“The trees, the rocks, the animals, they are not [histosentient]. But your laugh, that is a histosentient sound. The word means historically sentient; and that means knowing where you've been, where you are, and where you're going. It also means appreciating it.” Out of the Dead City by Samuel R. Delany
Histosentience is a three-day artist-run programme of performance, bringing together three artistic works presented over three consecutive evenings, each followed by a conversation with the artist. Taking as its starting point the concept of histosentience from Samuel R. Delany’s novel Out of the Dead City, which describes a particular form of intelligence that is conscious of its own historicity, the programme proposes a framework in which the works become contexts for one another, allowing their forms, questions and methods to be read relationally, while the artists themselves directly shape the discourse surrounding their work.
Histosentience est un programme de performance de trois jours, porté par des artistes, qui réunit trois œuvres présentées sur trois soirées consécutives, chacune suivie d'une conversation avec l'artiste. Prenant pour point de départ le concept d'histosentience issu du roman de Samuel R. Delany Out of the Dead City, qui décrit une forme particulière d'intelligence consciente de sa propre historicité, le programme propose un cadre dans lequel les œuvres deviennent des contextes les unes pour les autres, permettant de lire leurs formes, leurs questions et leurs méthodes de manière relationnelle, tandis que les artistes façonnent directement le discours autour de leur travail.
Histosentience is een driedaags, door kunstenaars gerund performanceprogramma dat drie artistieke werken samenbrengt op drie opeenvolgende avonden, telkens gevolgd door een gesprek met de kunstenaar. Met als vertrekpunt het begrip histosentience uit Samuel R. Delany's roman Out of the Dead City, dat een bijzondere vorm van intelligentie beschrijft die zich bewust is van haar eigen historiciteit, stelt het programma een kader voor waarin de werken context worden voor elkaar, zodat hun vormen, vragen en methoden relationeel gelezen kunnen worden, terwijl de kunstenaars zelf het discours rond hun werk rechtstreeks vormgeven.
Histosentience je trodnevni program izvedbi koji vode umjetnici, a okuplja tri umjetnička rada predstavljena tijekom tri uzastopne večeri, nakon kojih slijedi razgovor s umjetnicima. Polazeći od pojma histosentience iz romana Samuela R. Delanyja Out of the Dead City, koji opisuje osobit oblik inteligencije svjestan vlastite povijesnosti, program predlaže okvir u kojem radovi postaju konteksti jedni drugima, omogućujući da se njihove forme, pitanja i metode čitaju relacijski, dok umjetnici sami izravno oblikuju diskurs o svom radu.
Tickets are free upon reservation (suggested donation 10 EUR per performance or 25 EUR for all three). Each performance is followed by a reflection session — an after talk amongst the showing artists.
08-12-26, 18h first performance, 20h second performance, au JUS, St Gilles
is a performance that, through objects, sound, video and choreography, reflects on depiction, technology and historicity, and uses argument — the practice of persuasion — as a performative device.
The performance is organized around the encounter of two performers with oddly grouped items. Clustered portraits of public figures, reconstructed from memory, stand alongside a still life composed of objects refracted through a mirrored sphere. Over the course of the performance, we observe the gathered objects in a material time caught up in social relations of power and reproduction that evade us.
A rendering of a nameless cityscape in aeropittura style further choreographs the space. Speed and altitude break down into dream-like forms of “the future”. Fetishizing bird’s-eye view, seeking to represent representation as such, for the Italian futurists, aeropittura was to impress its viewers: look what technology can do! 2009 borrows this disputed backdrop for a final call to action.
We treat the long first decade of the twenty-first century as a memorable epoch, a coming-of-age story of sorts, today distant enough to return as a problem and demand interpretation. Looking back, we ask how we became available to the popular forms that now organize us.
Marko Gutić Mižimakov is a visual, performance and text-based artist living between Brussels and Zagreb. Through intimate and collaborative processes, they animate and choreograph bodies and objects, digital and palpable, into non-orientable forms. Their work increasingly deals with matter as stored time, the sediment of social relations and the frictions that shift them. Current projects include 2 0 0 9 and Sagittarius A* with Stefa Govaart, and Govaart’s film Duplicity. They are an external associate at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where they also co-organise the artist-run festival PoslijeSvijet (AfterWorld). In Brussels, they are currently organising Histosentience, a performance programme hosted by au JUS and Metarage.
