The joy of disagreement

If the question of the Common is more than ever at the heart of our living together and our urbanity, it would be a mistake to infer a constant consensus, in the name of the general interest. The city is also made up of areas of opposition and conflict of opinions. From these frictions springs the sparks of democracy, it is specifically in disagreements that we feel alive.

Art in urban space does not get away from these fruitful confrontations. It is actually often an example as, by nature it is forced to leave the beaten path of artistic logic to confront other realities specific to the city, and systems that seem antagonistic. Think about trade, lifestyle, health, sport, urbanism, religion or celebration, which also cross social space and whose interests, codes, modes of operation, differ from those of art. From these confrontations arise works that touch us because of the risks they take and the dialogues they open.

These themes run through the program of our seventh edition of SIGNAL / Art and the City in different ways: in the artworks presented in public space and in debates and workshops of the Urban Academy.

With : Chantal Mouffe (BE/UK) Joanna Warsza (PL/DE) Tunde Adefioye (BE) Mattin (ES) Dmitry Vilensky & Olga Egorova / Chto Delat (RU) Siniša Labrović (HR) Katrien Verwilt / Metropolis & Vera Maeder / hello!earth (DK) Mike Ribalta / FiraTàrrega (ES) Floriane Gaber (BE/FR) Stephen Collins/University of the West of Scotland (UK) & Michaël Gustavsson/Uppsala University (SE) LUIT (FR) Annie Vigier & Franck Apertet (les gens d’Uterpan) (FR) Kubra Khademi (AF) Maria Sideri (GR) Galmae / Juhyung Lee (KR) Ghost Army (BE) François Durif (FR) Liévine Hubert/Le Geste qui sauve (BE) Reclaim the Future (EU) Aquaserge (FR) and many more...

Tunde Adefioye's statement

I have been thinking a lot about post-colonial theory after a book launch that I attended earlier this year, called “Smash the Pillars“, where one of the writers talked about the fact that we can only talk about decolonization and not post-colonization. I partly disagree with this assertion, after having thought about it for a few days. On one hand, he is right, there is still a lot of decolonizing that needs to occur. Because, namely thanks to patriarchy and the globalizing effects of capitalism, we are still effectively living in colonial systems. Whether in Brazil, where afro-Brazilians, especially in the last 15 plus years have been asserting their own unique identity and history through arts, politics and so on. Or Wales where many efforts have been made to highlight the repression of the Welsh language while reviving it.

Often disagreement for me is about urgency. The urgency I, and those I consider allies and accomplices, see and feel in real ways. Whether it is concerning, in my case, the real threat I feel walking down a street as a visible dark skinned Black person in the US, or the refugee crisis that has been caused by the mismanagement of ecological resources as a lasting impact of colonialism and due to the effects of over-consumption in countries that have the largest GDP. I no longer though want to simply disagree for disagreeing sake or to change white people and white institutions. I want to disagree in a way that gives alternatives that works towards a post-colonial future which writes and sees prominent leading roles for oppressed and marginalized peoples that currently are erased out of discourses that many are holding as they sit comfortably in positions of power. My starting point for doing this work is often using the writings of thinkers like professor of critical race theory and law Kimberlé Crenshaw who gave us gave us intersectionality as a concept. Additionally, Patricia Hills Collins and her focus on Black feminist thought create a basis where I survey other intellectual axis points. Further, feminist, queer, poet, thinker Audre Lorde’s work gives me insights on how to dismantle current structures and conceive of new tools to create alternatives that are not based on the current “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” as bell hooks would say.  Historical understandings of how colonial realities create the present context from someone like prof. Gloria Wekker allow for another type of envisioning. And finally borrowing from the work of activists like the three queer Black “womxn“ (Opal Tometi, Patrisse Cullors, Lisa Garza) who initiated the #Blacklivesmatter movement give me the understanding of how to disrupt and then build alternatives. Currently, my working context is a white cultural institution steeped in bloody colonial history, the city it is based in, its inhabitants, linked to the global context, and applying the above mentioned knowledge base as a driving force for the creation of alternatives structures/spaces/communities that attempt to be as non-colonial, non-hegemonic as possible while having a feminist framework.

