Bearing Questions: An Incomplete Guide to Motherhood

Do you want to be a parent?

How do you know when you’re ready?

Do you really know when you’re ready?

What’s stopping you? What’s pushing you?

What impact might your career, your age, your ethnic or racial background, your sexual identity or gender have on your decision?

These questions, along with many more, were the inspiration behind Anaïs Van Eycken’s latest choreographic work: Matki. A solo dance performance which allows the audience to turn a critical eye to the theme of motherhood.

In collaboration with Matki, a group of students from KU Leuven have created a project to start a new type of conversation around Motherhood. What began as an attempt to answer these questions, to navigate a pathway through the topic of Motherhood, only resulted in even more questions and even less of a sense of direction. It soon became clear that these questions can’t be answered. They should, in fact, be celebrated. There is something beautiful in allowing questions to be unanswerable, in questioning the questions and in accepting the uncertainty.

The topic of Motherhood needs to be opened into a conversation, a multitude of voices, a storm of questions without answers and without the pressure to be ‘correct’.

Bearing Questions is a platform where this new type of conversation can take place. It does so by going back to the basics: the letter. Bearing Questions is a letter writing chain: each letter contains a new question around motherhood and a new voice which questions the question that came before. Basically it is a lot of questions and a lot of non-answers!

This chain reflects the process of developing this project, the fact that talking about motherhood is mainly a process of one question leading to another, and another and another. Never really coming to a definite or ‘right’ answer.

These letters will be published online on our digital book: Bearing Questions: An Incomplete Guide to Motherhood.This book opposes the majority of handbooks about motherhood – and there are many – by raising questions, not answering them. It pieces the letter chains back together, allowing the reader to follow the development of each question. To see how one idea can flourish when so many voices are heard. When there is no pressure to be ‘right’ and where no answer can be ‘wrong’. The publication will remain a ‘work in progress’ that can be continuously added to, because the conversation around Motherhood can never be, or should never be, completed. Bearing Questions extends Matki into something more than the performance itself, bringing it into the community and making culture a conversation, not just an event.

When?

The premiere of Matki will be taking place online on 26th March 2021, along with an aftershow talk. You can get your tickets here!

The digital publication: Bearing Questions: An Incomplete Guide to Motherhood goes live on 2nd April. To get a reminder when it’s published, just sign up here.

How?

To participate in the Bearing Questions letter chain, please contact us on Instagram or via email at hello@bearingquestions.com. Mother, father, woman, man, trans, nonbinary, straight, gay, bisexual, queer, asexual and any label or nonlabel in between… we welcome your voice in the conversation.

Zoom Seminar: Instagram and the Politics of Streetstyle in Iran; An Overview of the Social Media Strategy Used by Fashion Designers

Written by Leili Nekounazar, PhD researcher, Cultural Studies

An upcoming Zoom seminar organized by TechnAct, the research cluster on gender, sexualities, emergent communities and technocultural assemblages at the University of Gothenburg.

In this pop-up seminar I will present a chapter of my PhD thesis on “Fashion and Aesthetics Politics in Post- Revolutionary Iran”. The seminar will focus on the rising female fashion designers in Iran and the way they take advantage of social media platforms, in particular Instagram, to push back the existing restrictions on the underground fashion activities in Iran, in order to advance their business plans by introducing their designs to a large audience, marketing, and acquiring artistic inspirations, while at the same time contributing -not always intentionally- to the anti- compulsory hijab campaigns. 

An Iranian model on Instagram

Like any other Cultural Studies researcher, I am fascinated with the political dynamics of everyday life practices. I found the evolution of the Iranian women’s urban attire, over which, the Iranian upper- middle class groups of women struggle with the state for almost more than four decades, a platform of studying and observing such undercurrents. Indeed, how the Iranian women are challenging the compulsory hijab in Iran, and their subtle way of manipulating the Islamic dress codes in order to invent and create their own version of dress, comes about as a perfect case study of how ordinary people construct and participate in the everyday life practices. 

