Practical Programme
Sep Sep 2013
on registration
La Bellone

Words

People

Public space, multiple space

  • summer university

For the second time, Cifas dedicates its summer university to the relationship between Living Art and the City.

Art and the City, through four paths

Four days, four paths to consider successively the City as a network of social relations, as a space for expression and political protest, as a given and designed place and as an exchange and trade zone. In these various cities - which often overlap - what role could and should Living Art play?

Following the lead of four "scouts", we will intermingle experiences of artists and cultural operators.

A specific issue proposed in the mornings will provide the material to deepen other aspects through practical workshops in the afternoons. Moments for sharing exchanges and prospective visions will culminate at the end of each day.

Université d'été "Espace public, espace multiple. L'art et la ville par quatre chemins" from CIFAS on Vimeo.

Programme overview

Tuesday 3 September

10.00 - 13.00: Society City

Debate led by Antoine Pickels or Benoit Vreux.

Scout: Eric Corijn (BE).

With Kris Grey (US), Sally De Kunst (BE/CH), Rajni Shah (UK), Heike Langsdorf (BE).

14.00 - 17.00: Workshops

1. Kris Grey (US): "Public Appearance"

2. Sally De Kunst (BE/CH): "Belluard Bollwerk"

3. Rajni Shah (UK): "An Invitation to Listen"

17.00 - 18.00: Exchanges and perspectives

Wednesday 4 September

10.00 - 13.00: Political City

Debate led by Antoine Pickels or Benoit Vreux.

Scout: Jay Jordan (UK).

With Marco Baravalle (IT), Voina (RU), Richard DeDomenici (UK), Dagna Jakubowska (PL), Laurent D'Ursel (BE).

14.00 - 17.00: Workshops

1. Marco Baravalle (IT): "Towards Art as a Common. The City as a Battleground in a New Political Economy of the Arts"

2. Voina (RU): "Voina. Political Art in Russia"

3. Richard DeDomenici (UK): "Work and Intelligence"

17.00 - 18.00: Exchanges and perspectives

19.00 - 21.00: Dinner workshop

Dagna Jakubowska : "Kitchen Politics"             

Thursday 5 September

The Summer University interrupts for one day but you are mostly welcome to follow the day organized by VTI in collaboration with Theaterfestival, Kaaitheater and SPACE, also dedicated to Living Arts in Public Space.

Out of the box – International conference on (performing) arts in the public space

More information: www.vti.be

Friday 6 September

10.00 - 13.00: Plan City

Debate led by Antoine Pickels or Benoit Vreux.

Scout: Pauline de la Boulaye (FR).

With Stany Cambot (FR), Vjekoslav Gasparovic (HR), Stefan Kaegi (DE), Emilio Lopez Menchero (BE)

14.00 - 17.00: Workshops

1. Stany Cambot (FR)  : "Campaign Mapping Workshop. Producing elusive maps"

2. Vjekoslav Gasparovic (HR): "The Idea of the City"

3. Stefan Kaegi (DE): “Life as a Theatre”

17.00 - 18.00: Exchanges and perspectives

Saturday 7 September

10.00 - 13.00: Market City

Debate led by Antoine Pickels or Benoit Vreux.

Scout: Raphaël Edelman (FR).

With Ljud (SI), FrenchMottershead (UK), Gert Nulens (BE), Jean-Félix Tirtiaux (BE) 

14.00 - 17.00: Workshops

1. Gert Nulens (BE) : "Bridging Economic and Artistic Logics: Is it logical at all?"

2. FrenchMottershead (UK) : "Shops"

3. Ljud (SI) : “Work with what you've got!”

17.00 - 18.00: Exchanges and perspectives

Society City - 3 September

10.00 - 13.00: Society City

Social classes, origins, gender, culture, income, customs, languages create divisions which meet, collide and sometimes mingle in urban areas, let alone in contemporary European urban space marked by globalization. If this space is that of individual freedom allowed by anonymity, it is also the space where social ties disintegrate. Living Art, better than Monumental Art, often tries to restore this tie, or at least highlights this complex social  fabric. What are its means, how successful is it and what are the difficulties met?

Scout: Eric Corijn (BE). With Sally De Kunst (BE/CH), Kris Grey (US), Heike Langsdorf (BE), Rajni Shah (UK).

