Swamp Sacrifices
Paula Almiron and Wouter De Raeve
Since 2021, artists Paula Almiron and Wouter De Raeve have been working in Brussels’ Northern Quarter to investigate the impact of urban planning on local communities. The neighbourhood, like many others in the city, is located in a large swampy area, which was drained to provide space for the growing city. The swamp buried under the asphalt streets of Brussels serves as a starting point of Swamp Sacrifices, a two-day programme of performances, a concert, screenings, and talks.
Historically, swamps in the Brussels’ Zenne river valley were places of non-productivity. Distant from all urban life, they were spaces of transcendence and spirituality, where people made offerings to gods, superior beings, and other worlds. Swamp Sacrifices is an invitation to reflect on what happens when we approach the swamp and the water resurfacing at today’s construction sites, including this future museum, as a zone free from production steeped in capitalist thinking. Whether we want it or not, the water and its entanglements find their way into the cracks of our contemporary society. What are we to do with its presence? Are we going to impose our will on it again?
Swamp Sacrifices acts as an invitation to think with the artists about what else can rise to the surface when we approach the swamp as a zone of non-productivity. The full programme, spanning two days, includes workshops, a concert, and performances spread across KANAL-Centre Pompidou, M33, and radical_house.