Women’s outfit in the early years of the Islamic revolution

Since the Islamic revolution in 1979, all Iranian women over the age of 9 are obliged to observe the Islamic hijab in public spaces. In the course of the past 41 years, the regime in Iran has implemented many moral projects and enforced various strict policies to impose a certain set of dress codes on women. However, according to the state’s officials’ statements, long after the victory of the Islamic revolution, the regime in Iran has not yet made an impressive progress in unifying the Iranian modern women’s urban attire. Ironically, as the results of 41 years push and pull, along with implementing many hijab- related state’s maneuvers that also involve harsh threats, violence and prison, the very pale, loose- fitting and lengthy garment that was imposed on the modern women in the early years of the Islamic revolution, has transformed to a stylish, sexy and beautified version of hijab, which looks way different from what is officially and politically accepted. 

In the past few years, the outfit of the Iranian modern women has radically changed

In the past few years, with the advent of social media platforms, a new generation of female fashion designers has emerged. These young women, of whom many are the art schools and universities’ graduates, deploy social media platforms to manifest their creativity in design and their ability to tactfully create a more stylish dress by displacing and manipulating the existing dress codes, thus pushing the current limits and boundaries. In my seminar on 19th of October, 2020, I will address how this generation of fashion designers, who regard fashion as their livelihood and their way of becoming financially empowered and independent, use Instagram in a hide and seek, on and off manner with the state, for the purpose of outreach and advertisement. In this way, they reclaim the right of choosing the desired attire, paving the way towards reclaiming the female body and dress. My conclusions are based on the analysis of 7-8 hours Skype interviews with a few models, fashion bloggers and fashion designers based in Iran, which will be presented during the seminar that takes place on Zoom.

Please register by sending an email to mia.liinason [at] gu.se. You will receive a zoom link upon registration.

The seminar will take place on October 19, 13.15-15.00 (CET).

Transatlantic Modernism, Art and Cultural Mediators between Belgium and Argentina, 1910-1958

Picture1Have you ever thought of arts modernism beyond a Eurocentric perspective? Have you ever imagined modernism can be expressed alternatively? Have you ever known that there was a huge connection between Belgian and Argentine arts?

You’ll find all the answers in the exhibition “Transatlantic Modernisms” in which Cultural Studies Master students Sophie Baert, Anna Laganovska, Joachim Meeusen, Dahai Zhang and Catherine Zubkow participated as part of the course ‘Cultural Policy’. We are a multi-lingual, multi-national group of students from very different backgrounds, each with a unique perspective and strength to bring to the project.

Our project is part of the upcoming exhibition hosted by the Mu.Zee in Ostende that is about the artistic relationships between Belgium and Argentina between 1910 and 1958. “Modernism exists only within western and Eurocentric frameworks of thought”, but by following the connections, influences and exchanges of three key figures from both Argentina and Belgium during this time, the exhibition seeks to explore alternative histories in the trajectory of Modernism on a global scale.

The exhibition is built around three figures: the artist, the critic and the collector, as they are the personifications of the transatlantic relations and serve as the through-line of the exhibition. Victor Delhez was an artist from Antwerp who moved to Argentina at the end of 1925 where he continued to work and paint until his death. The art critic, Julio Payro, was an Argentine who spent his youth in Brussels where he made friendships with influential Belgian artists such as Paul Delvaux, which he maintained even after his return to Argentina. Finally, you have Ignacio Pirovano, an art collector and benefactor who maintained an intense friendship with Georges Vantongerloo, a successful Belgian artist. It was Pirovano who exhibited Vantongerloo’s art in Argentina and thus contributed to the overseas fame of this artist.  Thus, we decided to film a short video to introduce this fascinating relationship between artists from Belgium and Argentina.

