Join us for the launch of Beginnings a collective publication project that gathers textual and visual works from twenty-nine artists to question protocols and forms of narration.

With readings & recordings by Cleo Tsw, Clara Pasteau, D-E-A-L & Calli Uzza Layton alongside artworks by Hyo Young Chu, Silvana Mc Nulty, Yunie Chae, Anaïs Fontanges, Heleen Mineur, Josefina Anjou, Raphaël Massart, Eliott Déchamboux Florey & Manon Michèle.

Beginnings was edited and designed by Manon Michèle and Oliver Boulton and published by Ex. Coda, 2025.

Schedule:
16:00 readings and presentation

About Beginnings:
What do we start with when telling a story — What tensions activate it — What does it promise — What do we want from it — How do we deliver it — Must it have an end — What about a story which never began — Stories we wish were told — Stories which have always been there — Stories we don’t know how to start.

Beginnings is a collective attempt at questioning protocols and forms of narration, initiated by Manon Michèle. The publication gathers textual and visual works from twenty-nine artists, writers and collectives. With two covers, ninety-six pages, and no end, the publication remains in flux, with no definitive conclusions but the shape of an ongoing question: Where do we start and where might the act of arriving lead.

There’s bodies thrusted through motion, accelerations, collapses, into the folly of life, death, borders and language. There’s following intuition, rabbits, leaders, and the shape of clouds, switching from script to script to escape latched circles and compliance. There’s braiding together clashing dimensions and vital landmarks, processing ghosts to reclaim space, feeding them to trusted spirits. There’s foreseeing new shapes, and believing in what grows. There’s the poetry of saving what can be saved and the pull of letting go. There’s so much to begin with

Contributors
Alice dos Reis, Anaïs Fontanges, Anna Bierler, Auriane Preud’homme, Bravas Graphix, Calli Uzza Layton, Clara Pasteau, Cleo Tsw, D-E-A-L, Elina Birkehag, Eliott Déchamboux, Emilie Pitoiset, Heleen Mineur, Hyo Young Chu, Josefina Anjou, Juliette Lepineau, Kimberley Cosmilla, Manon Michèle, Maria Paris, Marie-Mam Sai Bellier, Mathis Perron, Mia Trabalon, Pablo Bardinet, Pays de Glossolalie, Philip Ullman, Raphaël Massart, Sanae Oujjit, Silvana Mc Nulty, Yunie Chae

Beginnings was edited and designed by Manon Michèle and Oliver Boulton, and published by Ex. Coda, 2025.

About the Readers
Manon Michèle is a French visual artist, writer, graphic designer and teacher. Her practice challenges the textures of the textual through modes of conversation and aggregation. In exploring the instable circulation and ambivalent interpretation of words—seeing their substance propagated from mouths to texts, echoes to silences, mimicry to opacity, power to failure—she evokes a language that haunts itself. She is a graduate of MFA program Approaching Language at Sandberg Institute (NL). She is the initiator of this anthology of works, Beginnings.

Cleo TSW is a Singaporean-born designer and writer based in Amsterdam (NL). She recently graduated from the Critical Studies programme at Sandberg Instituut. Cleo is publishing work at Off Course. Issue I is a study of narration distinctive in their visual form: lexicons, lists, lyrics, collages, comics, essays and other diverse prose forms and their thresholds towards articulating and enacting language.

Clara Pasteau is a graphic designer, web developer and a member of OSP (Open Source Publishing) in Brussels BE. She is particularly interested in viewing coding as a craft, treating HTML and CSS as raw building materials. Her artistic and research practice focuses on websites as a medium of analysis, exploring technological, political and ecological dimensions. She also employs writing as a foundational element in her projects, adopting intuitive and automatic methods.

D-E-A-L is a creative studio run by a group of designers, artists, and developers based in Brussels (BE) since 2018. The studio creates distinctive visual languages tailored to each assignment’s specifics, interconnecting mediums, formats and disciplines with a unique twist.

Calli Uzza Layton is a writer and artist attempting to define practice while exploring notions of landscape, roving and distance. She lives and works in Washington (DC).