Inspired by the digital’s effect on the bodies, the choreographer Mette Ingvartsen creates a new universe. There, people, technology and organic matter coexist and create an abstract set of movements. Thus, the performance explores a poetics of plasticity, abstraction and imagination.

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.

Extrastatecraft controls everyday life in the city: it is the key to power – and resistance – in the twenty-first century. A talk by the American architect and urbanist, Keller Easterling (Yale University). Also, it is part of the Ecopolis festival.

The massive protest of young people against the climate impasse represented the most sensational event of 2018. Indeed, the Generation Hope holds up a mirror to politicians and shifted the climate crisis to the center of our social debate. They became united, refusing to accept half-hearten measures and insisting on radical climate policies. Thus, young people conquered a prominent place on the political stage.

An expedition to the source of the Styx led Karen Røise Kielland and Katja Dreyer to the heart of Greek mythology. This mythical river symbolized the border between our upper world and the underworld. Indeed, its water made Achilles immortal, it made Narcissus fall in love with his own reflection. They breathe new life into an old myth through numerous encounters with local residents and their stories about the river.

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.

The posthuman helps us make sense of our flexible and multiple identities. Thus, it helps us to measure the effects of post–anthropocentric thought. A talk by philosopher and feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti.

This is a humorous and passionate monologue rooted in a form of artistic barefoot anthropology. Indeed, Orla Barry directs Einat Tuchman, exploring the boundaries of art, gender, and the rural everyday. Thus, the artist reflects on a culture in which the connection with nature has been broken.

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.

Indeed, what objects exist in the social world and how should we understand them? Founder of object-oriented philosophy, Graham Harman sheds light on the nature and status of objects in social life.

Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

We live in an age in which human activity has a profound impact on our physical and ecological surroundings. Thus, there is the need to question what role can the performing arts play in the debate on climate crisis? Indeed, in this performative conference by David Weber-Krebs and Jeroen Peeters (curators), a variety of hybrid artistic and theoretical interventions wander around these issues.

Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus. 

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.

Art critic, media theorist and philosopher Boris Groys argues that modern ‘antiphilosophy’ does not pursue the universality of thought as its goal, but rather proposes the universality of life.

Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus. 

Under the title Hyperpresent, five contemporary thinkers give a talk on a new idea that they introduced themselves. Afterwards, they engage in a conversation with the philosopher Laurent De Sutter – who curated this series.

The philosopher Zhao Tingyang introduces ‘Tianxia’: a conceptualization of the world as the composition of three realms. These are the physical, the psychological and the political, thus placing inclusivity and harmony at the heart of a global worldview.

Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus

Benjamin Verdonck is an all-round artist. He creates visual work and theatre – poetic, nimble and compelling – both in theatres and in public spaces. In this performance, he builds and operates an unusual planetarium of sticky tape, ropes and cardboard.

Please note: cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus.

The year is 2020. From Australia to the Campine, nature is on fire. There is rapid deforestation, constant building projects, and millions of species of plants and animals are under imminent threat of extinction. This exploitation of nature is radically undermining and destabilizing our world and thus our very existence. When a new virus creates an epidemic and then a pandemic, existing tensions come under even more pressure. As always, vulnerable groups here and in the global South pay the highest price.

Multispecies urbanism puts forward a ‘just’ urban development on the basis of policies and practices that give priority to reciprocal interrelations between humans and more than humans. By giving primacy to the care of the ‘natural world’, multispecies urbanism de-centers humans as limited, single species and reorients towards strategies, which go further than mere human strategies: diverse and fluid humans become participants in their multispecies communities. This new urban planning and design paradigm is now only beginning to take place in municipal practice, but is setup to survive the ongoing crises of democracy, planetary climate catastrophe, and uneven resource distribution.