The exhibition, which will be held at the Mu.Zee in Ostende, is scheduled to take place from February 20th to June 13th 2021. Please, follow the link to the museum’s website for more information about the exhibition:

https://www.muzee.be/en/muzee/t212251/trans-atlantic-modernisms-belgium-and-argentina-ca-1910-1958

IN/BETWEEN PLACES: and now online

Organized by the artists platform Place, the exhibition IN / BETWEEN PLACES was scheduled from March12 to March 19, 2020 at Ecole de Recherche Graphique (ERG) in Brussels. The show had to close the day after the opening for health reasons due to Covid-19. This special issue of Place devoted to the exhibition gives an overview of the works on display.

Places

Curator’s word (Alexander Schellow):

We have been working on this exhibition for almost a year. From the very beginning it was clear for us that we wanted to create a space that could be experienced both physically and on screen – an online PLACE, if you want. It was also very clear from that the material realization of the exhibition should reflect our reflection on this paradoxical relationship between a real place and a virtual platform. For us, this proved the best way to answer the invitation made by an online magazine to transfer its works to the physical space of a gallery. In addition, this way of working seemed us most appropriated in the larger context of the shifting relationships between private and public spaces, which tend to merge through social media and other communication platforms.

What we could not foresee, of course, when planning the exhibition was how suddenly social and aesthetic realities would be turned upside down in the face of the COVID-19 crisis. Suddenly everything that looked solid seemed to melt down and our usual ways of communicating and interacting were abruptly unsettled by new procedures and regulations which questioned all habitual social, political, and economic processes. What used to be smoothly handled behaviors and exchanges were blocked almost overnight. Our first reaction was a sense of loss and frustration when moving from actual people to their virtual doubles, endlessly multiplied but nevertheless insufficient when having to solve real problems. At the same time, the wish to make room for these new practices and experiences forced us to find solutions capable of relocating and rebuilding them in hitherto unknown and not yet imagined forms. This is what happens in these new places beyond physical contact and this is where our new lives are taking place these days.

On exactly the day of the opening of IN / BETWEEN PLACES the Belgium authorities put the country under lockdown. The decision came into effect the day after. As a result, we had to cancel the lectures and performances event we had planned for that day, while the exhibition itself could not last beyond the night of its opening, when the public was already marked by the gap between private and public spaces. What we had tried to achieve in the exhibition suddenly proved very consistent with what the visitors that evening had started to experience.

Both the exhibition and the conference program with its lectures and performances have now been translated, relocated and materialized as virtual spaces one more time, so that our project is capable of tackling the questions of place from a supplementary point of view. The IN / BETWEEN PLACES project undoubtedly gains a new meaning and pertinence: in the given circumstances, it comes to the fore as urgent, concrete and unintentionally prophetic.

This special edition of the online publication PLACE allows the project to evolve into a new hybrid space, going back and forth between a (in)accessible physical environment and a virtual one. By producing this move, the online (re)translation of the works and practices involved in the original exhibition, which it is now no longer possible to visit, offers the possibility to continue and reinvent its material and virtual traces in a new and open space.

https://www.place-plateforme.com/exposition1/index.html

Project Climate Crisis: WARM ALARM

Warm alarm logo

The fight to save our climate is certainly no new battle. As globalisation, access to information, technology and its accessibility have inevitably increased in modern times, with all the positive aspects it has brought, has also created  suffering and detrimental elements.  One of the largest negative impacts, brought on by numerous factors, is to our natural environment.  Often, the state of our climate  leads back to causes found simply in the habits of people’s daily lives, even by those amongst us meaning to cause no harm, and not meaning to induce global warming or break a hole into our ozone layer.  We contribute by simply enjoying  long, hot showers, driving alone in personal cars to work, or eating those delicious, yet very well-travelled, Argentinian steaks.

