Let's Not Get Used to This Place – Works 2008-2023

17 Mouvements collects traces of a project that Decoratelier - the workspace and arts platform of Jozef Wouters - did in the fall of 2022 around the ‘5 blocs’ area in Brussels (Rempart Des Moines/Papenvest).

When Nuit Blanche invited them to build a gym, Camille Thiry and other Decoratelier associates did not want to design another generic muscle cage. Together with the neighbourhoods inhabitants, they built 17 distinct movement spaces, each tailor-made to an individual’s size, needs, dreams and aches. The gym equipment has meanwhile been removed from public space, but this eponymous book (ed. by Jozef Wouters) combines notes and reflections (language: French) by Camille with beautiful photography by Enzo Smits, documenting the ingenious and unique negotiations that were a part of this collaboration.

Drawing on his experience in the field of contemporary dance, Jeroen Peeters discusses principles, methods and practices that contribute to an understanding of dramaturgy as an experimental, collaborative practice and a material form of thinking.

Written from practice, this book reflects a particular history of collaboration and conversation with dance-makers such as Martin Nachbar, Meg Stuart, Vera Mantero, Sabina Holzer, Lisa Nelson, Jennifer Lacey, Chrysa Parkinson, deufert + plischke, Eleanor Bauer, Philipp Gehmacher and many others.

Phantasmal archaeology, unfolding material, literal and physical reading, crafting method, articulating process, witnessing and performing not-knowing, naming and ritual destruction, conceptual landscapes, symbolic waste, internal fictions and foreign objects – they may all play a role in creation and in exploring the unfamiliar in pursuit of making sense.

And then it got legs is an invitation to think along or against, to discuss those ideas with others or explore them in the studio, and eventually to imagine and devise one’s own methods of research, observation, reflection and creation.

Afternoon Editions no. 5: a collection of found papers annotated by Jeroen Peeters, titled Bookmarks of sorts. During several years Jeroen Peeters collected notes left by readers in library books: faded reader tickets, scraps with notes, a shopping list, train tickets and other little papers used as bookmarks. He noted each time the date and the book in which they were found. Afterwards he wrote commentaries to this collection, an essay on alternative reading practices, marginalia and extra-illustration, on the exchange between readers and the imaginary community lingering in all those library books.

Afternoon Editions no. 1: an essay by Jeroen Peeters titled Reseeding the library, gleaning readership. In May 2017, Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine settled during three weeks in the Ravenstein Gallery in Brussels as part of the Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Invited as a writer in residence, Jeroen Peeters visited the library of living books on a daily basis and recorded his observations by hand in a notebook, which formed the basis for Afternoon Edition #1. Reseeding the library, gleaning readership is an essay on the seed library, on the dispersion of literature through wind, water and animals, on biodiversity and commoning at the heart of readership. On the cover a drawing by Wouter Krokaert of a Philodendron Xanadu. Published May 2018.

24 transcribed public conversations led by Xavier Le Roy with artists and cultural workers, creating a space where Le Roy's work meets the experiences of his guests.

Lives Shaping Works Making Life is a collection of 24 transcribed public conversations titled Practices: Strategies and Tactics, led by Xavier Le Roy and hosted by the Institute for Applied Theater Studies in Giessen between November 2022 and November 2024. These dialogues bring together artists and cultural workers creating a space where Xavier Le Roy's work engages in conversation with the experiences of each guest. Each encounter follows the same set of 14 questions—printed on the book's cover—which serve as a flexible framework guiding the conversations. Through the careful editing of Giulia Casartelli, Daniel Cordova, and Livia Andrea Piazza, these conversations have been transformed into vivid, polyphonic texts that invite further reflection and offer a point of departure for expanding the dialogue beyond the original live encounters.

Conversations with Antonia Baehr, Matthias Mohr, João Fiadeiro, Herbordt / Mohren, Carolina Mendonça, Rolf Michenfelder, Ana Vujanović, Bojana Cvejić, Joana Tischkau, Giulia Casartelli, Susanne Zaun & Judith Altmeyer, Florence Lam, Olivia Hyunsin Kim, Jorge Alencar & Neto Machado, Rabih Mroué, Ruth Geiersberger, Swoosh Lieu, Arkadi Zaides, Valeria Graziano, Mette Edvardsen, Mala Kline, Sarah Parolin, Andros Zins-Browne, Rose Beermann.

The books included in the series ‘Choreography as Conditioning’ are rooted in a cycle of work sessions entitled CASC at KASK, in which students work together with invited guests. They explore the notions of choreography, understood as ways of organizing subjects in their surroundings, and conditioning in both art-making and society-making. Where, how, and by whom are things organized and what kind of landscapes of experience are made (im)possible by the practices we enact and encounter?

‘… Through Practices’ is written by artist researchers who have been involved in a three-day public symposium with the same title, explo­ring ecologies of attention, awareness, senses of participation, and agen­cies of practice. It presents resonances and sedimentations of indi­vidual, shared, and collective practices, mirroring different forms of participating and responding—diverse in/capacities, im/possi­bilities, and dis/interests as they appear in and through experience.

The Imaginary Republic is an artistic research project focusing on questions of social practice. In particular, it considers the creative and restless imaginaries underpinning our political selves and argues for a deeper engagement with what Elena Loizidou terms “dream-action”: the figurative and poetic staging of world making activity.

The publication brings together participating artists Tatiana Fiodorova, Octavio Camargo / Brandon LaBelle, the Sala-Manca Group, and Joulia Strauss, whose practices engage situations of struggle and autonomous cultures through a range of methods and approaches. From social fictioning to camouflaged interventions, collaborative pedagogies to gestures of care, their works propose unlikely paths of mutuality. The publication includes documentation of an exhibition held at Kunsthall 3,14 in Bergen, as well as key essays and works by theorists and artists Rhiannon Firth, Hélène Frichot, Marysia Lewandowska, Gerald Raunig, Raimar Stange with Oliver Ressler, and Manuela Zechner.

published in June 2020

Livre d’images sans images by Mette Edvardsen & Iben Edvardsen borrows its title from a book by H.C. Andersen, also referred to as The Moon Chronicler. The book follows a conversation between a painter and the Moon, where the Moon describes to the painter what she sees on her journey around the world every evening, telling the painter to paint what she describes. “This conversation, as in the now obsolete meaning of the word (‘a place where one lives or dwells’), was the starting point for our work. Using the weather report as dramaturgy, (‘the moon did not show up every evening, sometimes a cloud came in between’), we have created and collected materials from our conversations in the form of recordings, text, voice, drawings, references, found images, loose connections, inspirations and imaginations, in the order they came to us. They are at the same time sources and traces, material and support for new imaginations or events to come.” The work consists of three different media: vinyl, paper and live performance. 

Mette Edvardsen is a choreographer and performer eager to explore the performing arts as a practice and situation, also in relation to other media such as books and writing. This work is in collaboration with her daughter, Iben Edvardsen.

Published by Xing & Varamo Press
XONG collection – artist records XX10 (2023)
First edition, September 2023
Recorded and edited by Mette Edvardsen & Iben Edvardsen
Format white 12’ vinyl LP in cardboard sleeve
Released in a numbered edition of 300 copies, including collector’s edition of 25 copies, each accompanied by a unique poster hand drawn with black marker by Mette Edvardsen & Iben Edvardsen, 59,4 x 84 cm, folded, signed by the artists