Rehearsing Agency

Author Presentations @ Launch FORUM+ October issue

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Dear artistic researchers, (potential) authors, students, editorial board members, friends, and colleagues,

We want to extend a warm welcome to the launch of the new FORUM+ issue on 22 October 2026 at Royal Conservatoire Antwerp from 5.30-9.00 pm. During the festive opening night of the ARTICULATE 2026 research festival, three author (group)s and researchers from Schools of Arts in Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent will bring their contributions to the FORUM+ article "The exchange between artistic research and education" to life in creative ways, celebrating the launch of this new issue.

The full programme can be found below. We very much look forward to this pleasant gathering in October and hope to see you all there, 

The editorial team of FORUM+ 

Programme

17:30 - 18:00 Rehearsing Agency - Introduction by Kevin Voets and co-editors-in-chief Annelys de Vet and Falk Hübner
Where: Witte Zaal, Conservatoire
Language: English
For whom: open to all

18:00 - 18:30 Deconstruction as the art of disobedience, confrontation, contamination and rebellious cinema
Where: Witte Zaal, Conservatoire
Language: English
For whom: open to all

LECTURE by ROSINE MBAKAM (KASK/Cons Gent)

Rosine Bakam’s contribution explores personal and collective deconstruction through documentary cinema. She describes how disobedience, confrontation and ‘“contamination’” have shaped her practice as a filmmaker and teacher. She questions power relations within cinema and education, creating a pedagogical laboratory for deconstruction. The Heritage project, including a Safi Faye/Sita Bella retrospective, illustrates the need to reclaim African cinematic legacies, challenge Western-centred narratives, and decentralize thought to foster new perspectives between the Global South and the Global North.

18:30 - 19:45 Food & drinks 
Where: Witte foyer, Conservatoire
For whom: upon invitation

19:45 - 20:15 Am I Evil?
Where: Witte Zaal, Conservatoire
Language: English
For whom: open to all

SHARING EXERCISE by SIMONE BASANI and ALICE CIRESOLA (RITCS)

Am I Evil? is a collective exploration, through erotic writing, of the intersection between colonial power dynamics and desire, and of how whiteness is constructed and operates. Its seven past editions have been group- and context-specific, lasting from a week to a year, with participants ranging from students to artists and writers. The second Brussels edition took place at RITCS | School of Arts during Winter School 2025, Voices and Silences’, curated by Ellen Gillard.

Curators Simone Basani and Alice Ciresola invite the audience into a sharing exercise that treats discomfort as a space to critically acknowledge – by digging into personal his/herstories – how we deal with privilege, bias, guilt and shame when meeting the so-called "Other" in the field of desire. A glimpse into one of the project's tools, and perhaps a tease toward joining a future edition.

20:30 - 21:00 AI in Motion: Embodied Practices with Craft AI
Where: Gele Zaal, Conservatoire
Language: English
For whom: open to all

LECTURE-PERFORMANCE by Frederik De Bleser (Sint Lucas Antwerpen), Umut Eldem, Giusy Caruso, Myrthe Bokelmann, and Cèlia Tort Pujol
with performers Benjamin Scheuer, Silvia Giliberto, Gianluca Blasio

Art education faces enormous pressure to adopt AI tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney or DALL·E, while students increasingly fear these technologies will make the professions they trained for obsolete. This tension reveals a deeper problem: teaching students to use large AI systems trains them for dependency rather than agency. In this lecture-performance, the research groups The Algorithmic Gaze (Sint Lucas) and CREATIE (Royal Conservatoire) present their approach to 'Craft AI': creating small, bespoke models trained from scratch on artist-generated datasets. They also showcase results of the annual RAIVE AI Summer School, where interdisciplinary artists collaborate on new works while learning to integrate these bespoke models into their practices. The evening concludes with a performance of 'Ode all'Automobile'.

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