So what would be our approach in attempting to make a difference in this? Firstly, we wanted to reiterate and feed through our stream of ideas that this battle cannot simply be about telling people to stop using their home comforts and small ‘pick-me-ups’. Whilst they often do provoke climate issues, not only has recent history proven this approach to fighting climate change results in  little success, but the point is that there are people and organisations with far greater responsibility, whose influence and power hold much greater ability to make change. And so we would place our focus there: we would go to the government. Our second important factor is that it must be realised that the ‘climate issue’ is not a radical idea. We wanted to draw away from this perception that seems to have built up. The problem is simple, so let’s keep it that way.

At the time our project started out, we noticed that the Flemish government had very little policy regarding environmental issues. Their goal for 2030 was behind the goal set by EU standards, and there were no sections of policy with an environmental focus. Whilst there has been some improvement on this since October 2019, it is certainly not enough (forgive us for thinking that reducing a speed limit from 120kmph to 100kmph on a usually  slow-movement highway -due to traffic- is the most productive way to save this world). Our group questioned how we can expect people to make small changes, if the central government is not leading by example and implementing the changes that can have a big impact? So we decided to make it our goal to bring this to the attention of the Flemish government, with a focus on Flanders: on a small area, where we can make a big impact. And who knows, with the involvement of media outlets, perhaps our story could inspire others all over the world?

The idea was to fuel a letter campaign, to gather as many people as possible to ask the government for change. To do this we looked to two main sources: by utilising our student position in Leuven, and through involving members amongst Flanders’ influential and famous.

After carrying out research of our own and reaching out to organisations with expertise in both campaigning and environmental issues, we drafted the letter that we would use to approach a list we had collated of famous and influential people of Flanders, who we hoped would get involved. We were fortunate that our commissioning organisation, 30CC, held a number of links and contacts within the arts and cultural sectors to provide us with a starting ground.

Throughout the process, we thought long and hard about the best way of involving our fellow students. We planned to engage with student groups and use social media at its fullest force. We continued with these ideas throughout, but somewhere along the line we had a light bulb moment (a little later than we would have hoped, perhaps). We realized that one thing that so many students love is beer (or an iced tea for some), and enjoying each other’s company. With this in mind, we went about planning an event that would provide this social aspect, while adding to the impact that we wanted to make. The event was to take place in April at Fak Bar Letteren. The idea was that if people wanted to join in with our campaign, or at least find out more, we would be in Fak Bar Letteren, with music and beer, to tell you more and provide the writing equipment should you choose to join us. Our task and goal remained simple: we want the government to take action, something to help our climate. We want them to utilise the power and responsibility they have, and our voluntary participants could write this in whatever way they wanted. Participants during this event, would have a beer on us. “Save the world, have a beer”, as the saying goes (or as we say, anyway).

Warm a Logo

A sketch of our logo

Social media was going to be a great friend to us throughout this event, Not only to communicate that our plan to help the climate crisis need not be difficult nor scary or overwhelming, but to also share the web platform where example letters would go. This was to be a section on the website of 30CC, and would hold the example letters written by our famous supporters. On top of this, social media would allow the influence of the influential people to grow exponentially, both by increasing engagement with our pages and contributions, and by finding engagement among their fans and following, those who we may not have the chance to reach otherwise.

We were just about ready to go with these plans; the preparations were in place. We had contacted the influential figures, and the responses and letters to the government had begun to return to us. Fak Bar Letteren was booked, and the drink tokens were ready for our guests. Our web page was in the making, waiting for the letters to be uploaded and to be shared across Instagram and Facebook feeds. And then… well, we all know what happened next.

Even though our project cannot go ahead, in some ways it is not all bad. Research is showing that this tragic epoch may actually do some good for the environment; a silver lining if there is to be one, perhaps. And whilst we cannot host our event now, and it is certainly not the time to be asking anything from the government (we think they certainly have enough on their plate), we will pass on our research, plans and ideas to 30CC, so that they can be carried out, or at least be inspiration for related projects in times ahead.