14.00 - 17.00: Workshops

1. Kris Grey (US): "Public Appearance"

The very notion of public space is one that is marked by bodies and actions. Generally, public space is social space open and accessible to people. More than just a place to gather or pass, public space is also monitored, administered, and patrolled. The use of a space by bodies in alliance constitutes that space as public. Reciprocally, when bodies gather and appear to one another in the street, on the corner, in a park, etc their presence and appearance in those spaces constitutes those bodies as the public. In the recent years the world has witnessed the utilization of public spaces for large-scale demonstrations with far reaching political significance. When public space is activated as a site for civic engagement by social art, what are the politics of participation?

2. Sally De Kunst (BE/CH): "Belluard Bollwerk"

How to organize an Art festival in a city: manual

The result of globalization is that the romantic idea of cultural backgrounds and local roots has more or less lost all meaning. The authenticity no longer refers to the origin, but rather to the successful arrival of a cultural practice in a new environment, ideally with a slight obstinacy. It is in this sense that the community becomes interesting: to produce international projects that create an interactive relationship and question a local context.

How to organize an art festival in a small Swiss town? Personal manual in ten points, distilled with six years experience at Belluard Festival in Fribourg, Switzerland.

3. Rajni Shah (UK): "An Invitation to Listen"

This workshop will be centered around the idea of listening to the city, its people, and its buildings. After an introductory session, participants will each be given an individual instruction and a mission to explore the local area. Each person, whether they are familiar with the area or not, will be invited to be a stranger and a guest, gently discovering new friends, new ways of being, new colours and possibilities. All participants will then meet at an appointed hour in an appointed location and share stories, discoveries, and questions. Together, we will compile a trace of our findings.  

17.00 - 18.00: Exchanges and perspectives

Political City - 4 September

10.00 - 13.00: Political City

The City is also the best place for political expression: it is traditionally the place where demonstrations are held. Today, through a double movement where on one hand political action uses artistic tools, and on the other hand new "engaged" artistic forms use militant language, "Artivism" willingly invests urban space. Between the action authorized - or even sponsored - by the government and the savage or illegal action, there is a distance... crossable?

Scout: Jay Jordan (UK). With Marco Baravalle (IT), Voina (RU), Richard DeDomenici (UK), Dagna Jakubowska (PL), Laurent D'Ursel (BE).

14.00 - 17.00: Workshops

1. Marco Baravalle (IT): "Towards Art as a Common. The City as a Battleground in a New Political Economy of the Arts"

This workshop will be an open discussion about different issues. The main issue is to look at the city as a conflictual place between different ways of understanding art. The first concerns the economy of the event in which art is used as a means to boost real estate, where workers are precarious and underpaid, in which audiences are becoming increasingly central in the processes of production of value. But there are other ways of understanding art (obviously diversified according to different contexts), which see artistic practices as tools for the transformation of the status quo (and the city). These visions are in opposition, perhaps starting from the occupation of spaces (but not only) to the reduction of art for private profits and speculation events, even when public policies foster themselves these processes. Making art a common good means building a third way beyond the neoliberal rhetoric that drives every cultural worker to become an entrepreneur and beyond the public rhetoric which justifies the cuts into culture describing artists as unproductive and in need of assistance.

2. Voina (RU): "Voina. Political Art in Russia"

For this workshop, leaders of the group will give a lecture about political art in Russia based on examples of Voina.

3. Richard DeDomenici (UK): "Work and Intelligence"

For my workshop I will show some videos and we will have a chat. Then, if it's not raining we will all go out onto the streets of Brussels to make some discreet anarcho-surrealist interventions. These will hopefully include the first ever performance with an experimental piece of parasitic portable architecture, which is currently being built by a collaborator in Brussels.

17.00 - 18.00: Exchanges and perspectives

19.00 – 21.00: Dinner workshop

Dagna Jakubowska : "Kitchen Politics"

From Marinetti’s Manifesto of Futurist Cooking through Joseph Beuys' culinary practice and more recently Rirkrit Tiravanija's performances, artists have long used food as a material and inspiration within their work. Artistic strategies can contribute to address the issues related to the politics of food, economy and the environment.

Moreover, cuisine and food sharing rituals can be examined and used as a means of exploring and understanding the issues related to national identity, history and politics.

In line with a rule which states that you are what you eat (a principle first introduced by the pioneer of research on food and taste, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin), cuisine can be treated as one of the most versatile and lasting manifestos of a nation. Its analysis reveals the complex local relationship and histories.

