News

5 December 2024, Center for the Humanities, New York

How can we break through a culture of mistrust? Suspicion regarding our fellow beings, the authorities and enterprises is growing, blamed on passing the buck and feelings of impotence. 

'Trust: Building on the Cultural Commons' highlights the crucial role played by cultural commons, shared common life and its customs, practices, knowledge and values.

​Read more​

We do what is expected of us with great discipline. And in between the frenzy and stress, another need presents itself: the need for rest, vacation, for contemplation and quiet reflection perhaps, or even doing nothing, standing still, dwelling. The desired transition does not come easily. It is hard work to let go, to slow down, to get out of our routine by slowing down and 'de-disciplining'. We hope you'll pick up this edition of FORUM+ to read as an opportunity, as a space, as an intervention, or delay. Please take ample time for it. Note the surprises, the interruptions and the invitation to allow fuzziness, let the reading also be underwhelming, and take a preposterously long time. In reading FORUM+, we wish you a meaningful slowdown.

^{(Image: Anton Cotteleer, Orange, 1980-2024)}

Selected for the Official Competition of the 51st edition of Film Fest Ghent, hold on to her by Robin Vanbesien will have its Belgian premiere on Wednesday 16th of October 2024 at 19:30 at Kinepolis Cinema in Ghent.

Two additional screenings will be held on Thursday, 17th of October and Sunday, 20th of October. Tickets for all screenings are available right here.

• 16.10.24, 19:30

• Belgian Premiere
• Kinepolis 1 + Q&A with the director and the cast


• Subtitles: Dutch-French 

• 17.10.24, 10:00

• Kinepolis 1 + Q&A with the director and the cast
 
• Subtitles: Dutch-French 

• 20.10.24, 14:00
• Kinepolis 8
• Subtitles: English 

Robin Vanbesien’s hold on to her traces a lived social infrastructure of care, solidarity and struggle that addresses a recent case of police and state violence in the context of migration border control in Belgium.  

In 2018, two year-old Mawda Shawri, daughter of Phrast and Shamden and sister to Hama, was shot dead by a Belgian police officer during a car chase on a central highway. In 2023, over 40 people, both undocumented and documented resident activists, assembled before the camera at La Voix des sans papiers in Brussels to stage a collective hearing of documents from and reactions to Mawda’s case. Together they produce the counter-evidence of this deadly Channel crossing, and they practice justice as a sensuous social space for collective mourning and healing. 

“This film is an invitation—an invitation to attune ourselves to a collective hearing, an invitation to rehearse, together, the capacity to hold transformation.” - Robin Vanbesien

Hold on to her is part of the doctoral project 'Ciné-Place Making' by Robin Vanbesien at Sint Lucas Antwerp and the University of Antwerp.

This April issue of FORUM+ includes a fascinating diversity of contributions from the various fields, genres and disciplines of the arts and artistic research. The contributions all situate themselves as being in the world, rooted in the society of which we are all a part. You now have this brand-new issue of FORUM+ before you, to be explored and discovered. Wishing you a joyful read!

Laurence Petrone, PhD researcher at ARIA and the Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, has won the first Marion De Cannière Prize. As part of the prize she will present a solo exhibition at FRED&FERRY in 2024.  

​Read more​

ARIA is deeply concerned about the situation in Gaza. We urge our political leaders to stop and denounce the violations of international law and the deaths of innocent civilians and to urgently work towards a lasting peace in the region.

At ARIA, we have researchers who have strong ties with (people in) Palestine and Israel and research projects working towards justice for Palestine.

We want to repeat here our solidarity with this research and acknowledge that these are extremely difficult times for the researchers.

In the coming weeks, we will amplify the initiatives of ARIA-affiliated researchers that help raise awareness and stimulate dialogue about the war in GAZA on our social media and website.

>> Read all about the upcoming events here.  

