Playground

On Thursday, November 13, the 19th edition of Playground kicks off. The international festival explores the boundaries of performances and installations.

Performances and installations that bring together objects and bodies – that’s Playground in a nutshell. This unique arts festival gives space each year to artists working at the interface of the performing and visual arts, refusing to be confined to one single discipline. The programme is a lively mix of performance, installation, film, role play, guided tours and choreography... Playground remains a haven for experimentation: artists explore new forms and create images that reflect on art and society. Often premieres, always surprising. This year featuring the presentation of a new field sketch by Kunstenpunt on performance art in Flanders. ​

Playground is a collaboration between M and STUK.

Curators: Eva Wittocx, Lore Boon and Steven Vandervelden

Lecture Kunstenpunt - 'Performance in Vlaanderen' in STUK

On the occasion of the publication of a new general description on performance in Flanders, Kunstenpunt is organising a public conversation. This publication, written by Katleen Van Langendonck, offers both a historical and a current overview of the sector in Brussels and Flanders.

Lecture Friday 14.11, 10:00 - 12:30 - in STUK Verbeeckzaal, free entrance (in Dutch and English)

A few names highlighted

Karel van Laere - 'Reach' and 'SLow'

Performance | Belgian première - 20’ in STUK & Video ​ - 6' in M

In 2022, Karel van Laere attended a six-hour operation at St. Antonius Hospital in Nieuwegein. He witnessed how surgeons made incisions in a body and worked with laparoscopic instruments.

Van Laere now works live with the same instruments, making sound audible by connecting audio cables. Together with two surgeons, he constructs and deconstructs a sound artwork. The artist perceives strong parallels between surgery and performance art: both demand control, concentration, and precision. This performance brings those worlds together on stage.

Performance on Saturday 16.11, 19:30 and 22:00, Sunday 17.11, 16:00 - in STUK Soetezaal. 

A man moves slowly through the urban landscape, pulled by an invisible electric winch. At a steady, unwavering pace, his body carves a path through the city, creating a poetic and powerful contrast between the defenseless human body and the relentless rhythm of modern life. During his time in Taiwan, Karel van Laere observed how people live within strict societal rules that are not easily set aside. In the video SLow, he explores the vulnerability of the human body in a world dominated by machines and rigid systems

Video, ongoing, Thursday 13.11, 8:00-22:00, Friday 14.11 until Sunday 16.11, 11:00-18:00 - in M Forum. 

Isaac Chong Wai - 'Falling Reversely' 

Performance | Belgian première – 35' in M Leuven

Isaac Chong Wai works with performers of Asian descent, reinterpreting movements of falling as a powerful form of solidarity and resistance. They study CCTV footage of Asian individuals who fell due to physical assaults and investigate how they can slow down and reverse the trajectory of these attacks. Responding to systemic violence, Chong imagines an alternate future where the marginalised transform their falling through linked movements, reversing moments of attack into protest. ​

Performance on Thursday 13.11, 9:30, Friday 14.11 and Saturday 15.11 at 12:00 and 15:00 - in M Zaal 2A.

Ana Mazzei - 'The Martyrdom'

Performance | première, 30' & installation in M Leuven

Ana Mazzei’s artworks are fragments of myth, memory, and fiction. Inspired by Legend and Martyrdom of Saint Quentin, a 16th-century painting from M's collection depicting a gruesome torture scene, she created four new sculptures that act as both actor and scenography: The Call, Persecution, Resistance en Memory. The stations are activated by performers in a rhythm of effort and surrender. The collision between body and object, stillness and motion, echoes the spiritual and physical tension of the original painting, where Saint Quentin withstands violence with an elevated gaze and an expression of ecstatic transcendence.

Performance on Thursday 13.11, 18:00 and from Friday 14.11 until Sunday 16.11, 11:30 and 14:30 - in M Lobby. Installation ongoing - in M Lobby.

Alkis Hadjiandreou, Julie Laporte, Myriam Lefkowitz - 'Remote dances' 

Performance | première – 60’ in M Leuven

How does distance reshape connection, and how do we bridge it when bodies cannot meet? This collaborative performance embraces collective listening, transcending physical separation to create an imaginary space where perception is shared and movement emerges. Gathered on a common floor, the audience becomes the destination for a dance transmitted from afar. Two performers, separated by space but not by time, execute a dance as spectators are guided through a sequence of sensations and images. Gradually, a shared moment unfolds where the dance finally lands and lingers.

Performance on Thursday 3.11 om 18:30, vrijdag 14.11 en zaterdag 15.11 om 13:30 en 16:30, zondag 16.11 om 13:30 - in M Loge. 

Ferenc Balcaen

Installation | work in progress - in STUK (ongoing) and M Leuven

Next year, Ferenc Balcaen will present a major new theatre production at NTGent. In this work, he explores melancholy as both an aesthetic and existential experience: reflecting on loss, memory, change, and the longing to hold on to what inevitably slips away. In preparation, Balcaen has been experimenting with installations and small-scale performances, two of which he will share with an audience during Playground.

Enclosed Garden

At STUK, you can visit Enclosed Garden, an installation that serves as a preliminary design for the scenography. It is open throughout the festival and free to enter, like an exhibition. About Enclosed Garden Ferenc Balcaen states: A garden within walls. Silent, sacred, enclosed. Blooming behind monastery walls, among relics and embroidery. A place of prayer, beauty and meaning. A hortus conclusus.

Performance ongoing on Thursday 13.11, Fridat 14.11 and Saturday 15.11 from 17:00-22:30, Sunday 16.11 from14:00 -18:00 - in STUK Studio. 

Alicja Kwade - 'Hubwagen'

Performance in the exhibition 'Dusty Die' in M Leuven

For Hubwagen, Alicja Kwade places a familiar industrial object into a new context. The forks of a pallet truck are bent into a perfect circle, subverting the tool's purpose and turning it into an absurd, endlessly spinnable device. The circle symbolizes a concept of time that is cyclical without beginning or end, mirroring our own potentially futile yet relentless pursuit of meaning and knowledge. Activated at set times, the work performs its own illogical function. This installation and performance are part of the exhibition Dusty Die.

Performance ongoing on Thursday 13.11, 20:30-22:00, Friday 14.11 until Sunday, 16.11 6:00-18:00 - in M, zaal 2A.

Alicja Kwade, 'Dusty Die', Press Preview on Wednesday 8 October: confirm your attendance by mail at nica.broucke@mleuven.be (see below press dossier)

Grace Schwindt - 'A Vocabulary of Care' 

Performance | première – 30’ and installation in 'A History of Touch' in M Leuven

How can care be deployed as a strategy to resist dominant power structures? Inspired by observing the meticulous gestures of the museum’s storage manager tending to art objects, Grace Schwindt developed A Vocabulary of Care. In collaboration with dancers, she translated this vocabulary into a movement language, which is performed in dialogue with both a film and a large-scale textile installation. Her exhibition, A History of Touch, emerged from a two-year residency at M Leuven, where she studied conservation protocols for museum objects and their broader restoration histories.

Performance and première Thursday 13.11, 20:00, Friday 14.11 and Saturday 15.11, 13:30 and 16:30 - in M Platform.

Installation: during the opening hours at M Platform.

Press images

Mediagalerij: Playground

17 afbeeldingen - Performances & installations in M Leuven & STUK - 13.11.25-16.11.25

M Leuven

Practical information

Contact

Playground live arts festival is a yearly collaboration between M and STUK.