Playground 2025
Live Arts Festival
Playground 2025
Isaac Chong Wai
Falling Reversely
Performance / Belgian premiere
Isaac Chong Wai works with performers of Asian descent, reinterpreting movements of falling as a powerful form of solidarity and resistance. They study CCTV footage of Asian individuals who fell due to physical assaults and investigate how they can slow down and reverse the trajectory of these attacks. Responding to systemic violence, Chong imagines an alternate future where the marginalised transform their falling through linked movements, reversing moments of attack into protest.
‘Falling Reversely’, Isaac Chong Wai, 2021/2024, photo: Andrea Avezzù. Courtesy of La Biennale di Venezia
Alkis Hadjiandreou, Julie Laporte, Myriam Lefkowitz
Remote dances
Performance/ premiere
How does distance reshape connection, and how do we bridge it when bodies cannot meet? This collaborative performance embraces collective listening, transcending physical separation to create an imaginary space where perception is shared and movement emerges. Gathered on a common floor, the audience becomes the destination for a dance transmitted from afar. Two performers, separated by space but not by time, execute a choreography as spectators are guided through a sequence of sensations and images. Gradually, a shared moment unfolds where the dance finally lands and lingers.
Myriam Lefkowitz (c) ‘Diana’, Simon Ripoll-Hurier, 2017
Ana Mazzei
The Martyrdom
Performance / installation / premiere
Ana Mazzei’s artworks are fragments of myth, memory, and fiction. Inspired by ‘The Martyrdom of Saint Quentin’, a 16th-century painting from M’s collection depicting a gruesome torture scene, she created four new sculptures that act as both actor and scenography: ‘The Call’, ‘Persecution’, ‘Resistance’, ‘Memory’. The stations are activated by performers in a rhythm of effort and surrender. The collision between body and object, stillness and motion, echoes the spiritual and physical tension of the original painting, where Saint Quentin withstands violence with an elevated gaze and an expression of ecstatic transcendence.
‘Death’, Ana Mazzei, 2019 © Everton Ballardin
Alicja Kwade
Hubwagen
Installation/ performance
For 'Hubwagen', Alicja Kwade places a familiar industrial object into a new context. The forks of a pallet truck are bent into a perfect circle, subverting the tool’s purpose and turning it into an absurd, endlessly spinnable device. The circle symbolizes a concept of time that is cyclical without beginning or end, mirroring our own potentially futile yet relentless pursuit of meaning and knowledge. Activated at set times, the work performs its own illogical function. This installation and performance are part of the exhibition 'Dusty Die'.
‘Hubwagen’, Alicja Kwade, 2012-13, photo: Roman März © Alicja Kwade, courtesy of the artist and René Block Edition
Grace Schwindt
A Vocabulary of Care
Performance/ installation/ premiere
How can care be deployed as a strategy to resist dominant power structures? Inspired by observing the meticulous gestures of the museum’s storage manager tending to art objects, Grace Schwindt developed 'A Vocabulary of Care'. In collaboration with dancers, she translated this vocabulary into a movement language, which is performed in dialogue with both a film and a large-scale textile installation. Her exhibition, 'A History of Touch', emerged from a two-year residency at M Leuven, where she studied conservation protocols for museum objects and their broader restoration histories.
© Marie Dreezen voor M Leuven
Charlotte Bouckaert
The Photographer Left, they Told the Truth I BOX
Performance
In her work, Charlotte Bouckaert often explores the tension between photography and perception. She manipulates images to shift the attention from the frozen moment to the instants before and after the shot was taken. Based on the idea that meaning emerges through the interplay between image, beholder, and context, 'BOX' creates a dialogue between the viewer and an invisible performer. This generates a continuous flow of disappearing images that interact with the museum’s collection.
Charlotte Bouckaert © Charlotte Bouckaert
Karel van Laere
SLow
Video
A man moves slowly through the urban landscape, pulled by an invisible electric winch. At a steady, unwavering pace, his body carves a path through the city, creating a poetic and powerful contrast between the defenseless human body and the relentless rhythm of modern life. During his time in Taiwan, Karel van Laere observed how people live within strict societal rules that are not easily set aside. In the video SLow, he explores the vulnerability of the human body in a world dominated by machines and rigid systems.
Still ‘SLow’, Karel van Laere, 2013
Ferenc Balcaen
Alledaags Afscheid
Conversation/ encounter
'Alledaags Afscheid' at M focuses on a deeper thematic exploration. Balcaen invites visitors to an intimate encounter, where hands speak and words are allowed to hesitate. These conversations form part of his research into melancholy, as he reflects on how we pause for farewell and how we cope with everyday loss.
Ferenc Balcaen, Alledaags Afscheid