The workshop- the cooking lesson/ culinary performance- is a result of my research on national cuisine. Food sharing rituals and local cuisines will be critically read through the lenses of economy, culture and politics. It aims to offer counter-tastes to the conflicts and traumas of Eastern Europe.

VTI - 5 September

The Summer University interrupts for one day but you are mostly welcome to follow the day organized by VTI in collaboration with Theaterfestival, Kaaitheater and SPACE, also dedicated to Living Arts in Public Space.

Out of the box – International conference on (performing) arts in the public space

More information: www.vti.be

Plan City - 6 September

10.00 - 13.00: Plan City

The space of the City is determined by its particular topography and its urban layout, dividing or connecting its own different areas... and populations. Living Art may highlight or transgress these differences, create new axes, reveal fractures, abolish or establish temporary borders. If temporary forms a priori do not leave traces in urban planning, they do transform the imaginary, and may be followed by longer-term effects...

Scout: Pauline de la Boulaye (FR). With Stany Cambot (FR), Vjekoslav Gasparovic (HR), Stefan Kaegi (DE), Emilio Lopez Menchero (BE)

14.00 - 17.00: Workshops

1. Stany Cambot (FR)  : "Campaign Mapping Workshop. Producing elusive maps"

The map is not the world itself but a particular perspective on the world. Is the objective of the cartographer to produce an image of the world, or a world in the image of the map? Indeed, the modern map reveals a picture of the world where nothing escapes the eye, of which all secret or hidden place is excluded. That is why this map is totalising. The map tries to gather all possible data in a comprehensive and exhaustive neutral representation. It is the vehicle of a certain idea or representation of the world in which each group, each society dictates its own codes that accurately reflects cultural or political orientation. The map is not the only correct version of the world but one of its possible versions. Despite its apparent objectivity, the map is before anything a particular view of the world, therefore one must take a step back to put a relative perspective on the reality of the map. However, gathering all possible paths, the map trivializes the importance of these routes in a codified track. The map seems to gather elements coming from different backgrounds to form an array of geographical knowledge. But its apparent neutrality masks the background of those who made it and do not let either imagine the experience of those who will use it. It stays a still image between two actions: create a map and use the map. Starting with the will to ordinate the natural disorder and its heterogeneity, the map actually organises and ordinates the world. Yet reality is multiple. Nowadays, mapping tends to be an arbitrary reduction making the city an area bounded by arbitrary signs, with wholes and fulls, black and white surfaces: triumph of the line and subdivision.

2. Vjekoslav Gasparovic (HR): "The Idea of the City"

Two hundred years of military presence in Pula (Austrio-Hungarian Empire, Italy, Yugoslavia and Croatia) has left vast free areas, preserved and beautiful coastal landscapes, interlaced with invisible military infrastructure, in the city centre. Half of Pula bay is still to be discovered and life has there still to take place. But, contrary to the scenario of a city gradually developing around its bay, very different plans are lately being imposed.

The notion of the city is in fact referred to the lives of people who make it a city, who find there the possibility of fulfilling their existential, social and political needs. Human existence is spatial. So the attitude toward the city is the attitude toward people and their lives.

Every action is preceded by thought or ideas – so the construction of thoughts and ideas about the city – is in its final outcome the construction of the city itself, i.e. the lives of people who inhabit it. This construction of ideas is mainly done through mass media. Who constructs our collective image of the city, and for what purpose? In the case of Pula, it is not difficult to find answers. The target is the privatization of common resources.

So, the questions are – how to get a different image of our present moment? How to create different ideas about our lives? How to create even differing ideas about it? Or, in physical terms, how to image a different city?

3. Stefan Kaegi (DE): “Life as a Theatre”

Marketing plans for cities try to sell us each city as outstanding and different from all the others. But as a matter of fact globalisation has created many spaces that look very similar as they have been created to be easily understood by their users: Hotelrooms, shopping malls or airports are such places, but also universities, hospitals or playgrounds. Stefan Kaegi has developed a number of strategies to use this fact for creating urban performances that can easily be transported from city to city as they use such spaces as stages, but in the same moment reflect the different contexts of each local version - a form of travelling research lab. With "Cargo Sofia" he took the audience in a convertable truck to gaz stations and logistic hubs, in "Remote X" he guided audiences with a computer voice and sound engineerings through cementries and metro stations and with "Ciudades Paralelas" he and Lola Arias invented a portable festival that recreates artistic ideas in hotel rooms, libraries or rooftops. At CIFAS Kaegi will show video excerpts of different local impacts of such global aproaches and ask where theatre strategies could become forms of temporary architectures redefining art in public space.