We have, as a team and as individuals, learnt a great deal in this time, especially that the process of brainstorming and fixing ideas may take longer than expected, even if the solution, the bright idea, appears to have been there all along. And that’s okay. We’ve also learnt that the energy needed for making a project a success often comes from within the team, and whilst it may drop at times when the progress seems small, it will no doubt return fuller than before. And we have, without doubt, not given up the fight to change climate policy to be treated more importantly  by authorities. This plan might not go ahead now, but who knows where its inspiration will take us in the future, and what small parts of it that we will each take away will grow to become in future times and settings.

Digital D.I.Y. CAFe

According to annual tradition, the cultural policy event of the Cultural Studies program takes place towards the end of the academic year. This year the event is called D.I.Y CAFe and is organized by us: Cathelijne Jennes, Lan Jacobs, Laure Verstreken and Rani De Leener. The name stands for Do It Yourself Cultural Arts Fair event.

In normal circumstances the event would have taken place at STUK in Leuven on April 2nd. On this day the organizers would have provided a fair with multiple stands where the different groups could present their projects to the visitors. This would have happened within a cozy and homely atmosphere with appropriate lighting, plants, seats and of course a bar and buffet. The master students themselves would’ve provided the food for the buffet. Entertainment-wise, a screen printing workshop and a live concert of a band from Leuven, Arrandt, would have made this day complete.  

However, the corona crisis forced everyone in quarantine. As an alternative, the D.I.Y CAFe-team will present its online fair on May 25th. The Master’s students of Cultural Studies are busy creating fun digital presentations to explain the projects they have been working on for the past few months. Some of them will also talk about their experience during the organization of their own project or about the work process. This way, the online presentations will hopefully bring the same vibe of the original event into a digital space.

The name of the event is then easily explained. We named our project a CAFe, because we wanted to create the same vibe as a living room or a cafe where students of our age spend their spare time. Now, not only students can experience this living room style. With the digital CAFe everybody can learn about culture in the relaxed setting of their own living room. ​Moreover, we wanted to enhance the fact that the students started from scratch and finished with a complete cultural project. That is why we called our cafe, a D.I.Y CAFe

Our fellow students have put together some creative and original presentations of their projects. These projects varied from an exhibition to a video dialogue.

With this alternative version of the event, the D.I.Y CAFe team wants to reach everyone who is interested in the cultural field. Mark May 25th in your agenda and come over to have a look! We invite you to take a look at the interesting cultural projects of the students!

De//Colonize Together

The term “decolonize” has gained popularity over the recent years. One Google search can get you more than 800,000 results within a second. Many organisations develop initiatives concerning the decolonization of a workplace, a museum, an institution, a public space… Not only places can be decolonized, persons can be too. Decolonization is not a process you go through alone, you always decolonize with other people; you always decolonize together.

De//Colonize Together is a project created as a part of the course ‘Cultural Policy’ by Cultural Studies Master students Anke Stroobants, Wannes Van Ingelghem and Kaat Fransen. The end goal of this course is to successfully organize an event or several events concerning a topic of your own choice.

For De//Colonize Together the end goal is the 26th of March with an interesting and evocative evening filled with talented artists from in and around Leuven. Firstly, Peter Verlinden, Africa expert and professor at the KU Leuven, will start off the evening with a reading, and will be interviewed afterwards about his work and the colonization of Africa in general. He will also present his upcoming work “Zwarte trots, witte schaamte” (Black Pride, White Shame), which will hit the bookstores in May 2020. Afterwards we will switch over to poetry and its strong ability to convey emotions that are not so easily expressed through conventional speech. Three spoken word artists of Urban Woorden will present their work on colonization with a political, emotional and personal focus. Together with our partners we decided that with our event we wanted to create a safe space for everyone involved and interested in the topic of decolonization. Everyone is welcome to come and listen to the artists, have a nice drink and talk openly about what is on their mind.

