Rencontre with Médor | DEC 14, 18:30

Rencontre with the magazine Médor at Centrale for Contemporary Arts, Brussels In the frame of OPEN ACADEMY The students of the seminar "Be realistic demand the impossible" will engage in an open dialogue with the journalists of Médor, starting from the questions they have been working on for several months : what becomes protest and contestations and their own energies today in the face of the multiple narratives of dystopic futures? Dark times, crises, emergencies, exhaustion, obsolescence, catastrophes, wars, nationalisms, lack of alternatives ... all dystopias of a present that seems to want to cancel its future ... and just as many reasons to force the door of the present, to challenge it, to dare the impossible possible future. In this context it seems obvious that to renew today the sixty-eight's « be realistic, demand the impossible », is no longer a need for memory, but a vital need to turn disputes into forces of affirmation and invention. Learn to break in. Learn to reinvent stories that otherwise freeze us.

A conference organised by Académie royale des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles ARBA-EsA / ISAC in partnership with CENTRALE for contemporary art. Within the scope of 2018, year of protest, the City of Brussels celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, a period marked by disruptions and multiple challenges but that remains emblematic for arts and society alike. On the occasion of the ambitious project entitled RESISTANCE, CENTRALE for contemporary arts fulfils its mission as public arts centre and focuses on the ways in which art used and pursued the many society and political challenges that rocked the past half-century. During the exhibition RESISTANCE, CENTRALE will turn into an OPEN ACADEMY for teachers and students from different Brussels art schools and will thus offer a platform to artists, thinkers, students and the audience, a place for debates and encounters. Together they analyze and highlight the themes of student and worker uprisings that have unfolded in a pluriform protest by all authorities in May 68. They explore the causes of the movement to gauge the protest of today and tomorrow. The public will discover this open laboratory, consisting of the prospective work and the artistic work of the students. In addition, a cycle of lectures, performances and screenings is also organized.