Network day: A Day of Kinship

Openbare werken, the city festival organised by Tot in de Stad!, invites you to rediscover the city and more - where artists engage with public space, explore kinship and take root in public squares, from the margins of the marshes and with long tables full of food.

On Friday 9 May, we meet at an old manor farm in Geraardsbergen among the trees and chickens for a networking day, or the prélude to the festival. We invite you to spend a day slowing down and connecting with our surroundings, each other and yourself. 

There are a number of offerings (ritual, conversation, workshop, walk, meal,...) shaped from artistic practices of artists working from/around kinship (including Isabel Burr Raty, Elien Ronse, Laura Palau, Asli Hatipoglu, Eline De Clercq, Jubilee, State of the Arts,...). Bring your colleagues and your hammock! 

With openbare werken, art practices appear in places where you don’t always expect them. They embrace the margins, connect with what is already there and gently subvert the dominant currents of the city. The city festival draws attention to a range of unconventional makers. Like Mark Požlep with 'Everything Under', exploring what goes on under the waterline of Ghent’s waterways, or the artists of Midnight Marsh, who bring the wild marshes from the expanding periphery back to the city centre in the form of a big potluck, and Atlas of Ovens, taking us to hidden baking ovens in the city.

During the festival, discover these and many other projects that question and engage with public space - with the marshes as the undercurrent and food and kinship as the common thread.

"Staying with the trouble means making (odd)kin; that is, we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations - between humans and non-humans - in hot compost piles. We become - with each other or not at all." - Donna Harraway