Joanna Warsza's statement

Disagreements are unpleasant, however we must remember that we enjoy most of the civic rights, or urban goods because somebody once disagreed, and then others did. Disagreed to yield a place on the bus, disagreed to stay silent, disagreed to obey. As a curator in more or less involuntary manner I found myself in the recent years in some conflictious situations, where meta politics broke the spectacle of art. What I learnt from those circumstances is that stopping the business as usual can be revealing and productive. Such situations expose interesting dilemmas: such as what can art do in the midst of the political conflict? How can art be efficient socially? What are the hidden agendas of terms and conditions of art? What can be the real responsibility of an organizer, a board member, a curator or an artist (beyond exhibition making)? Disagreements are often short-lived and brisk, but the real question would be how to welcome them and transform a peppy and necessary difference and divergence into a substantial accord on the next steps of the game.

Programme

Friday 21.09.2018

Urban Academy

9:00 > 12:00 Discussions Provoker: Tunde Adefioye (BE/US). With Siniša Labrović (HR), Katrien Verwilt / Metropolis (DK), Stephen Collins/University of the West of Scotland (UK) & Michaël Gustavsson/Uppsala University (SE)

13:00 > 16:00 Choice of 4 workshops led by Siniša Labrović (HR), Franck Apertet (les gens d'Uterpan) (FR), Katrien Verwilt/Metropolis & Vera Maeder/hello!earth (DK), Stephen Collins/University of the West of Scotland (UK) & Michaël Gustavsson/Uppsala University (SE)

16:00 > 16:00 Summary of the day

18:00 > 19:00 Conference Chantal Mouffe “How to revitalise democracy at a post-political time” One of the great political philosophers of this time, who has inspired both Podemos and France insoumise, proposes us a radical thought about debate and disagreement. With translation into English.

Urban Interventions

14:00 > 17:30 François Durif - "Vie, vite, vitre, vitrier" 20:00 > 22:30 LUIT - "Marché Noir"

Saturday 22.09.2018

Urban Academy

07:30 > 08:30 Yoga

08:30 > 09:30 Breakfast

09:30 > 12:30 Discussions Provoker: Joanna Warsza (PL/DE). With Mattin (ES), Dmitry Vilensky & Olga Egorova / Chto Delat (RU), Mike Ribalta / FiraTàrrega (ES), Franck Apertet (les gens d'Uterpan) (FR)

13:30 > 16:30 Choice of 3 workshops led by Mattin (ES), Dmitry Vilensky & Olga Egorova / Chto Delat (RU), Mike Ribalta / FiraTàrrega (ES)

16:30 > 17:00 Summary of the day

Urban Interventions

08:00 > 14:00 Kubra Khademi – "Eve is a seller" 08:00 > 21:00 Galmae / Juhyung Lee - "C’est pas là, c’est par là" - installation Non-Stop       Ghost Army 13:00 > 16:30 François Durif - "Vie, vite, vitre, vitrier" 15:00 > 18:00 Reclaim the future 18:00 > 19:30 Reclaim the Future - Repas partagé 19:00 > 20:00 Mattin - "Social Dissonance" 21:00 > 22:00 Galmae / Juhyung Lee – "C’est pas là, c’est par là"  - performance

Sunday 23.09.2018

Urban Academy

08:30 > 09:30 Yoga

09:30 > 10:30 Breakfast

10:30 > 12:30 Conclusions with provokers Tunde Adefioye (BE/US) and Joanna Warsza (PL/DE)

Urban Interventions

Non-stop       Ghost Army 11:00 > 14:30 François Durif - "Vie, vite, vitre, vitrier" 13:30 > 16:00 Le Geste qui sauve - "No Regret" 14:00 > 17:00 les gens d’Uterpan – "Défilés" 15:00 > 17:00 Maria Sideri - "Déviation" 18:00 > 19:30 Aquaserge

WORKSHOPS URBAN ACADEMY

FRIDAY 21.09.2018

1/ Workshop led by Siniša Labrović (HR)

_I am here, but I don't know where _ From 1945 to 1991, Croatia was part of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia was a communist / socialist state in which most of the property was public and state-owned. Hotels, factories, land, forests, parks, flats, hospitals, sports, workers' resorts, roads, waterworks, electrical facilities were publicly owned. In 1991, Croatia became an independent and democratic state, and what has characterized its independence until today consists in two events: the war that lasted from 1991 to 1995, and the privatization of public and state ownership. The privatization process could be described as plundering and destroying all forms of public good in favour of the private interests of those who were associated with political rulers. During the workshop will be presented some of the performances Siniša has done in the public space. Siniša will also present artistic interventions in the public space of other Croatian artists. All these actions deal more or less with robbing, but also with defending the public space and good. The word describing these processes is “transition”, never ending "transition", so most people in Croatia can say: I am here, but I don't know where. Discussion is desired and encouraged throughout the workshop.

