flemish artist comes into contact with one of these fools, one of the ignorant.

Any resemblance to existing artists is purely coincidental, of course!