This is only one of the challenges that are at the core of the newly launched RESHAPE Workbook. This Workbook is the result of RESHAPE – Reflect, Share, Practice, Experiment, a research and development project that brought together artists, art professionals, and organisations from Europe and the southern Mediterranean to create new organisational models and alternative ways of working.

Artists and art workers with a track record of experimenting with alternative methods and models, came together to imagine concrete, realistic, and sustainable solutions to the major challenges facing the arts sector. Find out more about the reshaping process and working methods that led us to formulate ideas for and prototypes of alternative practices.

The tangible results of this process are presented in the form of Prototypes, proposals that reflect and provoke the transformation of the sector, towards more equitable and more sustainable methods and ways of working. These take various forms: a game, a collection of rituals, a house, a shapeshifting department, a multitude of questions, a call for action, and many others. All contribute to positive change in the arts and its relation to society.

RESHAPE encourages adopting, applying, and building on the prototypes in the everyday practices of artists, art workers, and organisations in Europe and the southern Mediterranean – indeed, all over the world, to contribute to fundamental change in the arts and society.

We invite you to explore the material that has been published on reshape.network and start your own path of reshaping the arts. 

Experimental, multidisciplinary, artistic practice requires production forms that are equally agile and experimental.
But how can these be reconciled within the straitjacket of a tightly organized sector where, due to a chronic lack of resources, supreme efficiency is a key word? What does this mean for the people who take on the mediating and facilitating role of producer? For artists and craftsmen who squirm into all kinds of bends to make the gap between the necessary space for artistic development and the reality of figures?

But also: what does this work mean within the canon of classical ‘management models’? And is the knowledge and expertise we are building here perhaps worth more than we think in a world in transition?
On this day we look very specifically at the working conditions of the (flex) workers behind the scenes, especially the producers, dramaturges etc. How can we make the crucial position of creative producers more visible and more sustainable? Can we support each other (even) better? Tools, expertise and good practices that we can share? And shouldn’t we set up a clear narrative towards policy makers?

The symposium will take place at wpZimmer on March 19th from 10h til 18h.

(illustration by:  Borislava Willnevermadeit)

[Wet kitchen – an unhygienic space to boost our collective immunity, a space to experience artistic energy and experiment togetherness. A place to exercise critical thinking and resilience.]

In the context of wpZimmer, The Wet Kitchen project stands for collective research – with the trajectory artists, the curatorial team and the wpZimmer team itself.

Research on how to create new possibilities to support artists and how to create a visibility for artistic work during these challenging times, but also to find the way to reconnect physically and share processes, struggles, drives that we all have, how to overcome isolation and think ahead of time, or with the time we live in – instead of moving against it.

As a result of these collaborative research moments, there will be two moments of presentation.

29/05 – Presentation 1: Gosie Vervloessem and Maria Lucia Cruz Correia (The Detective Agency of Monsters)

30/05 – Presentation 2: Dan Mussett, Francesca Chiodi Latini, Katrien Oosterlinck and Fabrice Samyn

More information coming soon!

Starting this week, the collective residency: Rooted Hauntology has begun! Ingrid Vranken is joined by Mihaela Brebenel, Nahuel Cano, Mayfield Brooks, Rodrigo Batista, Mathieu Charles, Gosie Vervloessem and Rasa Alksnyte to explore the haunted world.

Due to the recent Covid19 regulations, the residency has to take a different form – but the participants succeeded in finding a new way to be connected while developing ROOTED HAUNTOLOGY collectively.

Together with video maker Jochem Baelus, Charlotte filmed and interviewed people with ‘abnormal’ bodies: from physical limitations to bodybuilders. In addition, she immersed herself in extreme forms of movement, with the aim of making the (un)perfect body physically tangible on stage.

During KIEM festival in CC De Grote Post, Charlotte will share a work in progress with the audience. Travel to the seaside on Saturday 10 October 2020! Click here for tickets.

Have you heard? This Friday we kick off the first day of THE IMAGE GENERATOR III – a three day festival taking place in Antwerp.

With The Image Generator III, wpZimmer, in collaboration with Platform 0090, Koninklijke Akademie voor Schone Kunsten – In Situ³, Kunst/Werk, Musica and Out of Sight presents a programme that crosses the border between visual arts, performance and sound.

Several artistic interventions, performances and actions in the city of Antwerp, invite you to follow the proposed route or temporarily inhabit new places, while redrawing your daily routine from September 25th until September 27th. 

We invite you to take a look at the exciting programme we have put together for you! Discover all the information on the artists and performances that are part of THE IMAGE GENERATOR III.

See you soon?

We were happy to open up our doors again for our residents a while ago, and today we gladly announce that we get to welcome our audience too! Of course, considering the current situation, we’ll be doing this 100% Corona-proof. This way we want to ensure the safety of our audience, our artists and our staff members. 

Let’s go through some guidelines that will help us all to enjoy art performances in a responsible manner. Find them here!

From the end of August, the current team will be strengthened by two driven women: Dušica Dražić and Latifa Saber. They are both the starting force behind an inspiring place or collective in Antwerp. Dušica founded OUT OF SIGHT in 2018 and Latifa is one of the founding mothers of Baya Collective. 

Dušica will collaborate with the trajectory artists & residents and support the process towards a collective learnscape. Latifa will take charge of the online communication and work on a trajectory around community building. 

Collective project by Maria Lucia Cruz Correia, Aylin Balikci, Lucie Cellier, Zoé Gronchi, Laura Laigo, Abigaël Mackenzie, Morgane Roduit et Clara Rouge.

With Voice of Nature: The Trial, presented last year at the far° festival, Maria Lucia Cruz Correia involved the audience in a transformation process through fiction, magic and documentary. Spotlighting the notion of ecocide, this theatrical process addressed the way laws and justice may serve the Earth’s ecosystems by granting rights to nature. This year, in collaboration with HEAD–Genève (Geneva University of Art and Design), far° has asked the artist to work with students on a new project. Common Dreams: Moving Away Together follows from a workshop run in February. Between fiction and reality, the project focuses on long-term research on education about the future, much like an alternative school to outline strategies to counter climate change. The topics discussed focus on the common good, healthcare, hope and time and will address what unites us and how to teach survival. For Communs singuliers#1, the school has adopted a nomadic form, settling in a forest and on the shores of Lake Geneva. For five days the students unfold a programme, which includes several collective activities such as planting, singing, reading, eating, discussing, contemplating, snorkelling or rebelling… Every day a guest also shares his or her knowledge (of biology, economy, astrology…) and opens discussions on topics relating to the ecological transition. In response to the burning issues of our times, Common Dreams: Moving Away Together offers space and time to explore our capacity to act, to think together and maybe develop common dreams.