Stefa Govaart is a Brussels-based performance artist. Collaborative in nature, their work probes the stakes of critique today, and considers the performer as “function” caught up in distinct forms of institutionality. They are currently collaborating with Marko Gutić Mižimakov on two film projects and the performance titled 2009. Govaart performed in works by Oscar Murillo/Lydia McGlinchey, Eszter Salamon, Claudia Pagès Rabal, among others. BEGIN/The Mirror (2024) is a dance performance for the theater made in collaboration with Bryana Fritz and Chloe Chignell (Beursschouwburg, Brussels, October 30-31). They teach writing and coordinate the theory programme at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels.
09-12-26, 18h, METARAGE, St Gilles
is a living lexicon of 366 gestures that embodies the 366 entries in Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary written by Monique Wittig and Sandie Zeig (1979). In an act of speculative reanimation Sun Cut is an anticipatory document remembering a future yet to arrive. The work unfurls word by word, body by body. Each iteration of the performance progresses through the dictionary: gathering bodies, gestures, dances. It resists linguistic fixity in order to embrace language as a site of transformation, refusal, and reinvention. Inverting the status of printed material in archival practices Sun Cut asks how the body can be both a site and means of preservation.
Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary is a speculative dictionary that dismantles patriarchal language to posit a world of lesbian relation. Through fragmented definitions and poetic inventions, it reframes language as a site of resistance. Its entries range from definitions of everyday terms to elaborate accounts of mythical events, political movements and cultural practices. The book itself is a queer critique of linguistic authority and its role in enforcing dominant ideologies. Wittig and Zeig subvert the dictionary’s normal function, as a tool of mastery and control, and reshape it into a generative field where language destabilises its own conditions of use. Building on these foundations, Sun Cut approaches Lesbian Peoples not simply as a book but as a practice—a framework for reorganising the body through language.
Chloe Chignell (AU) is an artist working across text, choreography and publishing. Her work focuses on language within a choreographic frame. She invests in writing as a body building practice and in practices of experimental translation. In 2019, Chloe co-founded rile* a bookshop and project space for publication and performance with Sven Dehens. Her work has been presented across Europe and Australia including Beursschouwburg Brussels, Dancehouse Melbourne, NEXT Festival, Pavillon ADC Geneva, Batard Festival, Saal Biennale, Moving Words Norway, KAAP Bruges, Littérature etc. Paris, and Venice Biennale of Dance.
Steph Holl-Trieu (DE) is an artist and writer. Her work explores social relationships that shape modes of perception, the production of meaning and experience – both abstract and concrete. Through text, installation, sound, performative readings and role-play, she develops structures that deconstruct and reconfigure existing forms of meaning-making. She regards aesthetic experience as indeterminate and unruly; her works emerge through a process-oriented approach and frequently within collaborative or collective contexts. Her works have been presented at venues including the Shedhalle, Zurich, CH; HAU Berlin, DE; Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna, AT; and Le Commun, Geneva, CH. Her art-critical texts have appeared in publications such as Texte zur Kunst and PW-Magazine.
10-12-26, 18h doors open, 19h performance, au JUS, St Gilles
It could start with a doll-like body. A doll-like body could lie naked on the lawn, float in the river, stare from the car. She could be frozen in the fridge, covered in plastic on the riverbank, lying in bed as if nothing had happened. A doll-like body could be missing; a day, missing for two, for a week, 96 hours with a hope to reappear, placed perfectly, washed neatly, always in the same pose, waiting to be found, seen on screen, avenged. It will probably start with a doll-unlike body sitting still.
The performance comes into the discussions with the libretto of ballet Coppélia. It is a choreographic manifesto about the relationship between cuteness and violence.
This performance parallels the research “Where do we go when the glass shatters”. With this it re-imagines the choreography through the perspective of its own skin.
Zrinka Užbinec (they/she) dances and works with choreography, shaping it through different media and materials. They often choose collaborative projects and explore the emancipatory potentials of the dancing body. In their work, they approach choreography as a way of thinking, researching, and creating relations through dance, text, video, drawing, objects, and other materials. They hold an MA in Choreography and Performance from JLU Giessen and a practice research PhD from C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research), Coventry University. Their doctoral research, Moving Between Cuteness and Violence: A Choreographic Investigation, explores the relationship between cuteness and violence and the metastability of choreography. Zrinka enjoys facilitating workshops that question dance and choreography as discipline-specific skill sets. They hold the title of Docent (equivalent to Assistant Professor) at the Dance Department of the Academy of Dramatic Art, University of Zagreb, where they occasionally teach as a guest lecturer.
Organised by: au JUS, Ana Letunić, Marko Gutić Mižimakov, Zrinka Užbinec, Stefa Govaart, Chloe Chignell. Thanks to: Sabina Scarlat - Metarage. Funding: City of ZagrebSt Gilles Commune. Website and design: Marko Gutić Mižimakov.