Swamp Sacrifices
An immersion in the cracks, the non-productive and the supersensory of the Brussels underground; a gathering around water, eroticism and the (un)controlled.
The second edition of Swamp Sacrifices focuses on water and eroticism (hydro-eroticism) and on (un)controlled spaces as a counterbalance to the strict ways of dealing with the Brussels soil.
The erotic is seen here as the sharing of a deep joy, whether it is physical, emotional, psychic or intellectual. Swamp Sacrifices investigates the link between water, eroticism and the spiritual realm. Moving beyond conventional ideas about productivity and reproduction, spaces are opened up to allow for a more deeply felt intimacy with our surroundings. In this perspective, water itself becomes a sensual, fluid companion in the search for connection beyond control.
At breakneck speed, our society has evolved into a mechanism that exerts control over humans and spaces alike. But what would those spaces look like if that control was relinquished? What new relationships might arise with – and from – the Brussels substrate, the swamp?
Over the course of one weekend, the swamp and the waters of Brussels become a site of shared pleasure, intimacy and eroticism, making room for that which grows (and withers) beyond production and control.
The second edition of Swamp Sacrifices takes place both indoors and outdoors, by the canal and in K1 (Kanal Centre-Pompidou), and in the marsh of Neder-Over-Heembeek. The programme includes performances, presentations, workshops and films.
Curated by: Paula Almiron & Wouter De Raeve
Production: Hiros
Contributors: Eliane Bertschi, Seba Calfuqueo, Jori Galama, Pieterjan Grandry, Catalina Insignares, Anna Lugmeier & Mar* Szydlowska, Sophia Rodriguez & Simon van Schuylenbergh & Vincent Focquet & Freinetscholen Keerpun, Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, Hannah Todt, Gosie Vervloessem & Simon Asencio & ISAC
Co-production: Kanal – Centre Pompidou
Supported by: VGC and Urban Planning Department, City of Brussels
Saturday 4th October
at KANAL - Centre Pompidou
Location: K1, Temporary venue of KANAL-Centre Pompidou (Av. du Port 1, 1000 Brussels)
Ongoing: Cracks on a Cell Phone with Love Letters, a textile installation by Eliane Bertschi
16:00: v e s s e l, a performance by Catalina Insignares (tickets)
17:00: Sweet Darkness, a performance by Sophía Rodriguez & Simon Van Schuylenbergh & Vincent Focquet & Freinetscholen Keerpunt
18:00: v e s s e l, a performance by Catalina Insignares (tickets)
19:00-23:00: An evening of fi lms on water, eroticism and (un)control
TRAY TRAY KO (Big Waterfall), a video performance by Seba Calfuqueo
Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure, by Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens Artemys revival by Mar* Szydłowska & Anna Lugmeier
Followed by Ear Balm, a DJ set by Hannah Todt
A bar and soup corner is open throughout the whole program
Sunday 5th October
in the swamp of Neder-Over-Heembeek
Location: Meeting point at 15h45 at the entrance of La Ferme Nos Pilifs, Trassersweg 347, 1120 Brussels
16:00-18:00: this world is full of monsters — storytelling as a sensual practice, by Gosie Vervloessem & Simon Asencio & ISAC
18:00: Thus Burped the Bog Body, a reading by Jori Galama
4th October at Kanal-Centre Pompidou
Cracks on a Cell Phone with Love Letters,
a textile installation by Eliane Bertschi.
Saturday 4th October, ongoing at KANAL - Centre Pompidou Outdoor, changing shape and space on the quai
Kludde and the Nekker, two mystical fi gures from the Brussels area, reveal their shape-shifting abilities in geotechnical challenges during the construction of new underground subways. Through cracks in the concrete and sunken pillars, a connection emerges — perhaps a love story, a political debate or other entanglements.
Cracks on a Cell Phone with Love Letters is a textile installation that weaves and unravels the story of their encounter. Like speech bubbles in comics, banners can convey words or hidden messages and serve as attributes of saints in religious art. In the Middle Ages banners were often made of cotton or carefully woven silk. They symbolized the identity of their carriers. These banners liquefy the story and the identities of Kludde and Nekker.