2/ Workshop led by Franck Apertet (les gens d’Uterpan) (FR)

Map and everyday life – Spacial writing with constraints In this workshop led by Franck Apartet, participants will discover the implementation phases of the project Topologie in a practical way. Participants will locate and report on city maps the model graph of Topologie, which may not be altered. This will bring them to the writing of physical and musical scores, conditioned by the model graph. After a presentation of Topologie, participants will be invited to work in groups on various city maps, on which the aim will be to define the graph model location. They will then make the necessary location scouting on the internet, in order to define the routes which will impact the writing of both the physical and musical scores created. In collaboration with FAI-AR.

3/ Workshop led by Katrien Verwilt / Metropolis & Vera Maeder / hello!earth (DK)

Metropolis in - walking out The workshop will consist of two parts : a talk and discussion with Katrien Verwilt about Metropolis, and a walking experience outside lead by Vera Maeder. Metropolis [Performance and Art in Urban Space] is an artistic platform for the development of the creative city. Københavns Internationale Teater is the organisation behind Metropolis, an initiative that exits the theatre and enters the city to create art, life and debate. The objective is to break the established notions of the art, and in particular the traditional image of the performing arts. Metropolis was a festival 2007-15, and since 2017 Metropolis is a summer season presenting performing arts based experiences in city streets – far from traditional street performances – but artistic adaptations of significant buildings, squares and roads. These experiences include the staging of everyday life, installations in urban space, artists working with local groups, art experiences in temporary mobile venues and excursions to the parameters of the city. Tales of city diversity are told, and all formats and media are tested. The city is the object, subject and frame, all at once.

www.metropolis.dk

4/ Workshop led by Stephen Collins / University of the West of Scotland (UK) & Michaël Gustavsson/Uppsala University (SE)

Defining the Centre - Cultural Experiments in Peripherality This session brings together two of the researchers from the Reclaim the Future project, a two year collaboration between five theatre companies funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, that is also part of the program of SIGNAL’s Urban Interventions.  The aim of the project was to bring together companies and artists working on the periphery of Europe to share processes, explore ideas and develop closer cultural ties in a time of political discord. The seminar explores key themes that have emerged from the collaboration, examines its successes and failures and seeks to contextualise its theoretical, artistic and political significance.

Know your place - Michael Gustavsson, Uppsala University The polarization between an economically and culturally expansive center vs. a trailing and vulnerable periphery is commonly analyzed in terms of a ”lack” of economic and cultural resources. The centrality of urban economic and political institutions creates an insular conception of culture and knowledge; the conditions and consequences of urban life are generalized, confusing urban norms with presumed neutrality. In contrast, local peripheral cultures can be assessed within their own horizon as central, rather than as determined only by what they are not or do not have. Is it possible to examine rural or peripheral vulnerability as a resource for autonomous art and action, their potential and limitations in maintaining viable and resilient ways of living? Contexts described from the perspective of the ”center” in terms of ”lack” can be, for those who live their lives ”on the periphery”, conditions that make possible resistance, self-reliance and autonomy. Instead of taking for granted the centrality of the center, you can understand the periphery in terms of belonging.

Arts on the Edge: staging performance in An t-Eilean Fada - Dr Stephen Collins, University of the West of Scotland. How is the centre defined? It exists as the seat of political and cultural power, positioning everything either within or without. Crucially, in Scotland, it is also the arbiter of success, the bar by which artistic excellence is judged. Using the theme of ‘dissensus’ (Rancière, 2011) this talk seeks to explore whether the tension between the centre and the periphery can usefully help to provide insights into the current political and cultural moment, and inform Scotland’s arts policy moving forward.

