Plastic Art Performance collective’s art research < symbio-bodies: cryptogams > took place between 17.07 and 31.07 in Brussels and surrounding forest areas. The residency revolved around ”making kin” with forest beings: fungi, lichens, moss and ferns and set out to develop and test sensory, perceptual and body-based tools to come into poetic engagement/ entanglement with these cryptogams (“hidden” reproducers, via spores). The mobility was possible through a grant from Culture moves Europe. Funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and implemented by the Goethe-Institut.

Who were the artists travelling?

With a formal training in cultural anthropology and folklore studies, GCV (Georgiana Vlahbei) manifests as an inter-media creatress. Her current practices intersect: photo-performative essays, exhibition concepts, nature-object installations, costume making, digital illustration, art microscopy, videoart explorations and, starting with 2023, earth art and performance experiments, rooted in ecological consciousness. She uses these as tools for investigating the overlaps between sensory universes, cultural heritage, and symbiotic thinking.

Alina Tofan is a multidisciplinary artist working across acting, performance art, and a PhD candidate in Visual Arts at the National University of Arts, Bucharest. Her practice conceives performance art as ritual and rebellion, with the body as a site of resistance, memory, and ecological entanglement. Through embodied and interdisciplinary research, she explores more-than-human perspectives and the transformative potential of ecoperformance.

Coming from web development in international and European projects, Kiro (Alexandru Chirilă) has an experience of 15 years with various musical instruments (percussion – hand drums, drum sets, electric/acoustic guitar, keyboards etc.) During the last 3 years, his work has also developed sound design and production, most recently within Plastic Art Performance collective, where he’s currently engaged in creative coding tools for music experiments.

Who was our host?

Adina Ionescu-Muscel is a Belgian-Romanian visual artist working across experimental analogue film, installation and performance. Her practice explores how moving images can become sites of encounter with the more-than-human world, through direct contact with plants, photochemical processes and collaborative forms of attention.

LaboBxL is a film processing and research laboratory working since 2005 with film in all its forms. It functions as a space for image creation and production, working mainly with super-8 and 16mm film – shooting, developing, processing, transferring, transforming and testing. LABO is a toolbox, a place for research and experimentation, thanks to the sharing of knowledge and the exchange of know-how and practices. In this laboratory, a cinema of artisans is born, autonomous and outside commercial logics.

Short after-clip

Public events:

Immersive sensory event: 26.07 in Foret de Soignes. See here the experience guiding lines.

Performative reading event: 29.07 at Zig Zag Reading Room, Brussels. See here list of authors and references.

Behind the scenes

Soundtrack:

Photo series: Offerings to the Nurse Logs

[ This work was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.]