Credits:
Eliane Bertschi
Lydia Perret (Support Typefaces)
Languages:
English
v e s s e l,
a performance by Catalina Insignares
Saturday 4th October, 16h & 18h at KANAL - Centre Pompidou. K1, ground fl oor. Dur: 35 min. This performance has a limited audience capacity. Please inscribe through:
16:00 (click here)
18:00 (click here)
In the past years, I’ve been developing an organ, one that can listen through the mouth and the throat, the walls and the fl oors. After two weeks sitting with the canal, the organ has attuned to something else, it has become magnetic and it goes deep down in the water. This performance presents a collection of sounds, songs and things that fl ow between the water and my throat.
Credits: Dramaturgical accompaniment: Andrea Rodrigo and Carolina Mendonça Texts and songs by (in order of appearance): Brian Eno, Björk, Mercedes Sosa, Maggie Nelson, Etelvina Maldonado, Brenda Lee, Chavela Vargas, Gilberto Rojas Enriquez Language.s: English and Spanish
Sweet Darkness,
a performance by Sophía Rodriguez & Simon Van Schuylenbergh & Vincent Focquet & Freinetscholen Keerpunt
Saturday 4th October, 17h at KANAL - Centre Pompidou. Outdoor, in the amphitheatre next to K1
Dur: 35 min
Sophía Rodriguez, in collaboration with Simon Van Schuylenbergh, created a solo during the research project Dark Habits, which examined the beliefs and rituals that sustain society and the artistic fi eld, staging them in different spiritual spaces—the church, new age cults, satanic rituals, and the faith of the faithless—to expose their contradictions with humor and refl ection. Following a proposal by Swamp Sacrifi ces to lead a workshop with the students of Freinetscholen Keerpunt, which is located in the canal area, Sophia further developed this solo as a point of departure, inviting her close collaborator Vincent Focquet to co-guide the process. Sweet Darkness extends the solo’s original imaginary swamp into a real context, allowing the workshop and performance to engage with the sensual and fl uid presence of the swamp. Oscillating between absurd humor, social critique, and intimate vulnerability, the piece probes how rituals, memories, and embodied imagination can transform darkness into a space of fragility and resistance, where the everyday collides with the transcendent and new forms of collective belonging and defi ance can emerge. Language.s: English
An evening of fi lms on water, eroticism and (un)control
Saturday 4th October, 19h at KANAL - Centre Pompidou.
K1- 1st floor
19h15 TRAY TRAY KO (Big Waterfall)
a video performance by Seba Calfuqueo Dur: 6 min The work is centered on the idea of the trayenko (waterfall) in the Mapuche world view. The trayenko is a vital and sacred space to many of the Mapuche people's practices; the fl ow of the water, especially of the trayenko, is of utmost importance and is linked to the lawen–medicinal herbs that grow near water bodies. In the performance, we are able to see the movement of the artist’s body, dressed in an electric blue coat, which, in the end, enters the river and the waterfall. The work proposes to refl ect on the body within the immensity of nature.
19:25 - Water Makes Us Wet: An Ecosexual Adventure
a film by Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens
Duration: 80 min
With a poetic blend of curiosity, humor, sensuality and concern, this fi lm chronicles the pleasures and politics of H2O from an ecosexual perspective. Travel around California with Annie, a former sex worker, Beth, a professor, and their dog Butch, in their E.A.R.T.H. Lab mobile unit, as they explore water in the Golden State. Ecosexuality shifts the metaphor “Earth as Mother” to “Earth as Lover” to create a more reciprocal and empathetic relationship with the natural world. Along the way, Annie and Beth interact with a diverse range of folks including performance artists, biologists, water treatment plant workers, scholars and others, climaxing in a shocking event that reaffi rms the power of water, life and love.