The five fundamental mechanical principles of movement are gravity, inertia, resistance, momentum, action, and reaction. And they inspire Ivana Müller in her new work. Thus, these principles compel bodies, objects, animals, water, minerals and plants to move. Indeed, we must control them if we want to walk and dance. What if these forces apply to social, political and emotional bodies? A new perspective arises on the world around us.

This show has been cancelled to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus. 

In this talk, Maneesha Deckha calls for a non-anthropocentric reorientation for Canadian law and other Western legal orders, by criticizing their treatment of animals as property, but also finding fault with personhood as an appropriate animal-friendly replacement. Instead, marshalling feminist and postcolonial insights, as well as critical animal studies, the book theorizes a new legal category altogether, namely beingness, as better able to protect animals from exploitation and value animals for who they are. Professor Deckha’s talk will delineate this new concept as well as outline how the foundations of anthropocentric legal systems must otherwise change to move toward justice for animals.

In the second instalment of A Series of More-Than-Human Encounters we are inviting researchers, activists and artists in a three-day-programme to explore the meaning and potential of justice in a multi-species post-imperialist world. Should we confer fundamental rights to animals and natural formations – such as lakes, the seas, rainforests and the soil? What can historical, present-day and future human and more-than-human alliances of resistance teach us? How are the worldwide decolonial struggles related to the global and local struggles for the live, safety and autonomy of non-human animals?

With Eva Bernet Kempers, Darko Lagunas and The Dunes of Schouwen-Duiveland.

We live in an age in which human activity has a profound impact on our physical and ecological surroundings. How can we create stories, aesthetics, and spaces of experience to deal with this situation reflexively and critically? What role can the performing arts play in the debate on climate crisis?

Are you – or rather, were you – a regular theatre goer? How do you feel about no longer being able to see a live performance? And what do you think your first theatre visit will be like when the doors of the theatres will open again? That is what David Weber-Krebs wants to know.

A Series of More-Than-Human Encounters #3. Over the course of this evening, the intersections between animal liberation and disability liberation are explored. How do speciesism and ableism intersect and operate in relation to other -isms in a system of oppression? If certain abilities are the prerequisite to include other animals into the circle of moral consideration, what ethical and practical implications does this hold for humans who do not possess these abilities?

With Agnes Trzak and Geertrui Cazaux.

A Series of More-Than-Human Encounters #4. To highlight the International Day Against Racism, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson takes the floor to share her innovative thinking on the intricate relations between race, species and the idea of ‘the human’. In her thought-provoking book Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World, she scrutinizes key African American, African and Caribbean cultural texts. She argues they generate conceptions of ‘being’ that disrupt the human-animal distinction that persistently reproduces the racial logics and orders of Western thought.

In her lecture, Suzana Milevska will present various art practices of women artists who have mounted ecofeminism as a critical frame that not only offers environment awareness, but also aims to deconstruct contentious assumptions that dwell on stereotypical and patriarchal hierarchical understanding of women’s creativity and productivity.

In this talk, dr. Suzana Milevska will discuss various art practices of women artists who mounted ecofeminism as a critical frame that not only offers environmental awareness, but also aims to deconstruct the assumptions that dwell on stereotypical and patriarchal hierarchical understanding of women’s creativity and productivity.

According to an old Spanish folk tradition, villagers used to cry directly into the cloudy sky to ward off an approaching storm. With a canticle, they tried to scare away lightning and turn hail into raindrops. A nublo! This performance without players places you in the eye of the storm and in the middle of an intense sensory experience, in a landscape that is halfway between the scenography of an opera and a cloudy valley, between geology and an amusement park. The characters you meet there are neither people nor animals, neither monsters nor gods, but rather natural phenomena.

The project brings together 75 visions by artists, scholars, curators and spectators, created in response to a question sent to them by David Weber-Krebs in the middle of the first wave of Covid-19 in Europe: What will happen on your first theatre visit after the lockdown? While being confined at home, David found himself thinking about the day when theatres would open their doors again. It somehow seemed impossible to picture this moment.

