Real and Imaginary Embodied Landscapes / Molenbeek

Brussels, 8 June 2016 – 9 June 2016
A two-days workshop and a round-table discussion with a parallel exhibition that explore the idea of silence in the sensory experience of diverse layers of Brussels. The event is included in the actions of the Urban Emptiness Network (http://urbanemptiness.org/), which suggests an interdisciplinary investigation of emptiness and silence in three contemporary cities: Athens, Edinburgh and Brussels.
Info and reservation: urbanemptiness@gmail.com

8 June 2016

16:00 – 19:30 /  Reading Molenbeek.
A silent walking workshop that aims to foster the body awareness of the individual in the city and especially in the area of Molenbeek that regards a unique environment, worthy to be examined in terms of performativity, sensing and the experiential spatiality of silence. Besides using silence as a methodological tool of opening oneself to the moving city-scape of this walk, the workshop invites the participants to create/narrate/depict imaginary, mnemonic or even oneiric landscapes of the area. Documentation techniques will be deployed to fulfil this aim along with a discussion at the end of the workshop.
Based on an ongoing creative dialogue between Stella Mygdali, Dr. Christos Kakalis, Geert Vermeire,  Stefaan Van Biesen and Marielys Burgos Melendez.

9 June 2016 18:00 / Silent Pockets Brussels
Silent Pockets
Project by master students of RITCS and Guy Debievre
Cities have pockets of silence, usually by contrast to sonically more intense environments. If you would transpose those pockets to a quiet countryside, they would of course probably seem very noisy. But within the city these oases can sometimes almost seem surreal especially when they do not require entering buildings. Their quietude can be due to architecture, shielding them physically; to conscious planning (larger pedestrian areas are more likely to house them) or distance from more active neighbourhoods, or proximity to abandoned, possibly derelict sites.

From 9th June 2016 / Placing Sounds Molenbeek
Soundwalk
A sound walk and composition of 3D sound related to body movement in space  and walking, placed sounds in the urban space mix naturally depending on your position and your movement, allowing you to to compose a soundscape with your body. The placing and editing of sound happens on your iOS mobile device using the GeoComposer app. The GeoPlayer app plays the sound piece at the location, based on their geolocalised position tracked via gps outdoors or via iBeacons indoors. Both apps are integrated with Google Street View, so that users can virtually experience both the visual environment and sonicscape together on the screen. Both apps are free available on AppleStore. The soundwalk, composed with sounds from Athens, Edinburgh and Brussels, will be permanantly available from 9th of June as a download on your iOS device. www.sonicplanet.com

Placing sounds is a project by Geert Vermeire, Stefaan van Biesen and Dr. Sinan Bokesoy, with contributions of sound artists and collectives in Edinburgh, Athens and Brussels.