I have no talent for nostalgia. That does not alter the fact that my childhood was a paradise. It's that simple. No other description covers the load. I was surrounded by boys and girls with a real obsession for good, contrarian guitar sounds. Everyone I knew was into music. And we could all meet in Het Lintfabriek. Kissed by the gods we were. And we didn't know. At least: we couldn't quite estimate how kissed by the gods we really were. “Youth is wasted on the young,” Oscar Wilde once wrote. That is not entirely true. Looking back, we didn't spill a lot with our youth, but a person naturally forgets a lot about the boredom, the dead moments, the predictability of a life at school. 

The magic of Het Lintfabriek was the magic of my youth. 

Excerpt from text by Jeroen Olyslaegers, Het Lintfabriek

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A story about a hotbed of young talent on the outskirts of the city. A space where talent could develop and show. An old factory where young people were given the space to set up their own operation with no restrictions and in complete freedom.

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What Jean-Pierre Vets launched in Kontich in the 1980s continues to resonate to this day. His encouragement to show yourself as a young person in complete freedom and unruly has shaped many for life. In this book you feel the power of his vision through all the interventions and stories. For Jeroen Olyslaegers it marked the start of his artistic and professional career. Kurt Overbergh regarded Het Lintfabriek as his sweetheart (but later married the Ancienne Belgique as artistic director). The seed that Jean-Pierre planted in 1982 still germinates in the work of the numerous artists and in the daily lives of visitors. 

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Eric Bouwens, Peter Daems and Katrijn Sermeus found each other in the ambition to write down and share this special story of Het Lintfabriek. Since 2019 they have been working on organizing the archive, collecting information and anecdotes and sharpening the history. This quest, incidentally, proceeded entirely in accordance with the laws of a sanctuary: somewhat rudderless with a multitude of opinions and discussions, sometimes emotional but above all with a lot of understanding, love and passion.

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Please note: this book is (spoiler) not the definitive story.