From July 5 to 23, the New Theatre Institute of Latvia organized an artistic residency for the Belgian artist David Weber-Krebs, who, together with the playwright and producer Simone Bassaniand, and the French sound artist Samuel Sylvain Repault, worked on their new production “Silencing”. A coproduction of the New Theatre Institute of Latvia and Kaaitheater (Brussels). The first rehearsals took place in Riga, attracting Inta Balodis, Jānis Balodis and Kati Krolli as actors. Sound space and technical assistance were provided by Voldemārs Johansons.

Listen Here: These Woodsis a literal invitation to go into nature. Set to the soundtrack of the forest, of wind rustling through the leaves and birds zipping by in the branches, the forest is these five dancers’ home, as they draw you into feeling the dynamic aliveness of the forest. The performance becomes a beautiful exchange between forest, dance, and audience, as we all momentarily share space with other living creatures in nature. At that moment, a question arises: what if, at least during these hours while we are here, we all belong in the forest?

Forces of Nature follows a movement of an articulate and complex organism composed of five persons with different energies and ideas. Their desires might not be the same, but they have a common goal: the construction of a shared physical and imaginary space.

Ræv rehearsal* invites you to rehearse new forms of coming together. Glow shoes, flashing lights, portable audio sculptures, a mobile speaker system and of course: you. These are the ingredients for a new kind of manifestation, a rehearsal in which the participants jointly create a movable light show to a techno beat. Ræv rehearsal uses several TOOLS FOR ACTION to organise these rehearsals safely during Covid. Helikites and floating helium sculptures with LED light strips and Bluetooth transmitter act not only as a strobe and transmitter for the speakers, but also as a warning system when people get too close.

How can you create a safe space in public space for the exchange of various forms of repressed or underexposed knowledge? How can we challenge the hierarchy of public debates and arrive at a more horizontal, fair and inclusive society? These are the starting points of bodies of knowledge (BOK), an alternative school, that stays in the same spot in the city for a few weeks or months, and then moves on again.

Around the same time the precursors of Carl Linnaeus (Lobelius, Clusius, Dodoens – whose books were all printed by Christoffel Plantijn) started their dubious classification of the natural world, radical botany got born. It is a genre of fiction in which the speculative energy of plants to imagine new worlds gets fully unleashed. The genre tackles important issues about ‘agency’ revolving around the question: ‘How to re-think agency outside of the notions of desire, exploitation and power, outside the animal logic?’

Gosie Vervloessem invites Natania Meeker, Antónia Szabari, Gry Ulstein & others

The global Covid crisis brought healthcare into the spotlight. But care extends beyond the strictly medical: it includes everything we do to preserve and restore the world. The erosion of the welfare state, the plundering of the Global South and the crossing of planetary boundaries is worrying. What about the connection between exploitation of man and of nature? What if tomorrow we found the courage truly to care for all people and other earthlings, for our unique living world?

Networking as part of the ACT project is an important segment, in which partners are sharing and discussing the activities’ state of the art. This meeting was organised and hosted by Culturgest, Lisbon with participation of other project partners and representatives from: Arts Admin/London, Bunker/Ljubljana, Kaaitheater/Brussels, COAL/Paris, Domino/Zagreb, Kampnagel/Hamburg, NTIL/Riga, Theater Rotterdam/Rotterdam, and Lokomotiva /Skopje.

A play that behaves like a stone: what would that look like? What form would a ‘mineral’ representation take? What if we try to imitate what is never born, never will grow and never dies? In How to Turn to Stone, stones, as ‘non-living’ things, are models for a different kind of resistance. Manuela Infante brings pieces of eroded stories together. The fragments become landscapes and she stacks those landscapes like geological rock layers – using looping and sound landscaping. This creates a ‘mineral’ representation telling you something about what is written in stones, and what stones have written in us.