17.00 - 18.00: Exchanges and perspectives

Market City - 7 September

10.00 - 13.00: Market City

Regardless of the political system in place, the City has always been a place for market and commercial exchange. The intrusion of "free" artistic events in this space can disturb this logic , but the disadvantages (disturbances on the usual course of trade) are also advantages - Art as "attraction", attracts the customer and allows the development of tourism. How to find a balance between commercial and artistic logics?

Scout: Raphaël Edelman (FR). With LJUD (SI), FrenchMottershead (UK), Gert Nulens (BE), Jean-Félix Tirtiaux (BE)

14.00 - 17.00: Worksops

1. Gert Nulens (BE) : "Bridging Economic and Artistic Logics: Is it logical at all?"

Economic and artistic logics do not always match. They are born out of a different paradigm. This results into discussions which are often based on several simplistic dichotomies. Here are some examples: intrinsic versus instrumental values of art, quantitative versus qualitative impact, return on investment versus societal return on investment, please versus challenge the audience, etc.

This workshop will be a collaborative exploration of economic and artistic logics. We will start by presenting the history and missions of the Festival Theater op de Markt, then we will discuss the different dichotomies in the practical context of our festival and will try to find ways to go beyond a antagonistic discourse.

2. FrenchMottershead (UK) : "Shops"

FrenchMottershead's The Shops Project was a 4-year international project, during which the artists travelled to cities in Brazil, China, and across Europe, engaging with a wide range of communities and audiences. The interest lies in looking at societies through the lens of local shops to show the possibilities of local difference amidst the dominant, highly commodified world of shops and shopping. Throughout the project the artists invited shop owners, staff and customers to become involved in a process of participation and exchange, which investigated the regular patterns of life around certain shops and how they reflect a city and its people at that moment in time. The photographic, text-based and video works were exhibited within the shops themselves and culminated in 2010 with a solo exhibition and a publication with Site Gallery, Sheffield, UK.

More info

Rebecca French will give a short introduction to FrenchMottershead's work and The Shops Project, before we all collaborate to make some brief creative contacts with the owners and customers of local shops, near to La Bellone. Within our group, it would be good to have some equipment available - perhaps a small stills/video camera, smartphone, sound recorder, notebook - so please bring what you have easily available.

3. LJUD (SI) : “Work with what you've got!”

It is one of the basic missions of art in public space to question and subvert the prevailing consumerist logic of the capitalist society. Shopping centres mask themselves as amusement parks where consuming is presented as an entertaining and creative experience. Freedom in our society is experienced primarily as freedom to consume.  We are “free” to choose from the many available luxury items being offered to us.

Street art must function as an antagonist and a parasite to the commercial logic of the city space. Even when it is not in direct opposition there should always be a Trojan horse element that implicitly reinforces values of creativity, freedom of expression and social awareness.

Our workshop will explore low-budget, self-organised production techniques for creating events in public spaces and present some concrete examples of effective street interventions. The participants will join in simple actions that will change the way we perceive and use the city around us.

17.00 - 18.00: Exchanges and perspectives

Speakers

Eric Corijn

Cultural philosopher and sociologist Eric Corijn is currently Professor (em) of social and cultural geography at VUB. He is the founder of Urban Studies Centre Cosmopolis, City, Culture & Society and coordinator of UAB Urban Studies Network, an interdisciplinary collaboration of urban studies at Erasmus Hogeschool-VUB University Association. He is also the Vice-President of Brussels Studies Institute and Director of the Brussels Academy. Eric Corijn POLIS co-directs a masters degree in European Urban Cultures with universities of Brussels (VUB), Tilburg (UVT), Manchester (MMU) and Helsinki (UADH) and "4Cities" a UNICA-Euromaster in Urban Studies with the universities of Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen and Madrid.
He graduated in zoology, philosophy and dynamic science at universities of Ghent and Brussels, has postgraduated in prospective (Utrecht and Amsterdam), psychoanalysis (Ghent), monumental sculpture arts (RHoK-Brussels) and has a doctorate in social Sciences (Tilburg University).

