WORKING TITLE FESTIVAL — Do people treat plants with enough respect? What happens when plants break out of the background of our living rooms? Gosie Vervloessem calls on a number of horror movies in which plants frighten us. Sometimes they attack us head-on, but often the horror lies in ominously waving branches and rustling bushes. According to the artist the exploitative human-vegetal relation comes to a climax in the nature reserve, the plantation and the botanical garden. Places with a direct link to a colonial past.

Get to know the latest generation of theatre-makers. In June, three theatre students from the RITCS will be presenting their graduation productions at the Kaaistudios. Not mine and other stories invites you to take a seat at the table. A table at which stories of a generation of twenty-somethings pass by. Young people with an opinion, who coincidently cross each other’s path in the city. Or is there more to it than coincidence?

Six actors on the stage and only one solo. There are no leading or secondary roles, but six simultaneous interpretations of the same script. How strictly will each actor comply with the stage directions? Will they allow one another a place in the spotlight? The Script focuses on acting, ánd on the existential loneliness that you sometimes feel in a group.

Ivo Dimchev is one name that cannot be missed from the Performatik programme: the exuberant performer has never missed a single edition. He often depends on audience participation to create his performances, such as P-Project (shown during Performatik13) and FB Theater. This time he is returning with his brand-new selfie concert. Take out your phone… because no selfies means no concert!

Nora Turato points a selfie-cam at today’s hectic internet culture. She exposes the fears that are at the root of our society’s shortening attention span. Her monumental installation in cold, black steel suggests that our ‘totally wired’ state of mind may be far more institutionalized than we think.

Alexis Blake selected a series of female poses found in artworks from the Renaissance to early Modernism and created a choreography and performance that explores subjectivity and examines gender and representation through embodiment, repetition and sound. Two dancers and four musicians in the Horta Hall at BOZAR will abstract the poses, strip them of their history and context, and confront the viewer to address, contradict and question preconceived notions of a body. 

Dancer/choreographer Ula Sickle presents a new and intimate sound performance in the striking, seven-storey staircase of WIELS. It is a pared down score for body and voice, performed by the artist and singer Fabienne Seveillac.

Gabino Rodriguez begins an ongoing performance in the Kaaistudios stable, as part of U-Loss by Barbara Raes/Beyond the spoken.