VITRIEN #12 will be a special listening session in which Artists in Residence Pauline Augustyn and Kenza Lansari share the results of their residencies with an audience.

28/05 @ BNA-BBOT
Doors: 19:30
Start of listening session: 20:00
FREE

° Pauline Augustyn: Pauline presents een bewolkte hemel hoor je niet, a poetic audio collage created during her residency for BNA-BBOT and KAOSat the Psycho-Social Centre in Ixelles.

What does the word “silence” mean? In a dictionary, you’ll find a definition and a few synonyms. But in reality, it is not so straightforward—perhaps even nonexistent, elusive. The world rushes on at high volume (pling, toot-toot, zzzzoeff), minds are flooded with noisy question marks (does absolute silence exist?), bodies need to move and struggle to sit still (tjop tjop).

But what if silence becomes a blank page—what words would appear then? With that question and a microphone, Pauline spent two months at the Psycho-Social Centre in Ixelles, listening to people there and their personal definitions of “silence.”

° Kenza Lansari: Kenza is a Belgian-Tunisian sound artist working across sound performance, audio archive collage, sound theatre, and audio documentaries. She also works in radio at Studio Brussel.

During her residency at BNA-BBOT, Kenza dives into our archives. She explores the history of female voices in radio and audio: what is the impact of a non-male voice on the radio? What does a voice reveal about the position someone is “allowed” to occupy? And how have (auditory) gender roles evolved and transformed over time?

While searching for her own voice within the radio landscape, she translates these questions into an archive collage. She investigates how women and non-binary voices are positioned today, what language is used when speaking about or to them, and how striking these differences can still be. At the same time, she reflects on how targeted, skillful interventions can contribute to structural change.

By placing sound archives from different contexts side by side, Kenza amplifies what is often normalized, in order to raise awareness around these issues.

S.Oor.S – By Pauline Augustyn and Kenza Lansari

S.Oor.S is a location-flexible, informal get-together for audio creators who are feeling stuck at times, or for those who aren’t stuck but want to help those among us who are, to get unstuck, organised by Pauline Augustyn and Kenza Lansari.

In practical terms: an audio evening where everyone is welcome to bring along something they’re struggling with as an audio maker.

This could be: a question about accurate subtitles for a multilingual work, an ethical issue, a piece of work-in-progress, a sentence you just can’t seem to cut in the right place, a script for a radio broadcast where something’s missing but what exactly…?

We’ll listen together and help each other out a bit.

One big game of ping-pong!!!!

This time we’re meeting on 14 May at BNA BBOT: Lakensestraat 119 1000 BXL

Doors open at 7pm, we start at 7.30pm.

“To listen is to give audience — to allow something to act in the world.” (notes from School of Magical Politics Listening Group)

Listening is often described as receptive or passive, yet every act of listening is also a decision: what to attend to, what to ignore, what to let resonate. In political life as in art, listening defines the field of what can be heard, remembered, and made real.

Through a short lecture and somatic experiments, this session explores how listening protocols — guided, embodied modes of attention — can move from a laboratory context into lived, public space. It asks how listening can be carried by the body itself, and how the listener becomes an active, situated actor in the world.

PRACTICAL INFO:

07/05/2026

18:00 - 21:00 at BNA-BBOT (119 rue de Laeken 1000 Bruxelles)

Language: EN

Fee: 15 euros

Inscriptions by info@bna-bbot.be  

Eszter Némethi and Julia E. Dyck guide the final masterclass of the trajectory, returning to questions, tensions, and intuitions that surfaced through shared practice during the Listening Field Winter School, and using them as a springboard for collective inquiry.

More on the project: listeningfield.be 

Photo: Lower Levant Company (LLC) installation, “when the ear tells the eye where to look” 2023 photographed by Julia E. Dyck

Listening as Political Practice: Toward a Protocol of Attention. 

Masterclass by Eszter Némethi

“To listen is to give audience — to allow something to act in the world.” (notes from School of Magical Politics Listening Group)
 

Listening is often described as receptive or passive, yet every act of listening is also a decision: what to attend to, what to ignore, what to let resonate. In political life as in art, listening defines the field of what can be heard, remembered, and made real.

Through two masterclasses at BNA-BBOT and a winter school at GC DeRinck we will explore together the agency of the listener and protocols for political listening.

In this first session, Eszter Némethi introduces the idea of listening protocols: guided, collective exercises that reveal the many ways listening can act, respond, and compose. Through a short lecture and a series of practical experiments, the class explores the politics and poetics of listening — from the body as a site of attention to the listener as a public actor.

Pratical Informations :

18th December 2025 

18:00- 21:00 at BNA-BBOT (119 rue de Laeken 1000 Bruxelles)

Language : EN

Fee : 15 euros

Inscriptions by info@bna-bbot.be  

A second session in March 2026 will continue this exploration, building on the findings of the Listening Field winter school and co-hosted with artist Julia E. Dyck.