SATURDAY 22.09.2018

1/ Workshop led by Mattin (ES)

Social Dissonance During this workshop the participants will try to interpret this almost impossible score: « Listen carefully. The audience is your instrument, play it in order to practically understand how we are generally instrumentalised. Prepare the audience with concepts, questions and movements as a way to explore the dissonance that exists between the individual narcissism that capitalism promotes and our social capacity, between how we conceive ourselves as free individuals with agency and the way that we are socially determined by capitalist relations, technology and ideology. Reflect on the I/We relation while defining social dissonance. Help the collective subject to emerge. » The score will be later in the day performed for an hour, from 7 PM on. Participants in the workshop engage in the performance opened to an audience after.

2/ Workshop led by Tsaplya Olga Egorova and Dmitry Vilensky / Chto Delat (RU)

The irreconcilable conflicts - The base of contemporary tragedy The workshop will be structured around the discussion focused on 2 of our films, both part of a triptych of socially engaged musicals on which the Chto Delat collective began to work on in 2008. The Tower: A Songspiel (2009) is based on real documents and on an analysis of the conflict around the planned Okhta Center in Petersburg, where the Gazprom corporation intended to house the headquarters of its locally-based subsidiaries in a modern high skyscraper. This has provoked one of the fiercest confrontations between the authorities and society in recent Russian political history. The Gazprom tower is promoted by the authorities as a symbol of a new, modernized Russia. How are such symbols produced? How does the ideological machine of power function? How are projects like this pushed through despite the resistance of ordinary citizens? Partisan Songspiel begins with a representation of the political oppression (forced evictions) of the government of the city of Belgrade on the Roma people on the occasion of the 2009 summer Universiade. It also addresses a more universal political message about the existence of the oppressors and the oppressed: in this case, the city government, war profiteers and business tycoons versus groups of disadvantaged people − factory workers, NGO/minoritarian activists, disabled war veterans, and ethnic minorities. Through the discussion around both films will be tackled the whole spectrum of politics of disagreement in urban situation.  The way the conflict erupts and is developed will be looked at, and the participants will try to imagine how it might be developed otherwise.

3/ Workshop led by Mike Ribalta / FiraTàrrega (ES)

Trouble in Tàrrega ? FiraTàrrega is the international market for performing arts that takes place every year in Tàrrega (Spain), during the second week-end of September. Founded in 1981, it is a great showcase of what is going on in performing arts, with an eclectic program that includes indoor shows and places special emphasis on street arts, visual and unconventional shows. As a meeting place and an international point of reference for debate, the main objectives of FiraTàrrega are to boost the performing arts market, opening the door to the internationalization of the companies; the accompaniment and promotion of creations by emergent artists; encouraging training, focused on artistic creation and culture management and on generating strategic alliances to develop transnational street art circuits or productions. This year FiraTàrrega is presenting two creations in the municipal cemetery. Both creations want to reflect on memory, death, life. The use of the space has generated some complaints, and interesting debates in the local medias and social networks. ma These case studies will be looked at during the workshop more particularly.

URBAN INTERVENTIONS

VIE, VITE, VITRE, VITRIER ! François Durif (FR)

Friday 21 September 14:00 – 17:00 : Walk through Dansaert / Molenbeek / Rue de Flandre 17:00 Rendez-vous @ Maxi Mousse, Rue de Flandre 51

Saturday 22 September 13:00 – 16:00 : Walk through Centre / Mont des arts / Sablon / Bvd de Waterloo / Marolles 16:00 : Rendez-vous @ Café Le Chineur, Place du Jeu de Balle

Sunday 23 September 11:00 – 14:00 : Walk through Abattoirs d’Anderlecht / Rue Heyvaert / Place Lemmens 14:00 Rendez-vous @ Place Lemmens

The parisian storyteller and visual artist strolls through Brussels in his glazier’s persona and in Baudelaire’s footsteps, reclaiming “life with beauty“ ! Meet him by chance during his ramble or come to hear the stories afterwards.

MARCHÉ NOIR LUIT (Laboratoire Urbain d’Interventions Temporaires) (FR)

Friday 21 September Place Sainte-Catherine - 20:00 – 22:00

On this Black Market are exchanged values that are more human than commercial. Negociation, market place, trade session to question our longings and invent new equivalences.

