CURATING LAB

CONCEPT

The theme of the Curating Lab developed by Christine Eyene takes Pelt (Belgium) as a point of departure, and its position as border municipality, neighbouring Germany and the Netherlands, to explore the notion of ‘man-made’ or ‘unnatural’ borders. It considers nature as a porous or permeable environment and a collective reconciliatory space.

Although Belgium is a country whose capital is home to a ‘borderless’ continent, freedom of movement remains a relative concept when approached from the perspective of displacement and migratory histories. This has been accentuated by the context of the global pandemic, which has dramatically limited the movement of people both locally and internationally.

The Curating Lab envisions sonic memory as an anchorage to histories and places, like a score one carries within oneself, through life and migratory journeys. These sonic anchors are also imagined repositories from which one draws comfort and healing in times of uncertainty. Domestic space is  also considered as a new territory, where extended periods of lockdown have created a new relation to sound within the private sphere.

The project also examines how sonic experiences in new territories contribute to the formation of new identities and how, conversely, new identities transform sonic landscapes; not just in terms of the aural but also in ways that address forgotten or silenced voices, and in doing so, contribute to social change.

The programme includes a curating workshop led by Christine Eyene with members of the community with the aim of facilitating the emergence of new voices, diversity representation, and new forms of agency in the field of arts and culture. The groups are also actively involved in the creation and curation of two new commissions by Paris-based South African artist and DJ Mo Laudi, and Berlin-based Cameroonian artist Elsa M’bala. The lab is filmed by Brussels and Hamburg-based South African artist Megan-Leigh Heilig, who will create an artistic documentation of the workshop that will be presented in Autumn 2021.

The new sound pieces are presented from in the form of sound installations as part of the Klankenbos Spring Expo (29/05 – 06/06) (www.klankenbos.be).

CURATING LAB