Institutions from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany present new performance works by international contemporary artists, ranging from interactive walks, interventions in public space, sound and musical performance, spoken word and installation-based works. The festival will take place inside the museum as well as making use of the surrounding areas. The participating artists delved into the distinctiveness of the Euregio-Meuse-Rhine region, with a focus on border politics, post-industrial ruins, and the contradictions inherent in the landscapes that surround us.


Two of the participating artists, Stefania Crișan and Isolde Venrooy have been developing new work for the festival during their residency at Greylight Projects between March and May 2023. Following an open call for proposals, the two artists were selected by a jury consisting of Very Contemporary members Guus van Engelshoven (De Domijnen, Sittard), Roy Voragen and Wouter Huis (Greylight Projects) and Brenda Guesnet (IKOB).

Leaky Walks (performance) & Macrobes (installation) by Isolde Venrooy

Isolde Venrooy invites you to see the environment anew and experience contrasting perspectives about earth, soil and bodies – experience what a landscape does to us. Our own body is the framework from which we perceive the world, a framework we often take for granted: the body as a self-contained container. Venrooy’s work shows us that everything is made up of relationships, between which porosity exists. This new perspective recognises that everything is polyphonic and layered. This walk is both a reflection on the gaps in the material world as well as on our ideas about this world.

Isolde Venrooy (living and working in Nijmegen, NL) is a visual artist. She studied drawing and painting, attained a Master’s degree in European Arts and Cultures at the Academie voor Beeldende Vorming Tilburg, and graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven. Her artistic practice consists of objects, interventions, performative walks and workshops. Her work has been exhibited at TENT Rotterdam, Zone2Source Amsterdam and Kunsthaus NRW. Her practice continues to evolve through residencies, such as at the European Ceramic Work Centre (2021), Greylight Projects and IKOB — Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst (2023).

CYCLE by Stefanie Klingemann

Stefanie Klingemann presents a new durational performance taking place in a meadow near the museum. In her signature style, she stages a temporary intervention into the landscape using her own body as a tool and as a marker. A performance that can be observed for as long and as often as you like, as the title suggests.

Stefanie Klingemann (Moers, DE) studied sculpture and art in public space at the Academy of Fine Arts Muenster and completed her postgraduate studies at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her work is situated in the field of art in public space, performance and intervention and has been shown at Artothek Cologne, Arp Museum Rolandseck, Kunsthaus NRW, Marta Herford, IKOB — Museum für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Eupen. She has received various project grants and scholarships, such as the working scholarship Stiftung Kunstfonds, the studio scholarship Kölnischer Kunstverein, and the residency scholarship of the German Academy in Rome.

Last Chance by ChunYao Lin

Exploring the notion of what we consider or define as a “landscape”, a man grabs a key of green to invert the ways of seeing spaces of entangled memories, (hi)stories, and experiences. With hearing, holding, and listening to the ground nearby IKOB, together we enjoy the failure of intervention, eaten by the land, and become part of the scape.

ChunYao Lin is a visual artist from Taiwan who landed in Utrecht, the Netherlands in 2020. With his background in photojournalism, ChunYao investigates sites that are being developed or under construction, and questions the way we see this highly constructed landscape. In the artist’s view, the land is controlled by the people who own it, and “the landscape”, as a singular understanding of that land, has collectively been formed by modern humans during the Anthropocene. This, in turn, has domesticated the way civilized humans see the landscape. ChunYao’s work has been shown at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan (2019); and in 2018, his work I’m going home (2018) was collected by the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Hokuto, Japan.

Around the Castle by Robin Faymonville

Taking Franz Kafka’s novel “The Castle” (1926) as a starting point, this performance explores our relationship with invisible bodies confronted by the inaccessibility of the Fortress Europe. Taking the role of Kafka’s surveyor, Robin Faymonville will read, recite, and trace lines on the ground to materialise the political fictions that borders represent.

