What does it mean to own? During the day, Emptor invites a group of engaged artists, art workers, and institutions to reflect on the challenges our current interpretation of property imposes, within the artistic field and beyond. Vermeir & Heiremans and Ciel Grommen & Maximiliaan Royakkers will present their ongoing research and talk about their artistic practice. Both duos collaboratively confront monopolised landscapes of extraction, proposing different ways of engaging with the respective sites they engage with, and articulating situated narratives concerned with how to live within these territories. Elaborate plenary discussions following these presentations will allow for collective knowledge and insights to develop. Making our way from the collective reflection to the public moment, Vermeir & Heiremans, taking up the role of fine water sommeliers, invite us to a degustation of 'eaux de Spa'. Gathering wood In an attempt to publish and perform our ongoing exchange on practicing property, Emptor invites you to a public moment of collective wood-gathering as a way to actively participate in the reflection on the notion of property and how it influences our use of common resources and art. Introduced by Emptor dramaturg Steyn Bergs and Ciel Grommen & Maximiliaan Royakkers, the wood gathering is followed by a keynote on open source cartography by Atelier Cartographique Brussels and a collective session of cartographing our findings. Meanwhile, Clémentine Vaultier will make sure we don’t get hungry, taking from her research on ways we raise, use, and diffuse warmth.
Gesture: AOP 1: ‘What does it mean to own?’