The marsh as a catalyst for art and a new common imaginary

Day at the Marais Wiels

Morning 9:30 > 13:00

With Stalker (Giulia Fiocca & Lorenzo Romito) (IT), Forum Territoriale Parco delle Energie: le lac Bullicante de Roma (Sabrina Baldacci & Enzo de Martino) (IT), Allan Wei & Valeria Cirillo (BE/IT), Paula Almiron & Wouter De Raeve (AR/BE), Maria Lucia Cruz Correia (PT/BE)

Afternoon 14:00 > 17:30

4 workshops to choose from

#1 Allan Wei & Valeria Cirillo (BE/IT)

Thinking with wetlands, imagining a desirable futures (FR)

#2 Paula Almiron & Wouter de Raeve (AR/BE)

Swamp Sacrifices (EN)

#3 Back2SoilBasics (BE)

Fire policies (FR/EN)

#4 Jeanne Pruvot Simonneaux & Anna Czapski (BE)

We will come back. Preparation to the Haunt-ology of places (FR)

Stalker (Giulia Fiocca & Lorenzo Romito) - DAFNE (Danni Ambientali ed Ecossitemi Urbani Emergenti- Dommages environnementaux et nouveaux écosystèmes urbains) & Forum Territoriale Parco delle Energie: le lac Bullicante de Roma (Sabrina Baldacci & Enzo de Martino) (IT)

For a Federation of insurgent lakes in Europe (EN)

Midway through their School of Nomadic Urbanism, Giulia Fiocca & Lorenzo Romito will come under the tent and present the DAFNE project. They will be accompanied by Sabrina Baldacci & Enzo de Martino from the Forum Territoriale Parco delle Energie association, fighting for the defense of Lake Bullicante.
Lake Bullicante emerged in Rome in 1992, on the ruins of a closed artificial silk factory, during the construction of a shopping centre. Lago Bullicante is a place of great biodiversity, its spontaneous renaturation was met by a community that has, over the years, learned to defend it, to know it, and to care for it. 
Just like the Marais Wiels, the lake emerged amid industrial infrastructures and is reshaping the urban landscape while providing neighbourhoods marked by environmental and social inequalities with the biodiversity now necessary to make cities liveable. The speakers will highlight the links between the Marais Wiels and Lake Bullicante, and will explain the importance of building a federation insurgent lakes in Europe.

https://stalkerlab.wixsite.com/spontaneamente
https://www.facebook.com/StalkerNoworking/ https://www.instagram.com/stalkerlab/?hl=fr

Allan Wei & Valeria Cirillo (BE/IT)

Thinking with wetlands (FR)
  On 17th September 2022, an alliance ritual took place in Rome between Lake Bullicante and the Marais Wiels in Brussels. This alliance marked the coming together of two communities, that of the Prenestino district of Rome and that of the Saint-Antoine district in Forest. A year after this act of union, Valeria Cirillo and Allan Wei reflect on what it means to think about and build communities around new territories so rich in biodiversity and creative relationships that are emerging in the interstices of cities. Born of human-induced damage, these two wetlands have generated new imaginaries and new ways of inhabiting the city from a multi-species, non-anthropocentric perspective. At a time when liberal capitalism is systematically exploiting cities' territories through property speculation, extractivism and concrete development, these spaces that have emerged from the 'ruins of capitalism' are spawning new generative values outside the logic of the market.  How can we imagine desirable new futures based on these 'urban resurgences'? What kind of alliances can we forge for these insurgent areas?

A doctoral student in philosophy in Rome, Valeria Cirillo took interest in the fight for Lago Bullicante as part of a 'spontaneous' collective research project with Stalker. Her research examines the ways in which we inhabit ecopolitical catastrophe from the perspectives of Alfred North Whitehead's thinking. The lake becomes a case study for rethinking philosophical production when faced with ecological emergencies.

A historian with a background in law, geography and education, Allan Wei has been living and teaching in Forest for ten years. He is also involved in the project of the Par Chemins bookshop. Having witnessed the growing interest in a new local pond threatened by land speculation in a context of densification and gentrification, he started carrying out prospective research on the future of Brussels' urban wastelands. He also works for the Université Libre de Bruxelles.

Paula Almiron & Wouter De Raeve (AR/BE)

I Build My Language With Rocks (EN)

Since 2021, Paula Almiron and Wouter de Raeve have been working on the project I Build My Language with Rocks, a choreographic project about the movements of the Northern Quarter in Brussels. Within this research, the swamp has been a companion as a way to experiment on alternative ways of creating space in a neighborhood that is currently being redeveloped. As part of their research, they are now working on a program that is called Swamp Sacrifices. It addresses the swamp and the water of the Zenne valley that is buried under the asfalt, concrete and buildings of Brussels. The swamp has been historically a place of non-productivity and as such an ecology for transcendence and spirituality. In Brussels, as in many other parts of Northern Europe, the swamp has been a place of sacrification, where people addressed offerings to gods, superior beings and other worlds. But throughout the evolution of the city the swamp has been forced to become a zone of productivity, inscribed in a capitalist thinking that regards both nature and human as a commodity.
The duo will share part of their working process. They will also give a workshop in the afternoon.

Paula Almiron is an argentinian choreographer and dancer, living and working in Brussels. Her work navigates between geology, choreography and fiction, and it is focused since some years in the material, social and spiritual transformation of water landscapes. Since 2019, she's been working on a series of works that grow in relation to a desertifying group of bodies of water located in the Bolivian Andean plateau. (Always Coming Hole, 2021, The River and The Devil, 2024). Since 2021, she collaborates with Wouter De Raeve in the project I Build My Language With Rocks, a choreographic project about the movements of the Northern Quarter in Brussels, where among other things, they coordinate the space M33.