The person is first and foremost an idea, to think of it in terms of a particular embodiment is to be within a tradition that forces the idea of personhood into a particular shape. In the western world, this has been an imagined rational, individual human of a particular class. This way of thinking is neither the only one nor the most fruitful – it hides the different ways of knowing inherent within multiplicity. During this evening, we will explore how human personhood has been constructed, and how it can be decentered and made to expand into different ways of seeing and being.

With Marisol de la Cadena and Isabelle Stengers, Mod. Mihnea Tanasescu

The ocean holds numerous stories of kinship between the human and the more-than-human. One of those stories tells of the ancient oceanic ancestors of our present-day (human) bodies of water. Traces of many of those ancestors, such as the amoeba or the jellyfish, are still present in the human body. This last session in our Series of More-Than-Human Encounters is entirely devoted to oceanic storytelling in kinship with hydrofeminism. This form of feminism is particularly sensitive towards watery creatures and our solidarity with them.

bodies of knowledge (BOK) considers the city as a rich source of valuable knowledge. Every passer-by could teach you something from their own background and life-experiences. BOK seeks to share this invisibilized or suppressed knowledge through oral transmission, that potentially could give rise to a socially more just society.

The Big BOK Multiplication tells the story of one and a half year of BOK in Brussels. BOK has been travelling as a nomadic classroom space through various parks and squares in Brussels for the past 18 months. Each week, passers-by and regular visitors could participate in the free programme, where they could learn about topics like: the central place of women in the Kurdish liberation movement, practising listening when you are used to being in the centre, Africa – a customs officer’s perspective, fighting structural injustices in mainstream education – as mothers, surviving and living with little money, saga of a happy borderline person and many more. All issues that don’t get a place, or not enough, in our schools, in mainstream institutions and in the media.

Every last Saturday of the month, Einat Tuchman invites you to the Marché Bildy Markt at Molenbeek’s Gare Maritime. This new local market is a meeting place, where you together shape a more sustainable future. Artistic events, such as concerts, workshops or interactive performances, highlight a connecting theme every month. The Marché Bildy Markt lets you consume locally and differently: you can buy products made by residents of Molenbeek and Laeken, local farms will be selling their produce at democratic prices, and snacks and drinks will be available in the café!

Kate McIntosh’s latest performance throws the work of several writers, composers and performers into the mix. To Speak Light Pours Out immerses you in a powerful listening space: it is a world where rhythms, voices, texts and their meanings shape and channel each other. Surrender to exhilarating polyrhythmic beats and the raw energy of layered voices that unleash sonic and spoken images, both political and poetic, liberating and activating.

Where Daniel Linehan’s previous performance Listen Here: These Woods took place among the trees, Listen Here: This Cavern invites you to descend into the darkness of a cave, to sharpen your senses and to listen. The music of Pauline Oliveros – recorded in a gigantic underground cave – accompanies the dynamic movement spirals of the performers. Let your senses get used to the dark and listen to the sound vibrations and dancers circling in the darkest space of Kaaitheater.

What attention do you pay to the sounds of your environment? What if those sounds slowly fade away? In his performances David Weber-Krebs (BE/D) explores the role of (human) spectators at a time when their activity has a profound impact on their physical and ecological environment. With The Silencing he enters the realm of sound and invites the audience to listen collectively to a world that is becoming increasingly silent.

In the near future, two friends meet in a forest. Michel, just back from two years of deep mindfulness in an ashram, did not follow the news. Taylor hurries to tell him about his adventures with the ‘Context and Modality Platform’, a kind of political party that – as an out-of-control joke and against all odds – has landed at the gates of power. Taylor tells his story using a nifty futuristic device that can project your memories in front of you as a hologram.

In May 2021 Kaaitheater invited art theorist and curator Suzana Milevska for an online lecture on ecofeminist art practices. This October she will resume this talk in live Brussels and will be joined by researcher and ecofeminist activist Myriam Bahaffou. In her lecture, Suzana Milevska will discuss various art practices of ecofeminist artists who revoke the existing systemic hierarchies and models of knowledge production. Myriam Bahaffou will formulate a response to Milevska’s views, by answering them in the prism of her own thoughts. The idea is to create a fruitful ecofeminist dialogue between two researchers who value the place of the dirty, the mixture and the hybrid.