_RECLAIM THE FUTURE Nomadic Carnivals for Change (EU)

Saturday 22 September Starting from Mont des Arts- 15:00 – 18:00 (shared meal at Halles Saint-Géry at 18:00)

Coming from 5 European countries, 5 carnivals built around the future we dream of and hope to offer. Final parade in Brussels !

_GHOST ARMY Ghost Army (BE)

Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 September Quai à la Houille - non-stop

A Brussels collective of artists join in a “Ghost Army“ fighting for a Zone to protect. Come and join this poetic fight !

_SOCIAL DISSONANCE Mattin (ES)

Saturday 22 September La Bellone - 19:00

A one-hour experience to understand how we are instrumentalised, and to reflect on the relation between I and We.

C’EST PAS LÀ, C’EST PAR LÀ Galmae / Juhyung Lee (KR)

Saturday 22 September Carrefour de l’Europe (main entrance central station) - Installation : 9:00 – 20:00 + Performance : 21:00 – 22:00

Strings attached patiently end up in a seemingly inextricable installation. The audience is invited to unhook it, with a bonfire as reward !

EVE IS A SELLER Kubra Khademi (AF)

Saturday 22 September Abattoirs' Market (24, Rue Ropsy Chaudron, 1000 Bruxelles)- 08:00 – 14:00

The Afghan artist, now a refugee in Europe, questions the place of the woman in the public space. She reactivates the myth of the forbidden Fruit and the "fault" of Eve in the context of a contemporan market. Beware of the forbidden fruits (and vegetables) !

NO REGRET Le Geste qui sauve / Liévine Hubert (BE)

Sunday 23 September Grand-Place - 13:30 + 14:30 + 15:30

A young woman performs a silent choreography, seemingly inspired by the deaf-mute language. But wait until it reveals a surprise !

DÉFILÉS Annie Vigier et Franck Apertet (les gens d’Uterpan) (FR)

Sunday 23 September In the streets of Brussels - 14:00 – 17:00

A group of people crisscrosses the city without being announced. They move like in a demonstration, but give no other sign of it. Can a movement be political in itself ?

DÉVIATION Maria Sideri (GR)

Sunday 23 September 15:00 – 17:00 Parade: Parvis St Jean-Baptiste > Kanal/Centre Pompidou > Parc Maximilien > Rue de Brabant > North Station

Based upon the mixed feelings one has in some areas of the city, for reasons that range from a senseof insecurity to social class bashing, a procession with songs, words, or music at different stops.

AQUASERGE Concert in-situ

Sunday 23 september Sportshall Rue Rempart des Moines (Rue du Rempart des Moines 101-103 / 1000 Bruxelles) - 18:00

One of the hottest arty bands of the moment performs its music that doesn’t belong anywhere in the most unexpected place.

SPEAKERS

Tunde Adefioye (BE/US)

Tunde Adefioye, born in Los Angeles, earned degrees in Women's Studies, Molecular Biology and a Master's degree in Bioinformatics. He ended up in Belgium for a PhD in Chemoinformatics at the KULeuven. There, he founded a poetry group with some local and international students, which was awarded with the Culture Prize for Cultural Education by the Flemish government. Since April 2016, Tunde is working as a city dramaturg as part of the artistic team lead by Michael De Cock at the KVS (Flemish Royal Theatre) in Brussels, searching how to use Brussels as a conceptual canvas to create a discourse with different aspects of the city.  In the meantime Tunde has also done dramaturgy for various projects.  In 2017, he curated Beyond the Binary, an evening that focused on the intersection of queer identity, ethnicity and gender.

Joanna Warsza (PL/DE)

Joanna Warsza (born in Warsaw, based in Berlin) is a curator working in the public realm, rather than museums. She is the head of CuratorLab at Konstfack University in Stockholm. Associate curator of the 7th Berlin Biennale in 2012, she has curated since, among others, the Georgian pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, the public program of Manifesta 10 in St. Petersburg, and in 2018 « Public Art Munich ». Recently she has edited I Can’t Work Like This: A Reader on Recent Boycotts and Contemporary Art (Sternberg Press, 2017) and Empty Stages, Crowded Flats: Performativity as Curatorial Strategy together with Florian Malzacher (Alexander Verlag, 2017).