Wouter De Raeve, artist and landscape designer, develops a critical as well as speculative reflection on the role of the creative actor (the architect, the artist, etc) within the power dynamics of the involved parties in spatial development processes. He has a film project in collaboration with Lietje Bauwens, WTC A Love Story , in which the relationship between the actors involved in the reconversion of the WTC towers and the North Quarter in Brussels is analysed. They have just released the sequel WTC A Never-Ending Love Story. Their collaboration takes shape through the non-profit organisation Fourthirty-One.

https://www.paula-almiron.com/
https://hiros.be/fr/artistes/paula-almiron-wouter-de-raeve-2/

Maria Lucia Cruz Correia (PT/BE)

Natural Contract Lab (EN)

How does water flow through and between human and more-than-human bodies politically, socially and environmentally? How do we apply a process based on reciprocity, accountability and interdependency to bodies of water? Do we need other ways of making justice and caring for bodies of water? These are questions raised by the project Natural Contract Lab, founded in 2020 by Maria Lucia Cruz Correia in collaboration with a multidisciplinary group (Marine Calmet, Brunilda Pali, Lode Vranken, Vinny Jones, Evanne Nowak and Margarida Mendes). Natural Contract Lab has done case studies of the Sijoumi Lake in Tunisia, the Tejo river in Portugal, the Rhone River in Switzerland and is now focusing on the Zenne River in Belgium. Natural Contract Lab is inspired by restorative justice practices. The group has designed a protocol of reciprocal care with the aim of building new relationships with water, as river guardians. During Feral, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia present the project and share aspects of the Lab’s practice with us by explaining their different methodologies.

Maria Lucia Cruz Correia’s cross-sectoral and hybrid practice speaks to her deep engagement with the ecological crises as a guardian of nature. Since 2009, her work reacts to the climate emergency and environmental conflicts of our times by bringing audiences and communities into participatory laboratories. These temporary collaborative processes are like a living organism that grows in kinship with ecologists, rivers, activists, resilient plants, environmental lawyers, restorative justice practitioners... Her artistic practice weaves rituals of care, embodied performance, walking-with practice and social design to fabulate environmental social services, such as Urban Action Clinic, Common Dreams School(Cifas 2020), voiceofnatureKINSTITUTE and Natural Contract lab.

4 workshops to choose from:

#1 Allan Wei & Valeria Cirillo (BE/IT)

Thinking with wetlands, imagining a desirable futures (FR)

Allan and Valeria are proposing a two-part workshop that will relate to the collective questions raised during the Nomadic School of Urbanism proposed Stalker. In the first part of the workshop, participants will be invited to speculate together on what the practice of 'Thinking with wetlands' might entail, based on a collective reading of text extracts. This will be followed by a fiction-lab session in which participants will be invited to imagine desirable futures for and with resurgent urban wetlands.

#2 Paula Almiron & Wouter de Raeve (AR/BE)

Swamp Sacrifices (EN)

A song writing workshop departing from a resistance song from the Northern Quarter in the 60’s, and that was sung collectively in the construction sites of the neighborhood. The song ‘Quartier Nord’, composed by the group GAM (Groupe d’action musicale) together with the inhabitants of the neighborhood, is a key element of Paula and Wouter’s upcoming program Swamp Sacrifices. As a scream calling for thinking activism in a transversal way, during the workshop, they propose to revisit it, re-sing it and re-write it in the marais Wiels, as a point of departure for imagining how different resistances resonate, inform and strengthen each other.

#3 Back2SoilBasics (BE)

Fire policies (EN/FR)

Back2SoilBasics will host a fake harvest where vegetables will be "picked" from the Marais. The group will then make and eat soupe using the harvested produce. This will be a pretext to discuss the accessibility to good food while manifesting abundance whist hot soupe cooks on the fire.

Back2SoilBasics is a network of people guided by the power of Mother Nature. They share basic tools for permaculture in an urban context to make resilience more accessible. They focus on people of colour, local communities or people with less access to nature. This creates an open school, a space for exchange where everyone's contributions has equal value.

#4 Jeanne Pruvot Simonneaux & Anna Czapski (BE)

We will come back. Preparation to the Haunt-ology of places (FR)

We will start with a languid physical and sensory warm-up to put us in a slightly altered state of perception and in deep connection with the Marsh. We will then travel through space and time using tried and tested techniques. When we arrive in this other place, we will take the opportunity to change our personalities and quickly create a parallel micro-society. We will then think about which ghost we want to be and which places we want to haunt. Finally, we will return to the here and now, with all our arms and legs. This other self, encountered during the experience, may reappear from time to time, in order to alter everyday life.
A narrative speculation technique based mainly on the sense of smell, intuition and inner vision.

Anna Czapski is a documentary punk poet. After founding and directing cultural projects with a penchant for utopia and chaos, Anna now uses gentle diversion of methods (collective intelligence, futurology) to create slightly mischievous situations and approach other ways of living, between teamwork and group poetry. She loves working in public space, in the open air and always in a group. She loves the clash of cultures, the sharing of power and the friction between fiction and reality. Her main current projects are Futurology of Cooperation and La Plage Interdite: la marche comme lecture/écriture du paysage (with Marine Fontaine). She is a member of Wander Structure.

Jeanne Pruvot Simonneaux is a sculptor and a cook. Her work is a vivid mix of sensations, culinary hearing, non-anthropocentric touch, 360-degree view, dynamic and fragrant movement, and sharp taste. She intercepts the global, for play and performance. With Antoine Boute, she forms the Lasso intervention duo (a barefoot start-up specialising in radical & playful austerity: tactile tactics for anywhere, anytime and miraculously fun body exits).

Jeanne and Anna both sing in experimental rock bands.