Robin Faymonville (Malmedy, BE, lives and works in Brussels) graduated in philosophy from University of Louvain-la-Neuve and has a background in painting and contemporary writing from La Cambre. His artistic practice encompasses various mediums including writing, text-based performances, painting, and installation. His work revolves around the creation of fictional narratives as a means of political expression, exploring our present condition from an existentialist perspective. Notable recent performances and exhibitions include Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), Fondation Fimimco (Paris), SB34 (Brussels), Montévidéo (Marseille), and Art au Centre (Liège).

Resonance Structure by Sjors Smits

Sjors Smits’ spatial intervention in the car park in front of IKOB offers a poetic enlargement of the surrounding environment. By crafting this temporary site, the artist establishes a perspective where latent characteristics and concealed elements of the landscape begin to reveal their performative nature.

Sjors Smit (Dordrecht, NL, based in Rotterdam, NL) explores architectural frameworks as a means to uncover the archival information embedded in our immediate surroundings. The objects and installations he designs often exist within a vacuum between fiction and reality, and reflect on the eternal process of building and dismantling. His artistic research employs archeological methods to reconstruct invisible elements within inhabited spaces. By delving into the hidden narratives residing within our built environments, Smit reveals the interconnectedness of past and present, tangible and ethereal.

Jean-Mehmet by Mikail Koçak

Jean-Mehmet is a food-based project that links and nurtures the clichés of a dual culture. Mikail Koçak creates spaces for encounter and interaction using the common repertoire of archetypes linked to Turkish and Western culture.

Mikail Koçak (Malmedy, BE, lives and works in Liège) is a graduate of Beaux-Arts Liège (2015). Inspired by the cultural world of his childhood and urban cultures, his work is multidisciplinary, taking the form of installation, video, graphics, sculpture, photography, painting and performance. His work has been shown at venues including Kunsthaus NRW, Aachen, Les Brasseurs art contemporain, Liège, KANAL Centre Pompidou, Brussels, SPACE collection, Liège.

Invoking Mosasaurs by Stefania Crișan

This is a story about the extinction of mosasaurs: a ritual performance reflecting on climate change, the utopia of reversing the entropy, death and rebirth. The artist merges her Anthropocene body into the Cretaceous Period, becoming a ruin of the future, eating and being eaten by the mining landscape.

Stefania Crișan (born in Romania, living and working in Metz, France) is interested in themes connected to the Anthropocene and healing virtues of ritual practices, questioning the paradoxes between the sublime and the utopian hopes of an ecological discourse. Her practice is marked by a landscape that was devastated through ecological disaster. Crișan is the winner of the 2022 Luxembourg Encouragement for Artists Prize (LEAP) and has exhibited at FRAC Lorraine, Casino Luxembourg, Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken and Centre Pompidou-Metz.


Accompanied by performer Cristina Negucioiu.
Music and sound design by Victor Mopin.
Behind the camera Kaya Erdinc & Bert Warson.

ODE by Helena Dietrich

Sonic portals opening between inner and outer worlds, travelling through matter, shapeshifting through spheres and invoking realms of magical landscapes and entities, unlocking ephemeral mysteries beyond the veil into a world of ghostly fractals…

Helena uses her voice as a channel into imaginative worlds, listening to spaces and environments. In a trans-like state, she visits internal landscapes and layers and loops her voice into assemblages that come alive in a summoning of dreams and vibrations. The listener is invited into an ambient sound journey – a sensitive space to dream and imagine collectively.

Helena Dietrich’s (DE) transdisciplinary work studies rituals, transformative body-experiences and altered states. Her artistic approach is often process-based and seeks to engage the audience in different ways. Her immersive installations and performances have been presented at Beursschouwburg, Kaaitheater, STUK, Kunstencentrum BUDA, Brakke Grond, Frascati, Vooruit, Charleroi danse, Centre Wallonie Bruxelles Paris, Fondation Fiminco, Batard Festival, among others.