Let yourself be swept up in an exhibition featuring numerous Brussels-based artists imagining the city of tomorrow, dive into panel discussions exploring alternative forms of technology, media and culture, and join hands-on workshops and talks spread throughout the day.
For 5 days, WIELS becomes a lab for the future — and we’d love to have you there!
On Friday and Saturday, a packed programme awaits with panel discussions, hands-on workshops, intimate talks and performances. More than 100 artists, designers, scientists and thinkers with a heart for Brussels reflect on the cities of tomorrow and on technology that truly matters.
About the exhibition
Can technology help us truly reshape the world? Sustainable change calls not only for new technologies, but also for a critical look at their cultural, social and ethical impact. Artists are the critical antennae of our society and play an important role in this. They challenge existing assumptions and imagine alternative futures through tangible images, installations, speculative scenarios, actions, prototypes and performances. The exhibition Shifting Worlds brings together the work of 17 artists and designers. From different perspectives, they reflect on the city of tomorrow and explore what role technology can – or precisely cannot – play in it.
The participating artists: Adrien Lucca, Bento Architecture, Hadassa Ngamba, Emmanuel Van der Auwera, Tom & Nicolas Valckenaere, Rachel Armstrong, Guillaume Slizewicz, Antye Guenther, Alice Jarry-Girard, Mona Filleul, Pandore Rossi, Lucía Xaxalxe, Matthijs De Block, Solar Lab, Eva L’Hoest, LAb[au], Laure Winants.
Talks and panel discussions
More than 25 talks, panel discussions and performances explore what it means for cities to be relational: shaped in relation to other living systems, cultures and ways of knowing. Artists, scientists, thinkers and makers tackle this question from the widest range of angles. They explore what it means to build cities with living systems – bacteria, yeasts, mycelium, insects – rather than merely being inspired by them. They make the invisible tangible: cosmic rays, quantum phenomena, brainwaves, the creeping impact of light pollution or platform logics. They question the city not as a collection of streets and buildings, but as a network of communities, ideas, emotions and collective imagination. And they bring forward knowledge that is too often overlooked – ancestral, indigenous, craft-based, embodied – as a full-fledged source of technological imagination. Running through all these conversations is the same underlying question: who or what deserves our care, our attention and our imagination in the city of tomorrow, and who gets to help shape that city?
About the Fashion Factory
What happens when you can virtually try on a creation by a Brussels designer, have your favourite garment repaired, or add your own unique screen print? When you discover how a Digital Product Passport reveals the story behind your clothing, or wonder whether dissolvable thread could be the key to better recycling?
The Fashion Factory takes you through a series of installations, workshops and talks where creativity, craftsmanship and technology come together. Check out the programme and pick the workshops that inspire you most.
The Fashion Factory is made possible by Masjien VUB, Anneleen Bertels, KNOTTO, The Digital Fashion Group, Playar, Jente Fleerackers, An Vandenberk, Resortecs, Beyond Bar Code, AWA Studio, Lila & John, Dorilou, kwale.hakiza, Julie Menuge, Erratum Fashion, Strange Inner Worlds, EVEN, TURBO, Atelier Bitoño
With big thanks to Gilbard for the scenography.