Kris Grey

Kris Grey/Justin Credible is a Brooklyn based gender queer artist whose work exists at the intersection of communication, activism, community building, storytelling, lecture, and studio production in mediums two dimensional, three dimensional, and time based. Grey earned a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a Masters Degree in Fine Art from Ohio University. Grey has performed and exhibited work internationally, was a 2012 Fire Island Artist Residency recipient, and the resident artist for the 2012 ANTI Festival for Contemporary Art in Kupoio, Finland.

http://kristingrey.com

Sally De Kunst

Sally De Kunst (Belgium, 1974) is the director (2007-2013) of Belluard Bollwerk International Festival in Fribourg, Switzerland (www.belluard.ch). After studying Theater at University of Ghent (BE), she worked as a dance, theater and film critic for the Belgian newspaper De Morgen. From 2003 to 2006, she programs dance for STUK Arts Center and for the international contemporary dance festival Klapstuk in Leuven (BE).
From 2006 to 2007, she organised two international exchange platforms: Monsoon Asia / Europe, held in Seoul in December 2006, and Expedition, a residence for artists organized by Frascati (Amsterdam) in collaboration with Brut (Vienna) and Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers (Paris). In 2010, 2011 and 2012 she also ran the Watch & Talk Residence at Theaterspektakel in Zurich. She was also the editor of Etcetera, a Belgian magazine devoted to Performing Arts.
Sally De Kunst takes care to provide adequate spaces and forms to each individual artist. This is an ongoing challenge to create a framework for research, production and presentation of works. She meets artists' works in which she gently introduces the debate. Finally and most importantly, she invites the public to discover and confront with the artist's work.

Rajni Shah

Rajni Shah is an artist working in performance and live art. Whether online, in a public space or in a theatre, her work aims to open up new spaces for conversation and the meeting of diverse voices. From 2006-2010 she conducted a three-year enquiry into the relationship between gift and conversation in public space called Small Gifts. From 2005-2012 she produced a trilogy of large-scale performances (Mr Quiver, Dinner with America and Glorious) addressing the complexities of cultural identity in the 21st century. Rajni is an Artsadmin Associate Artist and an Honorary Research Fellow at The Centre for Contemporary Theatre, Birkbeck College. If you’d like to know more, please visit www.rajnishah.com.

Heike Langsdorf

Heike Langsdorf (*1974, Burghausen, Germany) is a Brussels based performing artist. She studied classical and contemprary dance at the Conservatory of Arnhem (Nl) and followed the Advanced performance Training at a.pass, where she currently works as a coach. She worked with various international theater makers, amongst others with Karin Post, Krisztina de Chatel, Thierry Smits, Alexandra Dementieva, Alexander Baervoets and Kris Verdonck, most intensively with Jan Fabre. Since 2002 she is member of the artist collective C&H and since 2010 she produces work with her working figure radical_hope.

In 2013 Langsdorf received traject subsidies as well as a development grant. Until the summer 2014 she is now busy executing her artist trajectory OTÇOE - works for passers-by and developping the movement research sitting with the body. Recently she started to give class at KASK (Hogeschool Gent) Mulltimedia Design / Activated Space. radical_hope: Working as a public figure allows to start of within ever different contexts and people while remaining to catalyse a certain intention to work : radical_hope is a character at work, confronting us with what art does and can(not) do. The guiding question is how from an artistic point of view a context can be touched and challenged without loosing its natural complexity. The practice of radical_hope is generating in-situ instruments for social transition and respectively tries to put into action the principle of changeability. Soon after a research phase at a.pass in 2010, where test-scenarios where developed and realized, the work was challenged in 2011/12 by a broad public in for example the frame of Burning Ice Festival (Kaaitheater) or with No, No, I hardly ever miss a show (National Gallery Warsaw). The artist trajectory OTÇOE which is running until 2014 is the further development of radical_hope’s practice in the City and the search for a possible structure for this practice.

www.open-frames.net/radical_hope

Jay Jordan

Jay Jordan tries to balance on the edge between art and activism, co-founder of Reclaim the Streets and the Clown Army (now AWOL), they are also co-editor of We Are Everywhere: the irresistible rise of global anti-capitalism (Verso) . In 2004 they began the Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination, (www.labofii.net) infamous for fermenting mass disobedience on bicycles during the Copenhagen climate Summit, throwing snowballs at bankers, launching a rebel raft regatta to shut down a power station. Following the publishing of a film/book Paths Through Utopias (Editions Zones, 2012) about European communes, the Labofii has now moved to France to expand it’s experiments on a radical farm.