Chantal Mouffe (BE/UK)

Chantal Mouffe is Professor of Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Democracy of the University of Westminster, London. She has taught and done research in a number of universities in Europe as well as North and South America, but has also been a consultant at the Collège international de Philosophie (International University of Philosophy) of Paris. She has written a number of books that look at democracy through the prism of post-Marxist, anti-essentialist thinking. In opposition to the deliberative, liberal models of democracy, Chantal Mouffe proposes the idea and plan of a “composite radical democracy”.

Floriane Gaber (BE/FR)

After studying at the Royal Conservatory of Dramatic Art in Mons (Belgium), Floriane Gaber wrote a literature thesis at Paris 3 where she coordinated the CRAR (Research Center of Street Arts) from 1992 to 1998. As part of the European Network Eunetstar from 2003 to 2006, she did two researches about the audiences of street arts and the accompaniement for transnational creations. From 2014 to 2016 she coordinated the National Mission for Art and Culture in Public Space (MNACEP). As a journalist she has written about the street, circus, theater, contemporary dance and the non-western artistic modes of expressions. Currently, Floriane Gaber teaches at Paris 8 and at the University of Amiens Picardie Jules Verne

Siniša Labrović (HR)

Siniša Labrovic is a performer and a multimedia artist. In his performances he often counts on participation of the public as well as on history inscribed into a certain space, current tensions and transformations that reflect political, class, gender, social and other conflicts. It does not run away either from the use of humor and satire in his works. He likes to take over already established forms, a reality show or a referendum, which then fills with unpredictable content.

Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet (Les gens d’Uterpan) (FR)

Les gens d’Uterpan’s work questions standards and conventions governing exhibitions and live performances, for instance by exploring the limits of the human body and of representation. Based on adjustment mecanisms of the individual, of the body and of creation in these contexts, the artists build a critical work through their choreographic practice. Their work takes place in artistic venues (art centers, museums, art galleries, and theaters) as well as in urban space. Anne Vigier and Franck Apertet (les gens d’Uterpan) are represented by gallery Salle Principale (Paris).

Katrien Verwilt / Metropolis

has a MA in Roman Philology and Theatre Studies from universities in Leuven, Bologna and Aarhus before she began her training in cultural management with the Chaos Pilots. In 1994 she joined the Copenhagen 96 European Capital of Culture team, as international secretary. Since 1998 she has been with Københavns Internationale Teater as programme coordinator and co-director.

Vera Maeder / hello!earth (DK)

background is dance and theatre (School for New Dance Development Amsterdam and the Theatre Academy Berlin UDK). Since she works as a performer, director/choreographer and concept maker and has constantly been testing the limits of the performative. She currently teaches at the Sustainable Design Department  at Linneaus University in Sweden and is a founder and artistic director of hello!earth. hello!earth creates participatory cross-disciplinary art works with relational approach, where the presence of the audience is the co-creating and central element, with a variety of context based works in urban space and natural environments.

Stephen Collins / University of the West of Scotland (UK)

Stephen Collins completed a PhD in the copyrighting of folklore at the University of Glasgow’s School of Law in 2015. His background, both as a practitioner and as an academic, is in theatre. Since graduating in 2005, he has worked as a theatre director with several companies in the UK and beyond, including the National Theatre of Scotland and the National Theatre, Ghana. In Ghana, he developed a passion for community theatre and helped to establish the James Town Community Theatre Centre in 2007. As an academic, he has taught in the Theatre Studies Department and the School of Law at the University of Glasgow. He was appointed Lecturer in Drama and Performance at the University of the Highlands and Islands, 2014-2016, and then Lecturer in Performance at the University of the West of Scotland. He currently sits on the Board of Act for Change, Accra.

Michaël Gustavsson/Uppsala University (SE)

Michael Gustavsson is professor of comparative literature and research fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Uppsala University. He has published essays on issues concerning aesthetic theory, language and epistemology as well as theory and methodology in the arts, the humanities and social sciences. His current research deals with culture, knowledge and place, and the concepts of knowledge and art within the center and the periphery of the modern liberal society, especially in respect of the conflict between central and marginalized forms and norms of life.