The Listening Field is a three day winter school hosted by Eszter Nemethi and Julia E. Dyck in collaboration with BNA-BBOT and GC DeRinck and will result in a radio broadcast as part of SON.OOR on the 31st January 2026.

Eszter Némethi is a Hungarian theatre maker and researcher based in Brussels. Her work explores the interplay between language, listening and political imagination, often through participatory formats that create space for quiet and polyphonic expression. She leads the long-running initiative School of Magical Politics and in 25/26 the research cycle Geology of the Real, which focuses on memory, recall and the ethics of listening in performance. She graduated from a.pass and her work has been presented in Ireland, Belgium and internationally.

Julia E. Dyck is a Canadian artist and hypnotherapist living in Brussels. She works with sound, performance and expanded states of consciousness, exploring listening as an instrument for collective transformation. In her practice, she uses voice, vibrations and stories to open porous boundaries between body, technology and the subconscious. Her recent projects relate to queer ecologies and psychoacoustics.

Photo: Lower Levant Company (LLC) installation, “when the ear tells the eye where to look” 2023 photographed by Julia E. Dyck

Sharing moment - 14/12 - 6pm @ BRASS

 - Les Invisibles choir + Claron McFadden + Rokia Bamba

★ Free admission (payable on site) but booking is essential!

« Batômb Batômb ! » is a moment of musical sharing between soprano  Claron McFadden, the choir Les Invisibles (Comité des Femmes Sans-Papiers) and sound artist Rokia Bamba.

This autumn, the Brussels choir collaborated with Claron McFadden and the Troubled Archives collective. Today, they present part of their collective creation based on personal stories about the intimacy and universality of ‘home’.

The basic tone of this ‘home’ is a deep humming that helps us to freely share our energies, experiences and stories.

As part of the exhibition « What The Image Cannot Hold ». In collaboration with BRASS.

This visual and audio exhibition is presented by Troubled Archives. Since 2016, this collective has been working on colonial archives and creating art installations that aim to break the cycle of trauma passed down from generation to generation and create dialogue between different communities.

Members of the Troubled Archives collective:Antje Van Wichelen,  Rokia Bamba, Brenda Bikoko, Peggy Pierrot and Loes Jacobs, currently in residence at BNA-BBOT.

  Opening on Thursday 11/12 at 6pm, with a DJ set by Rokia Bamba.

  Exhibition opening (until 21/12):

▶︎ Wednesdays (2pm-6pm)

▶︎ Saturdays and Sundays (10am-6pm)

  Closing event and ceremony on Sunday 21/12 at 4pm.

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In the exhibition, you can listen to/see:

▶︎ New Hero·in·es , the result of photography workshops with groups of activists from Brussels and elsewhere. They worked on colonial photography, with heroism as the common thread. The aim is to pay tribute to those who were forced into silence and anonymity during the 19th century. And to bring them into dialogue with today. In collaboration with the studio and photographer Silvano Magnone.

▶︎ Listening to DouDou brings together sound excerpts from interviews and work sessions with Les Invisibles (the choir of the Comité des Femmes Sans-Papiers) in a sound installation by Antje Van Wichelen.

▶︎ Radiatio III: two projectors project images onto a large cotton canvas. The canvas is treated with a photosensitive emulsion, and an image is printed on it throughout the exhibition. The final image will be revealed at the closing event.

▶︎ Listening to Images brings together six sound works and images from colonial archives that have been reworked. The project is inspired by the ideas of Tina Campt, who invites us to ‘listen’ to photos and discover what may be hidden in and behind the images.

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+ Sunday 14/12 at 6pm (voluntary contribution):

▶︎ Batômb Batômb!

A moment of sharing with soprano Claron McFadden, sound artist Rokia Bamba and the choir Les Invisibles (Le Comité des Femmes Sans-Papiers). A joint creation based on personal stories about the intimacy and universality of ‘home’. The basis of this ‘home’ is a deep ‘humming’ that allows us to deliver our energies, experiences and stories.

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A collaboration between BNA-BBOT, Troubled Archives en BRASS, Claron McFadden en Le Comité des Femmes Sans-Papiers, nadine, Studio Silvano Magnone, Labo BXL.

A listening tour of Brussels cafés

Every last Sunday of the month, from 5.30PM to 6.30PM, we meet in a café in one of Brussels’ communes for a themed audio listening session: personal accounts, neighbourhood stories, anecdotes and imaginations for the city’s future… 1000 Brussels residents tell the story of their city and create more US.

Theme: Europe in Brussels.

Free admission, 1 free drink.

A listening tour of Brussels cafés

Every last Sunday of the month, from 5.30PM to 6.30PM, we meet in a café in one of Brussels’ communes for a themed audio listening session: personal accounts, neighbourhood stories, anecdotes and imaginations for the city’s future… 1000 Brussels residents tell the story of their city and create more US.

Theme: Student's life.

Free admission, 1 free drink.