Credits: https://watermakesuswet.ucsc.edu/fi lm-credits/
Language.s:
English
21h Artemys revival
a film by Mar* Szydłowska & Anna Lugmeier Avant-première Dur: 28 min I am shooting you with my eyeball I am trying not to forget That it’s round wet soft Weighs as much as a 2 euro coin And usually it is covered by the curtain of my eye lid Good night Artemys Revival is a short fi lm revolving around the architectural site of the fi rst feminist & lesbian bookshop “Artemys” in Brussels – a place of gatherings, dialogue and queer resistance – founded and led by queer activist and scholar Marian Lens between 1985 and 2002. Informed by choreographic strategies of guiding a walking, moving, sensing body, the fi lm merges embodied experiences of being-in-the-city with complex layers and historical frictions between the XIXth century gallery passage Galerie Bortier and queer identities. Calling upon the mythological fi gure of Artemis and her arrows, the fi lm weaves a visual speculative thought, a daydream about urban spaces for FLINTAQ* people. Credits: concept, direction: Mar* Szydłowska & Anna Lugmeier cinematography: Anna Lugmeier editing: Mar* Szydłowska, Anna Lugmeier sound on set: Laura Weissenberger-Silva soundtrack: Hannah Todt, Mar* Szydłowska sound design: Michael R.J. Crabbé colour grading: Marie-Sarah Piron styling & costume: Laura Weissenberger-Silva starring: Mar* Szydłowska, Abigail Aleksander, Galerie Bortier special thanks to: Alex Auris, Sofi a Dati, Mattijs Driesen, The Green Corridor, Meg Mackenzies, Marian Lens, Nathaniel Moore, Emma Ydiers supported by Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommisie
Language.s: English
21h30 Ear Balm
a DJ set by Hannah Todt Hannah Todt works with sound, vessels, metaphors, tubes, drawings and words. To her, music is a mother tongue we all speak through our ears. She composed the soundtrack for Artemys Revival and will close the screening with a selection of sounds to welcome the turning of the seasons.
5th October in the swamp of Neder-Over-Heembeek
this world is full of monsters— storytelling as a sensual practice,
by Gosie Vervloessem & Simon Asencio & ISAC a workshop from 30th September until 5th October + a public sharing on Sunday, 5th October
Sunday, 5th October, 16h in the swamp of Neder-Over-Heembeek
Meeting point at 15h45 at the entrance of La Ferme Nos Pilifs, Trassersweg 347, 1120 Brussels. Dur: 100-120 min.
Gosie and Simon started to collaborate in 2022, exploring the relationship between plants and text, diving deep into the work of Jeff Vandermeer's Area X. They will continue their investigation in company of the participants of the ISAC-Institut Supérieur des Arts et Chorégraphies, the swamp of Neder-Over-Heembeek, works by Catalina Isignares and Maru Mushtrieva, writings by Ursula Le Guin, Jeff Vandermeer, Tim Etchell and more. Together they will dive into the swamp’s messy, sacred, and wild heart—a place where knowledge bleeds through mud, roots, and decay. Stories don’t sit quietly here; they surge with the swamp, raw and alive, pulsing through bodies and materials with a fi erce, ritual energy. The masterclass will explore storytelling as a contagious force, feeling the fl ow of agencies between swamp and fl esh. Storytelling becomes a sensual encounter—where agencies shift—where ‘I read or write the swamp as it simultaneously reads and writes me’. They will explore how power moves through these entanglements and use storytelling to question and disrupt established orders. At the end of the week, a public sharing will be organized in the surroundings of La Ferme Nos Pilifs.
Language.s: Vegetal
Thus Burped the Bog Body
a reading by Jori Galama
Sunday, 5th October, 18h in the swamp of Neder-Over-Heembeek
Dur: 15 min
Jori will accompany Swamp Sacrifi ces by witnessing its performances, fi lms, research presentations and collective moments. Out of these encounters, they will weave a speculative text starting from a refl ection on the bog bodies of two sacrifi ced men (Mr. & Mr. Veenstra) found near the place where they grew up in the north of the Netherlands. Part refl ection, part reverie, this closing reading will stitch together the different experiences and knowledge generated during the two days. Language.s: English
Visual identity of Swamp Sacrifices 25,
by Pieterjan Grandry
The images of this year 's edition of ‘Swamp Sacrifi ces’ aim to create a tension between the digital and the natural, chaotic and ordered. A car driving through the mud, city pigeons, quickly recorded video clips capturing two worlds are randomised by a digital process called dithering. This is a compression technique designed to make a digital image as small as possible by reducing its information to 1 and 0. Optimising the loading time and thereby reducing its ecological impact to as close to zero as possible, while trying to maintain a recognisable image. A mostly forgotten ecological ethos in a cyber world.
Trapped in this mesh we fi nd the image of ‘Cernunnos’ a Celtic god related to nature and the afterlife. Reminding us of the Celtic history of Brussels and its swampy march land.
Pigeons are the first domesticated birds and symbolise peace and love.