Mattin (ES)

Mattin is an artist from Bilbao – currently living in Berlin – working with noise and improvisation. His work seeks to address the social and economic structures of experimental sonic artistic production through live performance, recordings and writing. He aims to question the nature and parameters of improvisation, specifically the relationship between the idea of  “freedom” and constant innovation that it traditionally implies, and the established conventions of improvisation as a genre as well as all the elements that constitute a concert situation, including the audience and the social and architectural space. Last year he finished a PhD at the University of the Basque Country. He edited Noise & Capitalism in 2009 along with Anthony Iles and, in 2012 Unconstituted Praxis - both books are available online (see bellow). Mattin participated in Documenta 14 which took place in Athens and Kassel in 2017 with Social Dissonance.

Tsaplya Olga Egorova and Dmitry Vilensky / Chto Delat (RU)

The collective Chto Delat (“What is to be done?”) was founded in early 2003 in St. Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers, with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. Chto Delat sees itself as a community organizer for a variety of cultural activities, intent on politicizing “knowledge production” through redefinitions of an engaged autonomy for cultural practice today, and also as an artistic cell. In 2013, Chto Delat initiated an educational platform - School of Engaged Art in Petersburg  -, and also runs a space called Rosa’s House of Culture. From its inception, the collective has been publishing an English-Russian newspaper focused on the politicisation of Russian cultural situation, in dialogue with the international context.

Mike Ribalta / FiraTàrrega (ES)

Graduate in History of Art and Master in Creation and Production of Fiction and Entertainment. He is head of the department of Professionals and international relations at FiraTàrrega since 2001. As such, he is the director of the Performing Arts Market La Llotja. He planned and developed the international cooperation strategy of the fair. He is the coordinator of the transnational cooperation projects in which FiraTàrrega is involved. He is member of the Steering Committee of Circostrada network.

François Durif (FR)

Since graduating from the Paris fine arts institute Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1997, François Durif has multiplied his experiences beyond the art world. He turns them into his raw material, sticking to a form of writing that enables him to connect up moments of life and to feel the artist’s urge. He works in situ: installations, videos, readings, and depictions of his actions in relief stud the exhibition area. In so doing, he takes on the risk of a discontinuous practice and develops an art of discretion.

LUIT (FR)

LUIT is a working group co-managed by Zelda Soussan and Aurélien Leforestier and brought together by artistic research and experimenting in public places. The work done by LUIT consists of both projects out in the field and theatre productions. These transverse forms involve artists and researchers with a mixture of the tools and methods coming out of these different types of know-how. The urban area is at the same time the main place of work and the medium and object of their work. The laboratory works on different research strands: the renewal of the notion of participation, the city’s potential for fiction, composition starting with geopolitical rationales (centre-periphery relationship, gentrification, taking ownership of public areas, etc.), and so on to develop methodological tools tied to our practices in the field.

Reclaim the Future (EU)

Over the past two years five performing arts companies – Teatermaskinen (Riddarhyttan, Sweden), Rural Nations (Stornoway, Great Britain), Visoes Uteis (Porto, Portugal, DDT (Riga, Latvia), and La Compagnie des Mers du Nord (Grande-Synthe, France) – have been working together to build Reclaim the Future under the European programme Horizon 2020/Creative Europe. The companies, accompanied by hundreds of participants, invent in each of these countries artistic answers to the following universal questions: What future are we dreaming of? What future do we want to live in? What must be changed to achieve that? What do we want to leave once we are gone? To wrap up this two-year European project, the five countries are rendezvousing in Brussels for a final parade presented as part of SIGNAL #7.

Isabelle Bats and Boris Dambly (BE)