Marco Baravalle

Marco Baravalle is an activist and independent curator at S.a.L.E.-Docks. His main interest lies in the overlapping between art and activism. In 2007 he took part in the occupation of an ancient Salt Warehouse in the heart of Venice. The space was later called S.a.L.E.-Docks and it is now run by an open collective. Along with exhibitions, seminars, performances and theatre, S.a.L.E was (and still is) active in many struggles and research processes that involve art and cultural labour. Marco Baravalle edited a book gathering a series of essays about the relationship between art and activism: “L'arte della sovversione” (2009). He lives in Venice.

Laurent d’Ursel

Multiform artist out of competition, Laurent d'Ursel produces everything passing through his central nervous system. He sets the limits that he can overcome through the lock of words, replaces genius by enthusiasm and the time remaining by the things he will have done. He bends under projects but never breaks, though, he actually did once or three times (under medication since then). Was homeless in another life. His latest motto: "Total confidence, zero talent! " (Laughs). He pulls out his gun when he hears these three words: Belgian, surrealist, provocative.

Voina

Voina is a street collective of actionist artists who engage in political protest art. Political orientation: anarchist. Enemies: philistines, cops, the regime. Organization type: militant gang, dominated by horizontal ties in everyday life and employing vertical relationships during actions. The group preaches renunciation of money and disregard towards the law (“the no-whoring way”). Founded by Vor and Kozlenok in October 2005, the group was named after Vor (“War”). Initially, Voina actions were clandestine and anonymous, and were called “training” or “practice”. Voina has enjoyed public recognition since 2008. To date, over 200 activists have participated in Voina actions. At least 20 criminal investigations into the group’s activities have been initiated, some of them still ongoing. According to Russia’s Investigations Committee, “Art group VOINA’ is a left-wing radical anarchist collective whose central goal is to carry out PR actions directed against the authorities, and specifically against law enforcement officials with the aim of discrediting them in the eyes of the public. Branches of VOINA exist in all major Russian cities. The group’s sympathizers number approximately 3000. VOINA members maintain contacts with anarchist groups and individuals from all around the world holding left-wing radical views on art and on the world order (Italy, Slovakia, France, USA, South Africa, Greece)”.

Richard DeDomenici

Richard DeDomenici's anarcho-surrealist interventions and acts of low-grade civil disobedience create the kind of uncertainty that leads to possibility. He makes work that is social, playful, political and beautiful, although rarely all at once. His tv show Fame Asylum was both nominated for a Royal Television Society award, and described by his favourite newspaper as 'the worst idea for a television programme, in the world, ever'.  Last year Richard's fake Olympic torch relay got him in trouble with police in Piccadilly Circus.  This year The Scotsman gave his remake of Cloud Atlas more stars than they gave to the actual film. Richard has performed in 22 countries, and in 2013 has made new work in Thailand, Japan, Belgium and Iceland. In April he was artist-in-residence at Trouble Festival at Les Halles Brussels, and in August will take his 4-star touring show Popaganda to Edinburgh. He is very sad about the closure of Mini-Europe.

www.dedomenici.com

Dagna Jakubowska

Dagna Jakubowska Graduated in sculpture and performance at the Academy of Fine Arts and from Theatre Directing and Dramaturgy at the Theatre Academy in Warsaw; visual artist, theatre director; also involved in the collaborative art projects for children; lives and works in Warsaw; mother of Kalina & Ida; currently curating and producing the festival built around the subjects: family, politics, kitchen and architecture- the idea of which is to develop political engagement and to expand political awareness through the participation in the art events inspired by the everyday rituals around kitchen- food sharing, home, gardening, playing, city design.

The festival will be the platform to reflect on the public space, the politics of the city, the multicultural diversity and the issues at stake of the local communities.