This October issue of FORUM+ is dedicated to exploring the art school as an ecosystem in the 21st century. What does the 21st-century art school look like? What remains of the original mission of conservatoires and academies, after a series of institutional reforms and the introduction of research in the arts? And what challenges does the future hold? These are some of the questions that this new dossier "The art school as an ecosystem" seeks to address.

FORUM+ generally comes out three times a year. This time we are making an exception, accommodating the winter edition in this spring issue. This double publication presents a great diversity of contributions. At the same time, they are remarkably interwoven. Discover these connections for yourself in the February | May issue of FORUM+.

We are excited to announce the release of “Hide to Show – Memefying Live Music, Algorythmizing Social Relationships” by Pascal Gielen and Thomas R. Moore! In this book, the authors use Michael Beil’s scenic composition as a lens to analyze our contemporary society and social media behavior. They delve into the effects of digitalization and online culture on our perception of the world and ourselves, and explore the impact of technological perfections and corrections on live performance.

Through an essay and an interview with Beil himself, Gielen and Moore strive to understand our contemporary hyperreal condition and demonstrate the intrinsic role of music and aesthetics in understanding our human condition. As they argue, beauty is a science, and like science, all our senses are keys to knowledge of the world.

Does not all social media, all our lust for communication and connection, hide our growing loneliness? Join us as we explore these questions and more in “Hide to Show”!

ISBN: 978-94-6475-549-7

For sale at info@nadarensemble.be.

10 euro + shipping cost

ARIA is deeply saddened by the passing of Wim Henderickx, composer, pedagogue, inspirer and teacher at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp.

PhD researcher and CCQO member Kato Everaert was one of the winners of the 2022 Student Researcher Travel Grants at the IADMS 32nd Annual Conference at the University of Limerick (28-31 October 2022). She received the award for her research paper “A qualitative study on low back pain perceptions and coping strategies in pre-professional dancers”.

Earlier this year, FORUM+ launched the dossier (Trans)literate art | De kunst van (ver)talen. Various contributions in this October issue will elaborate on this dossier. We invite readers to engage in further dialogue with these texts. Language, diversity and power are complex themes that constantly provoke new perspectives and continuously stimulate us to exchange our insights.

ARIA stands united and in solidarity with the Iranian women who fight for their right to self-determination. We are appalled at the horror Iranian women are subjected to; how they are threatened, killed, and violated in their most basic human rights. All women, everywhere, should have the right to choose how they live, and what they wear or not wear, without any fear of retaliation. Women should have the right to determine their own lives. More than ever we feel the echo their voices while they are silenced with extreme violence in the street of Iran today. #mahsaamini  #womanlifefreedom. Image by Roshi Rouzbehani.

Sometimes we need to take some time to reflect, as the authors in this new May issue do. In the various contributions, they provide us with an insight into their own journey. These contributions from a wide variety of disciplines seem to enter into an unexpected but interesting dialogue. We would also like to thank you, the reader, 'for your continuous efforts'; and above all, let us remind one another to not take each other for granted.

'The Long Hand' includes many references resulting from Baloji's reading of De Schelde as the access route from 'here' to 'there', as the connection between the city and the world, but also between Belgium and Congo, the artist's native country. The sculpture is a contemporary interpretation of a lukasa (or 'long hand' in Kiluba), an artifact from the Luba culture that is used as a memory aid in the oral transmission of history and knowledge. This transfer was always a social event in which coming together, and shared reflection were of great importance.

With 'The Long Hand' Antwerp now has a work of art that invites everyone to come together, to tell and to listen. It is also the first work by a Congolese artist to be given a permanent place in the city's public space.

To celebrate the event, Jean Kabuta will perform a kasàlà, a laudation poem that remembers remarkable people and events, created especially for this occasion.

When and where? Friday 3 June 2022, 3:00 pm, Cockerillkaai, 2000 Antwerpen.

You can read more about the artwork here.  

