photo: Koen Broos
...slugs’ garden is an immersive space for tactile contemplation. It’s a habitat to be calmly dwelled in, a playground of subtle sensations. It’s an intimate context where we can consider our relationship to our surroundings – other people and other objects – and let it morph, unintendedly.
slugs’ garden is also the time to let us experience minute events of seemingly no consequence. Have you ever surprised yourself by fiddling with a piece of paper that your fingers found lying somewhere? This is the time to let those small gestures mushroom to the centre of our attention, and become the core events of a meaningless universe full of sense.
Like a garden, it’s a space in which to spend some quiet time, having nothing in particular to do or to think about. This slugs’ garden is there to be inhabited and played with; an exploration of being in the space, an experience of time. It’s to wear no shoes. It’s where things grow. It’s when we cultivate our interest in insignificant incidents. Here, we don’t walk, we don’t skip. Here, we take the time to touch our environment and to caress it, detail by detail. We slide through it slowly, with no specific intention, wandering without plans, with no goal to achieve. It is the time we take to grow into slugs. ...
- Fabián Barba & Esteban Donoso
See full statement and more info here.
Performed by
Thiago Antunes, Josh T. Franco, Thomas Hauert, Tuur Marinus, Gabriel Schenker, Samantha van Wissen & students of the ISAC (Institut Supérieur des Arts et des Chorégraphies), Académie royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles (ArBA EsA): Paula Almiron, Maïte Alvarez, Estelle Czernichowski, Camille Dejean, Sophie Farza, Swan Gautier, Fanny Heddebaut, Shankar Lestrehan, Elena Moreno, Rosandra Nicoletti, Juliette Otter, Leen Van Dommelen, Castelie Yalombo, Victor Schmidt Guezennec
Research & concept
Fabián Barba, Esteban Donos
With the collaboration of
Josh T. Franco
Textile design
Ana María Gómez
Set design
Ive J.K. Leemans
Presentation
Kunstenfestivaldesarts, La Bellone
Executive production
Caravan Production
Co-production
deSingel International Arts Campus (Antwerp), Life Long Burning/workspacebrussels with the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union
With the support of
Flemish Government, the Province of Antwerp
Thanks to
Decolonial Summer School Middelburg (University College Roosevelt, Utrecht, NL), Centro de Arte Contemporaneo (CAC) (Quito, EC), l’Alliance Française (Quito, EC), Casa Malayerba (Quito, EC), KVS / Heidi Ehrhart (Brussels, BE), Stoffen Joëlle by Soie Unique (Antwerp, BE), Juan Pablo Plazas Saenz and everyone who has helped us developing the slugs’ practice in Quito and Brussels