Pauline de la Boulaye

Pauline de la  Boulaye is a historian, author and independent curator. She writes for Stradda, French magazine for outdoor creation. Since 1998, Pauline de la Boulaye produced exhibitions, conferences and missions for cities, museums and businesses. Her projects connect worlds: visual arts, circus, performance, dance, design, architecture, public space and question their partitions. She collaborates with ISELP in Brussels since 2012. Her website is called Borderline: paulinedelaboulaye.com

Emilio López-Menchero

Emilio López-Menchero is Spanish, he was born in Belgium in 1960 and lives in Brussels. His activity is multidisciplinary: urban intervention, architectural, performative action, drawing, photography, sound, video and painting are part of his tools. In 97 he runs the entire city of Berlin, during his stay in residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, with a mini-monument: two 18 cm high flanges painted in reflective yellow (RAL 1023). In 99 he performs "Vu'cumpra?" for the Belgian pavilion at the Venice Biennale where he becomes peddler and sells atomiums as souvenirs in the streets. Jan Hoet invites him in 2000 at the exhibition Over the edges, to intervene in a corner of Ghent where he proposes to launch the shout of Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) through the whole city! In 2001, in response to a fake Picasso command, he offers himself in person. He then starts the series "Trying to be" photographic self-portraits where he tries to embody different characters (Che Guevara, Balzac, Russell Means, Marcel Duchamp as Rrose Sélavy, Frida Kahlo, Rasputin, the Beatles, Szeemann, Dutroux, Jacques Lizène, Arafat, Cindy Sherman, Engels, Carlos, James Ensor ...). In 2006 he created the public art work PASIONARIA, close to Gare du Midi, a gigantic megaphone steel from which every person passing can shout in the street. In 2010 right during the Belgian crisis, he installs a replica of Checkpoint Charlie at Porte de Flandre between the gentrified neighborhood street A. Dansaert and "ghetto" migrants neighbourhood of Molenbeek ... dressed in U.S. military he blcoks the traffic. In 2012, he participated in the exhibition TRACK in Ghent with the diptych video "Moscow-Bernadette" where he asks residents of two neighbouring areas to sing a song for a musical battle. The same year he makes a solo exhibition only showing paintings at Gallery Nadja Vilenne under the title "Beware the Gorilla". All recently in 2013, he reconstructs in Switzerland EAC - Les Halles, Porrentruy, the canton of Jura, the conflictual reality of the Palestinian city of Hebron in the form of a sound installation entitled Environmental H2/H1, by pouring garbage and waste on a mesh stretched over the heads of the audience. This same piece has been shown to exhibition (One) hope map focusing on the art and the Middle East at Halles-aux-Draps in Bruges. Also in 2013, he offers the performative action in urban project PASSAGES - art works along the North - South Train Connection, where a group of nine temporary workers carry an 18m long rail weighing a ton between Gare du Midi and Gare du Nord. The action ended a few meters after the start...

http://www.emiliolopez-menchero.be/

Stany Cambot

Architect, set designer and film director, Stany Cambot makes installations and urban interventions. First attracted by live art, he produced set designs for theater then for exhibitions. He worked alongside Armand Gatti in achieving urban scenographies. Graduated from School of Architecture of Normandy, he devoted his final studies dissertation on urban interventions among which there was an opera by Armand Gatti that he presented in the form of video experiences. Since then he has developed this issue in the context of "participatory works in progress" with the "excluded of the map" (prisoners, homeless, travelers, roms, new nomads...). He has implemented work and artistic experiences around the city and the country. These experiences in the long term involve questioning those "excluded from the map". They give rise to interventions in public space, exhibitions, websites, videos, posters, maps, publications... what we are talking about is the "invisible in our cities." in 1998, he founded Echelle Inconnue of which he is the artistic director and in which he worked around the notions of invisible cities, their representations and their possible advent; that is the never ending assault of city cadastre by the one that we want. He is also the author of various theoretical articles and text on city, architecture, art and urbanism.

http://www.echelleinconnue.net

Vjekoslav Gašparović

Vjekoslav Gašparović, born in Pula 1980, graduated Architecture at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb, Croatia. Within Pulska grupa, an informal group of architects from Pula, engaged in production of maps and publications, formal and informal actions, legal and illegal public interventions – aimed at imagining a different city. In 2012 Pulska grupa designed and constructed the Croatian pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice. Member of the Citizens' Initiative for Muzil. Along with friends from Pulska grupa in 2011 established Praksa cooperative, the first engineering cooperative in Croatia. In 2010 made the short documentary Čistina (Clearance) about the ex military area Muzil.

