1) Here, now and in the Middle Ages - Ondine Cloez (FR/BE) & Viviane Genest (FR)

In this workshop, Viviane and Ondine draw on a dialogue between contemporary bodily practices and the study of sources from the Middle Ages to propose a two-hour practice that blends various states of perception. Drawing on and echoing other relationships to the living world transmitted by ancient texts, they invite us to shift our gaze and pay attention to what is there, today, in front of and around us. We will explore how the Middle Ages persist, how they can renew our experience, and how they can appear simply by summoning the present.

Ondine Cloez (FR/BE)

Ondine Cloez is a choreographer and performer. She has worked as a performer for many directors. In 2020 and 2021, Ondine Cloez is artist-in-residence at the Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers. Taking as her starting point the 13th-century work L'art de conserver la santé (The Art of Maintaining Health), she put together a series of multi-faceted projects: a choreographic piece, walks and tours, and lectures extending her thinking on health and the Middle Ages. It was here that she met Viviane Genest, who came to offer two lectures in the garden. They were later invited to take part in the Cerisy colloquium on "performance as method, when performing arts meet social sciences". In 2024, she signed the duet The first word of the first poem of the first collection is basket with Kotomi Nishiwaki. In 2025, she began researching the project "été pourri" as part of the Laboratoires Artistiques du Vivant in Brabant-Wallon.

Viviane Genest (FR)

Viviane Genest is a researcher, medievalist and historian specialising in literary texts. Having to work on an ancient period, she very soon began to wonder what it meant to "speak of the Middle Ages" and the links between the past and the present. Her PhD focused on the art of oratory in fifteenth-century religious texts. She is the author of L'Esthétique du raffinement, on Marie de France (2019), the first known female author in the French language in the 12th century. Then, in collaboration with Ondine Cloez (2021) and as part of her own work, she developed a second field of specialisation, reflecting on the living during medieval times, with a particular focus on plants. The aim of this work is to rework the topicality of a past that is perceived as remote, in the light of contemporary ecological issues. This research has led to collaborations with other contemporary artists, such as Lise Terdjman, working on the heritage of food-producing plants in Seine-Saint-Denis, and Nicolas Guillemin, with Fééricène, a project on magic plants as motifs.

2) D'argent, à la traverse dentée de sable - OSP (BE)

Open Source Publishing (OSP) will be giving a workshop on creating and making coats of arms on fabric. Using a database of medieval coats of arms from Belgian communes, you will remix heraldic symbols to create new meanings. These coats of arms will be drawn on fabric using a pen-plotter (a mechanical drawing tool that uses pens) and will become badges, chasubles, t-shirts, shields, etc.

OSP (BE)

OSP is a graphic design collective based in Brussels. They work on typography, websites, web-to print tools and plotters. They exclusively use free and open source software (F/LOSS). Through their projects they question software as cultural objects and modes of collaboration between graphic designers, artists, cultural institutions and schools. They question the influence and affordances of digital tools through the practice of (commissioned) graphic design, teaching and applied research.

3) aniara rodado (CO/FR) & Martin Hewes (DE)

More information coming soon!

4) BEGIN/BEGUINE - Bryana Fritz (US/FR) & Stefa Govaart (NL/BE)

In the 12th century, groups of spiritual lay women called beguines were gathering together in urban centers throughout the Low Countries to live together in collective housing, called béguinages, and practice religious life outside the jurisdiction of the church. The beguines wrote and published books in the vernacular, originated certain strains of mystical thinking, explored religious practices suitable for urban life, and generated financial accessibility and independence for Medieval women. The beguines did not organize their lives around the goal of being part of dominant history, which is their emancipatory potential.

Following the creation of the performance BEGIN/The Mirror (by Bryana Fritz, Stefa Govaart, and Chloe Chignell), Bryana and Stefa will offer a workshop which resurrects this history with the desire to engage with the practice and problems of collectivity, the embodiment of trans-historical meditations, the lineage of beguine pseudo-mystical literature, and a set of bodily and somatic practices derived from some of the concepts guiding beguine life. The concepts are the combination of active and contemplative service, annihilation (of self) as a form of unification, and pre-modern understandings of authorship and autonomy. The workshop offers both reading and physical exercises, welcomes all levels of experience, and will be taught in English and/or French, depending on its participants' proficiency.

Bryana Fritz (US/FR)

Bryana Fritz was born in Chicago and studied dance at P.A.R.T.S. (Brussels). She works at the intersection of poetry and performance, often in duet with the OSX user interface. Her work is informed by an ongoing interest in medieval literature, fan fiction, media studies and the practice of collective reading. She also works with artist Henry Andersen under the name “Slow Reading Club”.

Stefa Govaart (NL/BE)

Stefa Govaart works across dance, performance, and text. With Bryana Fritz and Chloe Chignell, they co-authored the performance BEGIN/The Mirror (2024). Other collaborations include the research group Sex Negativity (University of Amsterdam) and the annual lecture and performance series spring*meeting (Performing Arts Forum, St. Erme, France). Based in Brussels, they teach at P.A.R.T.S.

5) The Kin Agency - The Aunties (BE)

In their workshop, The Aunties will invite participants to co-create a fictional Kin Agency—a DIY institution for rethinking how to live love, parenting, housing, health, education, and finances as commons to be shared outside the nuclear family. What services would the agency offer, what events would fill its calendar, and how might its internal functioning be structured? Might medieval kinship practice and structures of commons inspire its modern-day vision?

The Aunties (BE)

The Aunties is a Brussels-based collective dedicated to the imagination, realisation, and celebration of family models based on kinship. The Aunties are 7 artists with a variety of artistic backgrounds and activist practices, who are either already, or wishing to engage with kin family constellations and experiencing the lack of institutional support to such life choices. They wish to contribute to a reality where the nuclear family is just one of many equally supported models.