LA FOREST

Starting in 2017, Bains Connective wants to use a new approach to its functioning.

La Forest is an artist-run project that engages the collaboration of five European independent artists based in Brussels – Lilia Mestre, Sara Manente, Heike Langsdorf, Edurne Rubio and Anouk Llaurens. It develops from questions of diversity and sustainability, It is considered a curatorial project, within which five artists share the responsibility of living up to the desire to create, share, exchange and sustain alternative artistic practices and alternative ways of meeting audiences. Each artist build up and support the project with on the basis of her experience, knowledge, concerns, points of view, networks, publics… The individual works for the collectivity and the collectivity will be in service of the individuals.

Regularity and the idea of the atelier as working-space and forming-place are the two main elements characterizing the future climate of La Forest: the five running artists have their roots in or very close to dance, an art form known as highly capable of embracing, collaborating with and including other art forms (multidisciplinary).

La Forest is a residency house for the creation, giving space and time to the artists. In addition, it installs a new and regular agenda of encounters: try- outs, workshops, cinema, lectures, festivals… The artists will feed this agenda; the events will be curated from and for the content of the projects in residency. We think that this is a very profitable situation, on one hand this is an economic (time and means) system to forward and on the other hand, it’s also a way of looking for new manners of sharing the work with the audience.

Bains Connective aims to present works that can be presented in a specific time-space-context, projects that need unconventional working-protocols on the level of realization and communication. The running artists’ experience is lying in the development and production of works that have hybrids appearance, come to live in progressive processes and/or can be shared in experimental formats, alternating between one-on-one sessions, bigger social/urban events, public gatherings, happenings, exhibitions and of course stage performance.

La Forest draws on Bains Connective history and the knowledge that the artist acquires through long-term and regular practice and considers at the same time the current economical context as well as the new cultural players and policies. It sets up a new way of running Bains Connective .The new system is based on a team of 5 artists that will be renewed every three years. These artists will have two different but complementary roles: artist in residency (two months per year) and BC coordinator (two months per year – ½ time contract).