Stefan Kaegi

Stefan Kaegi (1972, Switzerland) studied visual arts in Zurich and drama/theatre/media at the University of Giessen, Germany. He worked with local performers in urban contexts from Argentina to Latvia and Cairo to Vancouver, producing motor cycle tours, chasing channels, pet ceremonies or bus trips. His Argentine piece “Torero Portero” toured Europe and South America. His mini train world "Mnemopark" was awarded the prize of the jury at "Festival Politik im freien Theater". Since 2006, his mobile audience room “Cargo Sofia” – a truck driven by two Bulgarians – has been driving through Europe. In 2008 he developed “Radio Muezzin” in Cairo – a project about the call to prayer in this age of its technical reproduction, and in 2011 “Bodenprobe Kasachstan” about migration and oil in central Asia. In 2010 he was awarded with the prize for cultural diversity by the European Cultural Foundation.

http://www.rimini-protokoll.de

Raphael Edelman

Raphael Edelman studied philosophy at University of Rennes. His DEA dissertation addressed the ethical and aesthetic range of emotions. He taught philosophy and French in secondary school. He is currently professor of philosophy, semiotics and sociology at School of Design and at Higher Institute of Applied Arts. He is also speaker at Rencontres de Sophie, editor for Dma Gallery, president of the urban planning association Oup, conducts philosophy workshops for children, and regularly writes artist monographs.

http://fanfare-fanfare.blogspot.com

Jean-Félix Tirtiaux

Jean-Félix Tirtiaux wears many hats: co-founder of Namur in May, Festival of Fairground Arts; Founder and President of La Maison du Cirque asbl (Brussels); associated partner with Italy and Germany in O.P.E.N. Street, Culture 2007 European Programme (B); associate partner of European Network Street Arts, Culture 2000 European Programme (B); associated partner with Ici et Ailleurs, Interreg European programme (B); alternate member of the Performing Arts Commission (B); Member of Street Arts, Fairground Arts and Circus Commission, (B); member of the Commission for reflection on the new Decree for Performing Arts (B); administrator of Centre Culturel Régional-Théâtre de Namur (B); administrator of professional Federation of Street Arts (F); administrator / coordinator of Baladins du Miroir (B); administrator of Smart asbl (B), editor of the first reflection on cultural Economics (F / B) international debate moderator.

Gert Nulens

Gert Nulens is the director of Dommelhof, a cultural institute of the province of Limburg (Belgium). Dommelhof aims at supporting artistic creation in the domains of theatre, dance and circus theatre. Dommelhof welcomes approximately 35 international companies/artists a year. Dommelhof is also the organizer of Theater op de Markt, a festival for street, site specific and circus theatre. Before joining the Dommelhof team, Gert Nulens worked at the University of Brussels (VUB) as the co-ordinator of a research team specialized in cultural research.

http://www.theateropdemarkt.be

LJUD

LJUD is an international collective of performers, directors, visual artists and activists. Their main goal is to explore the possibilities of artistic expression in public space and new theatrical forms based on interaction rather than presentation. They believe in art that is in direct contact with the present times, trying to establish theatre performance as a game, a ritual and a social event.

The group has realised their projects in more than 30 countries around the world, runs an on-going experimental educational program (Ljud’s Laboratory) and has created a pilot project for low-budget artistic mobility (H.O.M.E. – Houses for Open Mobility Exchange) supported by the European Commission – Directorate of Culture.

For more information about the group, please visit www.ljud.si

FrenchMottershead

Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead are London-based artists, whose work looks at the conventions of social exchange and its relationship to the public and private realms in which they are played out.  FrenchMottershead have exhibited and performed extensively in international contexts including art centres, museums, galleries, visual art and performance festivals, and in biennials and the public realm. Site-specific locations have included shops and local newspapers in various international cities, the West Indian Ex- Serviceman’s Association, a public library, a North Tampa pool hall, and the pork supply chain in China. Following on from their solo exhibition at Site Gallery, Sheffield, their book People, Places, Process: The Shops Project, compiling four years of research, documentation and artworks from their extended international project was published by Site Gallery in 2010.

www.frenchmottershead.com

Recordings

The morning debates were recorded.

Pay attention: the recordings are not translated. Each speaker speaks in French OR in English.

03.09: Debate "Society City"

04.09: Debate "Political City"

06.09: Debate "Plan City"

07.09.2013: Debate "Market City"