Image: Grandhomme & Bennani, SB - Lukasa, schets, 14-01-2021

This winter issue opens a new dossier on '(trans)literate art' and compiles a multifaceted assemblage of language, writing and multilingualism. Artists and educationalists, native speakers/readers and second, third or fourth language users gather their experiences. Language is a place where power manifests itself and can therefore unite or divide people, as guest editors Ahilan Ratnamohan and Ruth Loos perceptively noted. Enter our 'fragile shelter' and together, we can keep the conversation going...

In 2020 Ludivine obtained her doctorate in the arts at the University of Antwerp (ARIA). The aim of her PhD project was to promote positive, artistic interventions based on evidence and research to improve the quality of life of young patients, mainly by concentrating on visual aesthetics that enhance mental well-being. Her doctoral thesis has now been published (in Dutch) as a book by Garant Publishers.

We are gradually waking up in a world that hasn't felt like our own for quite some time. We can and may take to the streets again; living and experiencing with others. The need for dialogue and engagement is great. This new autumn issue of FORUM+ also reflects this sentiment, as it is bustling with insights, frameworks and examples that encourage reflection on our role in society: from dramaturgy to jewellery design, from photography to multilingual poetry.

Photographer Mashid Mohadjerin won the Author Book Award 2021 at Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles with her book 'Freedom is not Free'.

This book is the outcome of Mashid's PhD research at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and ARIA (University of Antwerp).

What happens when the arts step out of the realm of aesthetics? Our dealings with art, whether in repertoire or creation, sometimes expose societal privileges and injustices. The artists themselves know this, and all too often they are forced to occupy the harsh no man's land between voluntary recalcitrance and involuntary precarity.

What about the relationship between art and political revolution? More questions, and even a few answers, can be found in the new Spring issue of FORUM+.

PhD drs. Kato Everaert (CCQO) won the Young Talent Price of the Dutch Association for Dance- and Music Medicines for her presentation on the “Relation between skeletal maturity, menstruation, hyper-mobility, scoliosis and low back pain: an experimental study in pre-professional femaleadolescent dancers.”

Faithful… to what?The unique creative process of the Italian composer Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1088) forces musician to rediscuss and redefine their agency and artistic engagement while performing his music. Moving away from traditional roles and systems of communication, his improvisatory approach to composition and his disregard for written music encourages performers to develop new strategies for interpretation.

Marco Fusi's album ‘Giacinto Scelsi - works for violin and for viola’, published by acknowledged Viennese new music label Kairos, presents listeners with the results of a newly elaborated performance practice of these works, based on archival research, in-depth audio analysis, computer-generated animated scores and extensive exploration of instrumental improvisatory techniques. The liner notes accompanying the album offer detailed insights into research process leading up to the recording.

This album is the result of a Marco Fusi's PhD Research at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp and the University of Antwerp, with the support of the Conservatoire’s research group CREATIE and the Orpheus Instituut, Ghent.

Listen on Spotify

FORUM+ is the magazine for research and the arts in the Low Countries, in collaboration with the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA).

Even in times of crisis, art cannot take root. The way in which the arts are organised, created and historicised is often a reflection of how we organise ourselves as people. But where are the keys to a sustainable arts landscape? From parafictions and meta-realities to co-creations and business models: discover these new perspectives in the Winter issue of FORUM+.

Read all articles from the winter issue on the new website. Contributions by Anke Coumans, Sarah Hendrickx, Louis Volont, Pauline Lebbe, Sef Hermans, Ode de Kort, Kobe Van Cauwenberghe, Walter Van Andel, Arne Herman, Annick Schramme, Matthias Heyman and Elisa Seghers.

Internationally renowned performance poet and ARIA PhD researcher Philip Meersman is the first Belgian to publish a second, originally English-language, collection of poetry, 'There Is Blue Somewhere', at Cyberwit.net publishers in Allahabad, India.

Meersman turns his poems into plastic, site-specific works of art, and dates them, just like visual artists do. He also provides them with the location of creation and defines writing techniques and materials. There Is Blue Somewhere is thus not only a collection of poems, but also a travel chronicle and an exhibition catalogue.

