During this evening we will focus on tendrilesque writing. What happens to human speech if vines enter our flesh, roots crawl through our veins, and we turn into hybrid plant monsters? What happens if we let plants speak through us and what kind of new language, new bits of knowledge and new worlds can emerge from there? We will explore these topics while focusing on the status of women, and their relation to plants, as presented in works of fiction in which the distinction between women and plants becomes blurry.

The School of Speculative Documentary is an interdisciplinary space for encounter that seeks to question the documentary act. Creators take the floor to discuss uncertainty and guesswork, to confront the unfixable holes in their work and the messiness of reality.

PERFORMATIK 2015 - Conversation with Philip gehmacher, Grace Schwindt and Victor Wang (moderator).

PERFORMATIK 2015 - Conversation with Jonathan Burrows, Matteo Fargion, Manon de Boer & George Van Dam in a relaxed atmosphere. Moderator: Pieter Van Bogaert.

PERFORMATIK 2015 - Feel free to join one of the many salons where we reflect on the dialogue between performance arts and visual art, together with curators, artists and critics. In this opening salon, academic Shannon Jackson (UC Berkeley) and curator Hendrik Folkerts (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Documenta 14) talk to art critic Pieter T'Jonck.

Pharmakon - On the second day we look into practices, developed in Brussels and elsewhere, that propose another economy of values and desire. We confront the current movements of speculation on imagination and utopia, and the subsequent proposals for the reorganisation of work and solidarities.

Burning Ice - The concept of ‘resilience’ is increasingly prominent in reactions to the socio-ecological systemic crisis that is affecting us. The arts too have increasingly been talking about ‘resilience’ in recent years. In this salon curator Grégory Castéra will talk with Franck Leibovici and Amy Franceschini about the role ‘resilience’ plays in their artistic practice.

Choreographer and visual artist Julien Bruneau, anthropologist Arnaud Halloy and philosopher Isabelle Stengers set up a conversation on trance and relational practices between magic, science and the arts.

A plea for imagination at the heart of Europe, where dreams are coming under increasing pressure. Fifty years after Martin Luther King’s famous speech in Washington (1963), the Belgian-Nigerian novelist Chika Unigwe and the Brussels political scientist and sociologist Philippe Van Parijs tell us in full their dreams for tomorrow’s world.