For more information, visit our Facebook page and event on https://www.facebook.com/decolonizeleuven/. Feel free to contact us with questions or remarks via Facebook or via decolonizeleuven@gmail.com.

decolonize together

IN / BETWEEN PLACES

65f3980f28898b8b378ce1d9eefeacf89ae2571bb0cd9a07b3d4a4f934ded1e6

Christian Milovanoff, Still from Travail dramaturgique autour du livre Bureaux, 2017

IN / BETWEEN PLACES brings together artists and poets/writers who contributed to PLACE, an online magazine that promotes encounters between various artistic practices and theoretical writings. For the first time, the exhibition reunites these artists within a specific physical setting in order to create a dialogue between the virtual space of the magazine and the real space of the gallery. The latter can be understood as the material counterpart of the digital platform, inviting thus the visitor to travel between these spaces – the virtual and the real – of which the frontiers become increasingly porous in our contemporary media society. If most of the displayed artworks may refer to different kinds of places, the exhibition’s particular focus concerns the question of how the digital place of the Internet and the physical environment of the gallery provide specific forms of displaying art that, rather than being confined to their proper spheres, might be conceived as distinct but communicating and interacting contexts that create places situated in/between the virtual and the real.

Contributing artists: Alexander Apóstol, Jan Baetens, Paul Bogaert, Vincent Broqua, Thierry De Cordier, Michel Delville, Denis Deprez, Peter Downsbrough, Mark Geffriaud, Kenneth Goldsmith, Suzanne Lafont, Pascal Leclercq, Christian Milovanoff, Sinna Bryce Nasseri, Jan Peeters, Michael Punt, Narmine Sadeg, Alexander Schellow/ARG, Agnès Thurnauer, Elisabeth Waltregny

Curators: Alexander Schellow (ERG) and Alexander Streitberger (UCLouvain)


Opening: 12 March 2020, 7 pm
With an online talk – Kenneth Goldsmith with Laurence Rassel / Gabriel Franjou, live streamed on ergTV 8 pm.

Public event: 13 March, 2 pm – 5 pm
Introduction PLACE by Narmine Sadeg / Jan Baetens,
Artist talk moderated by Alexander Streitberger / Alexander Schellow
Lectures by Michael Punt and ARG (AnimationResearchGroup)
Performance by Mark Geffriaud 13 March, 10 pm, starting at ERG – main entrance, rue du Page 87


Exhibition display: William Reidiboym, Giuliana Diada, Dorian Timmermans

In cooperation with ergTV


IN/BETWEEN PLACES
L’Ecole de Recherche Graphique (l’ERG) in Brussels
12 – 19 March 2020
From Monday to Friday, 10 am – 6 pm
Free admission
Rue du Page 87, 1050 Brussels, Belgium
Phone : +32 2 538 98 29

Look What You Made Us Do. An Examination of Precarity in the Arts

We often equate the life of an independent artist with one of glamor and embellishment, spending their euros from sales on tubes of paint or a brick-walled studio with big windows and natural light. Rarely do we consider the invisible hours strained over meticulously budgeting and submitting and networking and documenting.

What began as one look into a performance summoning culture spectators and enthusiasts to show support-in-numbers by way of attendance and capital, quickly became an appeal to artists to share their stories.

On March 18, at The Poetics of Precarity. Literature, Art and the Precarious Condition held in the Faculty of the Arts, we will premier our video dialogue with artists about these strains and struggles and the hidden mental gymnastics required to maintain a life as an artist. These culture creators – essential for community, beauty, and discourse – have shared their testimonies with us for our Look What You Made Us Do awareness campaign.