“Thinking out of the box is exactly how the box thinks. We are the boxes we strive to out-think,” writes philosopher Bayo Akomolafe, speaker at the eighth edition of Ecopolis where artists, thinkers and doers break open our frames. Social, ecological and economic crises force us to think about a radically different way of living. Can unheard stories help us with that? Stories that link different generations, geographical areas that are far apart or ancient knowledge and technology. Can activism as a form of love take us further than doomsday thinking? “The world is not about to end; we are already living with a different world,” Akomolafe continues. Ecopolis brings stories that depict an inclusive and sustainable future for this new world.

The impact and disastrous consequences of war remain a painful and often underexposed topic in the debate on global warming. Access to raw materials is often the root cause of conflict and ecological warfare, such as the draining of rivers, is increasingly used as an instrument of violence. Military exercises and operations waste enormous amounts of energy and leave behind hallucinatory amounts of debris. It is both cynical and ironic but some exercise areas and war zones are so polluted that no one is allowed to enter them. They are instead declared nature zones where nature is given free rein and can heal. The war in Ukraine also puts violence forcing governments to strive to make our energy sources more sustainable on the agenda.

Drawing on a variety of practices – the study of fungi, fashion, fermentation, dance and sculpture – MOLD approaches the theatre machine as a multiplicity of bodies. It strives to stage not only a performance but also a farm, an environment where dance, objects, audience, light, music, scents and costumes interact as living cultures. A garden dedicated to cultivating, abandoning, inoculating, braiding, duplicating, sprouting, warming up and decaying.

In Leçons de Ténèbres, four bodies, three adults and a child become the mouthpieces of stories that have been forgotten or that we have tried to make disappear. These people burrow, hunched and curved, until they unearth the invisible. They transform, disappear and metamorphose. In turn, they bring forth visions and assist and challenge them. For this new creation, Betty Tchomanga continues her research on Voodoo cults and crosses them with questions of climatic and social emergency.

In Nebula, the stage appears like a burnt black landscape, both natural and futuristic, where everything has been destroyed except for a few bits and pieces: precious stones, coal, water, clay, mirrors… In dialogue with these materials, the dancer quivers with the energies around her, reinventing herself as a tree, a tiger, and a star. Entering unknown universes to reveal what exists beyond the black hole, the solo Nebula opens up even vaster spaces with new forms of life where time is expanded.

The impact and disastrous consequences of war remain a painful and often underexposed topic in the debate on global warming. Access to raw materials is often the root cause of conflict and ecological warfare, such as the draining of rivers, is increasingly used as an instrument of violence. Military exercises and operations waste enormous amounts of energy and leave behind hallucinatory amounts of debris. It is both cynical and ironic, but some exercise areas and war zones are so polluted that no one is allowed to enter them. They are instead declared nature zones where nature is given free rein and can heal.

How can we rethink being human from a radical ecological perspective? What stories can help us grapple with the disruptions of the climate crises? These questions lie at the basis of PREY, consisting of three solos by three generations of women. All three offer a different perspective on the same theme, via a different medium – text/speech, song/music or dance/performance. Be prepared to delve into a scenography in which humans do not play the main role. Can we find consolation in the horrific fact that we are food and that we belong to an ecological cycle of life and death?

For Forest Silent Gathering, a group of audience members meet inside a forest at sunset and follow a soundtrack with the help of headphones. An audio-social architecture is created that lets the viewer be alone together. Changing distances invites us to find new proximities. Absent figures become protagonists. As the communal space takes shape and transforms, Forest Silent Gathering makes us reflect on the bonds between people, forests and histories. What is it that keeps us together?