The fresco ‘Porte de Namur ! – Porte de l’Amour ?’ by artist Chéri
Samba represents an imaginary gathering of members of the local
community on the Chaussée d’Ixelles in Brussels, near Porte de Namur.
Since it was first exhibited in 2002, this image has been widely
disseminated and has sparked a great deal of controversy. On 25 June
2011 this fictitious scene will become reality, as the 80 or so people
who posed for the artist create a tableau vivant in the very place where
the painting was originally conceived.

Nine performers give it everything they’ve got to the accompaniment of loud techno music. They dance, dance and dance. A physical and emotional marathon, a bomb of non-stop energy which you still feel in your body long after it has ended.

How can you get out of your body? How long can you stay out of yourself …without losing it altogether? TALES OF THE BODILESS explores a condition that is hard to imagine : a world without human bodies.

For his second opera production, Jan Decorte, the uncrowned king of Flemish theatre turns once again to the English baroque composer, Henry Purcell. The Indian Queen (1695) is a ‘semi-opera’. Decorte’s quest for basic simplicity is perfectly in keeping with the strength and freshness of this ‘not-yet-opera’.

For his first major solo exhibition, Kris Verdonck, theatre-maker,
artist and resident at Kaaitheater, is the guest of Z33 in Hasselt. He
is creating a new work called EXOTE there, a metaphorical garden
installation with a selection of the most invasive non-native plant and
animal species in Belgium. They are a genuine danger to biodiversity,
the economy and public health.

A few years ago the young Iraqi theatre-maker Mokhallad Rasem arrived in Belgium from Baghdad. In Iraqi Ghosts, his first major project in Belgium, he shows us the unreal violence and increasing alienation of the recent wars in his country. 

Barbara Matijevic and Giuseppe Chico present their own form of ‘history’ in three sparkling, imaginative and highly entertaining lecture performances. In a way the city of New York is the subject of Forecasting. The performers examine subtle and often invisible changes in our ideas and bodies, inspired here by modern scientific and technological developments.

Living Archive is a performance in which the dance historian and dramaturge Myriam Van Imschoot brings her personal archives to the stage. She draws on interviews she did when she was a critic, as well as other audio relics. Living Archive is an associative poem of sound and image, with Van Imschoot as a living index, guardian and administrator, prosthesis, ear, and lover and stealer of voices.

Matijević and Chico give an associative view of how they experienced 1989, the year the Wall fell and the world was turned upside down. Their material consists of authentic and fictional audio documents either made in 1989 or related to it by content: pop songs, excerpts from radio and TV shows, private recordings and so on. This second part concentrates on sound.

Barbara Matijević and Giuseppe Chico present their own form of ‘history’ in three sparkling, imaginative and highly entertaining lecture performances. In I AM 1984, Barbara Matijević takes us on a journey through the year 1984. She shows us bits of world history, science fiction, film, the virtual world of internet, and video games.