Look what you made us do

The conference is a four-day program exploring the foundation of the precarious lifestyle:

“The conference ‘The Poetics of Precarity’ focuses on the intellectual and cultural imaginations of precarity from a historical point of view. Since the 1980s, sociological precarity theories have provided an influential and productive discursive model to describe the work and life conditions in post-Fordist and global capitalism. Precarity and acquainted notions like ‘precarisation’ capture various aspects and effects of the socio-economic processes that gradually push more and more sections of the population in an intensified state of uncertainty and contingency. These structural developments have generated a new ‘dangerous’ class, the ‘precariat’, that manifests itself in protest movements such as the ‘Mayday Movement’ or, most recently, the ‘Yellow Vests’. These narratives, concepts and phenomena not only have poetical and theatrical dimensions of their own; they have inspired cultural and artistic production as well. By way of aesthetic experiments, artists and writers have tried to mediate and shape the imagination and perception of precarious realities. New poetic tools and writing strategies have been developed to represent, explore, transmit, legitimize or criticize the many faces of precarity. Up to now, these trends and their imaginative and aesthetic foundations have solely been examined by focusing on the novelty of the contemporary precarious condition. Whereas precarity has always been a part of capitalism and modernity, exactly this aspect has been neglected. The conference will explore the historical origins of the intellectual traditions and aesthetic reflections of the imagination of precarity from a variety of angles; its goal is to engage upon a critical dialogue between sociologists, political theorists and literary scholars, but also with writers and artists themselves.”

The testimonies illuminate the tedium and stress endured behind the scenes. Look What You Made Us Do was conceived in the wake of the Flemish Cultural Minister’s proposed budget cuts for the arts by 60%. The policy, which has since been enacted, envisaged cutting subsidies given to cultural institutions to cover their operating funds and specific projects. Many artists shared their thoughts and we are humbled to present them to a broader audience in the coming months. Stay tuned!


For more info:

https://www.arts.kuleuven.be/german-literature/precarity2020

https://www.facebook.com/lookwhatyoumadeusdo

lookwhatyoumadeusdo@gmail.com

De//colonize the mind

As the 30th of June will mark the 50th anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo, many questions subsist. Whilst those who lived in the colonies recall with nostalgia their times in Africa, much of the younger generation seems to know close to nothing to the ties that bind Belgium to Congo. Who is to blame? A government that never took responsibility for the atrocities which it inflicted upon a nation? An education system that fails to accomplish its critical duty when it comes to reflect on our national past? Or a social mass that seems to remain indifferent to colonialism, vaguely perceived as a gift of civilization to poorer lands?

De//colonize Leuven does not have an easy answer to these complicated questions. However, this project, created by Masters students of Cultural studies for their Cultural Policy project, calls for actions against a system that is deemed both obsolete and unfair. This year, Caroline Vervloet, Shushanna Shakaryan and Nina Teugels partnered with Nora Mohammed from the Dutch-Flemish house for debates De Buren to tackle the question of the decolonization of education in Belgium.

decolonize

The project aims at raising awareness about Belgium’s colonial history, on the one hand, and sensitizing the public on the importance of decolonization, on the other hand. In its own way, it hopes to engage in the process of changes in education, which are necessary in Belgium for the construction of a fairer society.

The event will be an interactive evening for students led by Miguel Heilbron and Hari Prasad Adhikari Sacré, our two guests.

Miguel Heilbron (Fawaka WereldBurgerschap& the Black Archives) will give a session on “World Citizenship”, discussing the legacies of colonialism and transatlantic slavery, among other things. He will discuss the various developments already visible in Education in the Netherlands and encourage the audience to participate in a collective brainstorm on the changes that could be done on our own educational system.

Hari Prasad Adhikari Sacré (For All Queens & UGent) will bring a completely different and refreshing approach to the decolonization debate. He will do a live story telling on his Samsara series (exploring displacement), followed by a workshop.

Rendez-vous the 5th of March at 19:30! RSVP desired, please book your tickets (for free) at www.deburen.eu.
More info on the Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/539062580062613/
Address: Naamsestraat 69 , 3000 Leuven. Hogenheuvelcollege kapel 00.50
There will be beverages!