Boris Dambly is a stage designer and performer. He lives and works in Brussels. Born in Belgium in 1985, he began his artistic studies at the University of Art and Design of Derby, in England, then decided to return to Belgium. After a stint in the department of philosophy of Université libre de Bruxelles, he enrolled at ENSAV-La Cambre, where he earned his master in stage design. Since graduating, in 2010, he has founded the performance platform RE:c, thanks to which he participates in various festivals such as Trouble in Belgium, Interakcje in Poland, PPP in Switzerland, Asiatopia in Thailand, Pan Asia in South Korea, and, recently, at the Palais de Tokyo as part of the Do Disturb festival. In his capacity as a stage designer he works with numerous stage directors, including Yves-Noël Genod at the Bouffes du Nord and Claude Schmitz in the Belgian festival Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Isabelle Bats was born in Charleroi in 1969. After studying at INSAS in the Stage Direction Section, she first took up various writing and directing projects, including at the Théâtre de la Balsamine, Océan Nord theatre, and Halles de Schaerbeek performance venue. She then went on to design more intimate shows that she wrote and in which she performed: Energie Fossile, Anne et Isabelle – un soap, Trampoline, and, more recently, Les petits ruisseaux font les grandes rivières, Life’s what you make it, and THIS/IS/ANOTHER/PLACE. She also does debut performances, such as Perfect match and Smashing hits, in festivals and composite evenings. She has written a book, Entre autre choses, published by Déjeuner sur l’herbe.

Galmae / Juhyung Lee (KR)

Juhyung Lee was born in South Korea in 1991. He discovered street performance when he participated in shows put on by Générik Vapeur during his non-military national service in Seoul. After running a tourist rickshaw service that told stories about the neighbourhood where he was born, he left for France to train as a self-taught street performer with Générik Vapeur. In discovering the spectacular major forms of street performance, Juhyung Lee was struck by the ability of street performers to transfigure symbolic places and re-occupy them in a spirit of emancipating joy, akin to what transpired at Ganghwamun Square, the epicentre of political and social events and demonstrations in Seoul. The political scope of his work lies in the way he gets the onlookers involved, asking them to carry out simple gestures: sharing a cake, untangling a giant skein, etc. His arrangements trigger participatory action at the same time as they reveal his work’s symbolism. Solving the puzzle that he presents to this collective corpus in movement necessarily calls for taking account of others, “a universal, vital, daily problem that spills beyond the artistic frame”.

Kubra Khademi (AF)

Kubra Khademi is an Afghan artist born in 1989. As a performer and feminist she explores her life as a woman and a refugee through her work. Kubra Khademi studied the visual arts at the University of Kabul and Beaconhouse University in Lahore, Pakistan. That is where she started debuting performances for public places. Upon returning to Kabul she continued this work, laced with a certain criticism of Afghanistan’s totally male-dominated patriarchal society. In 2015 she performed Armor in the streets of Kabul. Following this highly polemical performance her life was threatened and she was forced to flee her country in the following days. She is currently based in Paris and has received the title of Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) from the French Minister of Culture.

Le Geste qui sauve (BE)

Le Geste qui sauve is a company founded in 2012 by a group of actors from the Brussels-based Ecole Internationale de Création et de Théâtre. Today, the company is run by Liévine Hubert. She is focusing the company’s activities on issues of space, interdisciplinarity, public space, and public participation. Putting the body at the centre of their work is this group’s hallmark. Liévine Hubert conducts projects between experimentation and teaching. She launched Le Laboratoire de l’ordinaire (Laboratory of the Ordinary), devoted to the gestures of daily life, and has set up movement and singing workshops in schools and festivals alike. In parallel with her artistic work, she collaborates with the contemporary dance company LOUMA in Rennes, Réseau des Arts (Arts Network) in Brussels, and Festival FrancoFaune in Brussels.

Maria Sideri (GR)

Maria Sideri’s work is somewhere between performance and choreography and is based on movement, gesture, and voice. She is trained in dance and anthropology and is interested in the relationship between performance and its integration in its cultural context.

Aquaserge (FR)

Aquaserge took shape in 2005 around some musicians who wanted to explore the abyssal depths of rock (kraut, noise, progressive, free, etc.) and to explode the “song format” in the spirit of the late 1960s, in the manner of Wyatt, Gainsbourg, Coltrane, Zappa, Hendrix, The Beach Boys, and so on. Their music is composed collectively in a studio and relates, from opus to opus, the strange mythology of Captain Serge wandering in the abysses on board his submarine cigar. From 2007 to 2014 Aquaserge adopted a community lifestyle in an old farm at Tarnac, in the Lauragais region of France. La Mami – a locality named in a reference to the cow’s udder – was founded on the desire to dissolve all ties of economic dependence and to “do everything themselves”. Aquaserge’s music was thus born in a manger.