Event - Uchronicité 2022

- december 07, 2022

Do you have 5€ left in your pocket?
That's enough to pay the entry fee for this annual gathering of Belgian steampunks. Or is it steampunkers? Or vaporistes? Meh.. Choose whatever you fancy.

There are two kind of genre events in the Benelux:
The big ones. Nearly all of them are owned by large corporations (multinationals even), held in big venues and these have become éxtremely expensive for both visitors and vendors. For the current entry prices you expect to be WOW-ed and entertained at a high level. High expectations are always difficult to meet.
And there are a few tiny events trying to stay afloat. Just like for the big events the prices to get something organised have gone through the roof. But they mostly work with volonteers instead of a corporate overhead workforce consisting of more high payed managers than workers and they don't need to bring home truckloads of cash to please the shareholders & investors. This way they manage to maintain fair entry prices. And honestly if you only pay 5€ entry .. you will often have more fun than you anticipated.

Just a quick reminder: all of the pictures will be uploaded to Flickr, a short video will follow on Clapper and maybe as reel to Instagram. Sample pictures and updates get posted in this article or on Facebook.
And via this link you can seach for the pictures from Uchronicité 2019

Some pictures will take longer than usual to process. That's because the RAW-files from the new camera aren't yet supported by Adobe and the alternative work-around via Imaging Edge isn't giving satisfying results. So I'll wait till Lightroom & Photoshop have received their RAW-updates. Patience is a vertue in any era. (UPDATE: everything is online)

Back to Uchronicité.
How did we spend the afternoon other than taking pictures of the glorious attendees?

Shopping in the attic and the basement. Mostly artists & artisans presenting their unique craftwork.
Umbrella duels & tea battles. For real.
Watching the barber work. The musician, photobooth and facepainter all did an excellent job.
Tasting wines, hydromiels and other delicious elixirs.
Choosing between great dishes (We didn't try the food trucks outside because the boeuf bourguignon next to the stairs was just delicious)
For some reason we missed the acts on the marquee stage. Last edition there were a steampunk magician, musicians and some spoken word artists. We didn't catch any of that. Maybe next time.
Talking to people. It's for a large part a more mature audience and they love to make time to talk. So you slow down and listen. Convivial & chaleureux, the French would call the atmosphere.

Would a few workshops or a lecture be a nice addition? Probably.
More acts in the marquee? Please.
Would I have complained if they had charged 37€ entry + 18€ parking? Obviously, because humans always complain.
Was it so cold outside that wearing only a kilt & shirt was a foolish idea? No comment.
Did time fly by and did we enjoy ourselves? Definitely.

Should I write an essay on Steampunk & Retrofuturism?
Nah.. everything about it has been said before. I enjoy most of the different ..-punk styles. Maybe I should do some more shoots with steampunk, dieselpunk, atompunk, cyberpunk, silkpunk, cowboypunk, raygun gothic and all the others.

The video is now on Clapper