There Is Blue Somewhere takes the reader on a journey through humanity and all its side effects. Meersman holds up a mirror to us and points out the mess we have created. From discarded food surpluses, through a Mediterranean Sea filled with hopeless life rafts, through war zones with swarms of drones, past beggars walking by and among social media influencers, no human weakness escapes Meersman's biting, socially conscious gaze.

There Is Blue Somewhere opens on an ocean teeming with humanity and its various waste products. This surreal vista that Philip Meersman paints is 'Mare Nostrum': a mirror image of the mess we have created. Over fat mountains, across a Mediterranean filled with hopeless life-rafts, and through drone-filled war-zones, crowds of beggars, and swarms of social media influencers, no human foible escapes Meersman's caustic, socially conscious gaze.

(T)he lines in There Is Blue Somewhere are perfect companions for helping to realize that the way we go somewhere may be more important than wherever we think we’re trying to get.

Mark Wallace, Professor in the Literature department at California State University San Marcos

This impassioned, witty, elegiac book captures the performative power of Meersman's work on the page, (...) These are unflinching poems that defy the reader to ignore the message they carry: that we must change our lives.

Jessica Traynor, writer, dramaturg and creative writing teacher based in Dublin

This is the endeavor that is rooted deep in the cultural heritage of Europe but free and solo in the vast ocean of our post-singularity future. There got to be Blue Somewhere.

Yasuhiro Yotsumoto, poet based in Japan

Philip Meersman is blue. So is his newest book. (...) Like the water of life, reflecting heaven. Blue like eternity. (...) that’s what this beautiful poetry collection is about: possibility.

Sharon Mesmer, multi-genre writer and creative writing prof / techno-marm at NYU and the New School.

These poems are to be read by all of us, quietly, in the mind and feel in the soul.

Rati Saxena, poet, writer,  translator, editor and festival director of kritya International poetry festival, India.

​Meersman’s poems are as real as they are surreal, as rooted to the ground as they are ethereal. This collection is a quirky and unforgettable masterpiece.

Nkateko Masinga, South-African author of Psalm for Chrysanthemums currently living in Kenya

Practical information:

There Is Blue Somewhere, Cyberwit.net, 118p, Allahabad, India, ISBN: 9789390202966

https://www.cyberwit.net/publications/1522

Cover Image : “Memorias”, acryl on pannel (pressed wood), Rodolfo Espejo (Argentina), 2016

Author’s picture backcover: Georgi Vachev (Bulgaria) (http://georgivachev.com)

Graphical design inside: Ilse Mertens (Belgium) (Monoeil.be)

‘La Jeune Peinture Belge – De Jonge Belgische Schilderkunst’ is delighted to announce the awarding of the BelgianArtPrize 2021 to Els Dietvorst.

The Jury is particularly impressed by the radical way in which Els Dietvorst has developed and built her practice since the 1990s. The coherence between the oeuvre and the person is also impressive.

Dietvorst’s work often situates itself defiantly outside of the traditional commercial and institutional art circuits, and proves that an independent oeuvre is not only possible, but that it can also be extremely valuable. 

Els Dietvorst will exhibit new work in Bozar in autumn 2021 (13.10.’21 – 02.01.’22)

​belgianartprize.be​

​Interview with Vivi Touloumidi - PhD at ARIA​

'I care about understanding the human condition better. Finding ways of application. Articulate better questions and throw new questions to the already existing cultural production to distill new readings.' – Vivi Touloumidi

Vivi Touloumidi was born and studied in Athens before continuing her jewelry education in Germany and Canada. She holds an MFA from Konstfack University, in Stockholm. Since 2010, her work has been exhibited internationally in several curated gallery and museum shows. She is interested in exploring jewelry as a multifaceted cultural phenomenon and in its manifestations of the human condition, while taking into consideration today’s social challenges. Understanding the cosmos of jewelry is her way of negotiating and commenting on society and history. Touloumidi is currently a PhD fellow at the University of Antwerp and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp where she is also a lecturer.

Read the interview