The third of four international assemblies taking place across Europe as part of the project Art Beyond Participation – BE PART (2019–2023) is hosted by VIERNULVIER in the framework of the festival OPENBARE WERKEN in Ghent, Belgium. OPENBARE WERKEN is a surprising journey of discovery in which artistic practices intertwine with the city, its periphery and its inhabitants.

Difficult times call for well-thought-out curatorial and organisational strategies. More than ever, there is a need for horizontality, shared leadership, co-creation and imagination. For this edition of OPENBARE WERKEN we put our heads together with a host of artists, colleagues and partners to come up with a challenging and diverse programme. In doing so we kept the values of transparency, reciprocity, sustainability and respect at the forefront of our minds.

With this festival we are interested in exploring ‘the public’, in the sense of both the audience and the public space. We are guided by the following questions:

How do we as artists form a community in the current societal context, which threatens to destroy any trace of a collective dynamic? In doing so, how do we involve the widest and most diverse possible audience?

How can we as artists reclaim pseudo-public spaces, and how do we turn our stages into public places of encounter, difference and protest?

How do we ensure that the arts sector itself becomes more inclusive and that all voices have their place in the broader public debate?

The program of the festival presents several public events, including fieldwork-presentations by Vincen Beeckman, ATLAS, Elly Van Eeghem and Mara Oscar Cassiani. As part of the International Assembly a workshop of Cards On The Table hosted by Sophie Hope and Henry Mulhall and a meeting of the ten project partners that will continue working on the protocol on which a more equal (re)distribution of power between organisations, artists, and communities could be based in the art world and the cultural sector at large hosted by the critical network (Marwa Arsanios, Lotte van den Berg and Roland Gunst) is happening.

OPENBARE WERKEN is organized by: VIERNULVIER, de Koer, Manoeuvre, CAMPUS Atelier, Villa Voortman, Kunsthal Gent, Rest for the Wicked and CAMPO – with the support of: KASK School of Arts, LUCA School of Arts, Jong Gewei, Kunstenplatform PLAN B, Walpurgis, Trage Wegen, Boerderie/Hof te Nieuwenhove Zarlardinge and Design Fest Gent.

More information about the program can be found here.