There’s a new residency in town! wpZimmer welcomes concept creator and performer Sophie Guisset who will be joined by performer Clara Conza and dramaturgist Lisa Vereertbrugghen to work on VTC (working title).

VTC ( abbreviation for Vautour Tennis Club), is a research on the notion of rules and playfulness in the practice of tennis and in the practice of sexuality in darkrooms.Sophie is interested in the way this sport is organized, in the three types of regulation that affect players. The geometric boundaries of the field, the rules of behavior to adopt towards one’s partner/adversary, and finally the rules of the game in themselves. She will physically research how these three forms of rule organize themselves, their impact on the player’s bodies and mental state in a match situation and how they could be applied to another system.

Duet for two string trios is a coming together of pure dance and music, full of intimacy and lyricism, intense and disruptive, like the times we live in.

From this week on, we’re joined by Claire Croizé and the two performers with whom “Duet for Two String Trios” was created with and danced by: Emmi Väisänen en Jason Respilieux.

Read more about Duet for two string trios here!

Next up in residency at wpZimmer is Belgium-based costume designer and scenographer Sofie Durnez who will be staying with us until May 23rd working on DAYDREAM.

During her residency, Sofie engages with both, seeking overlap, synergy and contrast in images and materials. By also involving light, sound, smell and temperature, she explicitly seeks the physical limits of her designs.

Read more about Sofie’s residency below!

“The Chance to find yourself” is a collaboration of two migrants – who come from very different backgrounds -, which aim to stage a common performance. It becomes a confrontation between two theatre-practitioners, who came to Brussels hoping to improve their working- and living-conditions, who do not know each other, who have different cultural and economical backgrounds and different aesthetical practices and who both try to find out more about each other, themselves and their respective artistic practices, despite an evident cultural gap separating them.” 

That’s how Benno Steinegger and Jovial Mbenga describe their latest practice “The Chance to Find Yourself” which they will be working on during their joint residency at wpZimmer until May 9th.

Discover more about both performers and the story behind The Chance to Find Yourself here. 

Forensic Plant Lab was a one-day expo in which artists Maria Lucia Cruz Correia and Gosie Vervloessem guided visitors through the mind map of an investigation, which was broken up like a crazy wall. Forensic Plant Lab is set up as a detective agency that specializes in investigating the relationship between Homo Sapiens and the plant kingdom and, in a broader sense, humanity’s relationship with nature. The mind map through which the visitors were guided tells the story of the mutilation of the trees of De Liereman, a nature reserve in Turnhout, on the night of 23 May 2020. The artists started an investigation into this crime through field research, interviews with stakeholders of the ‘landscape’. The visitors who visited the expo were initiated into the ‘case’.

The expo was made possible with the support of The Activiteitenpremie from Flemish Authorities.

The one day event THE DATING PROJECT: First Date by the artist Dan Mussett in collaboration with Bianca Zueneli and Vincent Vandijck took place on March 6th 2021 at temporarily closed Bar Leon in Antwerp, between 15h and 19h. Every hour, two people were invited to the bar, and each given a mobile phone displaying a series of pre-scripted instructions that led them to re-enact a first date. Two participants began the date together, activating the first instruction at the same time. As the date progressed, they were given a variety of different types of instructions including scripted dialogues, dressing up, dancing, predicting each other’s futures and staring into each other’s eyes. 

The Event was supported by The Activiteitenpremie from The Flemish authorities.

From this Monday on, a new residency started at wpZimmer involving performer Steven Michel who is currently working on his ritualistic solo ‘DATADREAM’ in which he fuses choreography, visual storytelling and experimental video.

“DATADREAM wants to reclaim the importance of the body and the voice in a digital era. To not simply regard the “virtual” as an escapist technology, but to consider it as an invisible facet of a reality we live in, and in which everything is connected. A starting point to create new group-bonding rituals.”

Steven Michel is joined by a few team members: Mathieu Bonnafous (sound design), Jan Fedinger (light design) and Laetitia Bica (video design).

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)