News

Appointment of the 11th goldsmith of the city of Hanau

On Thursday 15 May, Mayor Claus Kaminsky introduced Hanau's 11th city goldsmith at the Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus Hanau: Vivi Touloumidi from Antwerp.

Since 2004, the city of Hanau has appointed a city goldsmith every two years. The jury - Alexander Blank, Dorothea Förster, Malte Guttek, Martin Hoppe, Benjamin Pfister - decided to appoint Vivi Touloumidi as the 11th City Goldsmith of the Brothers Grimm City. In summer 2025, the artist will spend six weeks in Hanau at the Hanau State Academy of Drawing, teaching a workshop to selected students.

After studying business administration, Vivi Touloumidi trained as a goldsmith in Athens. She then studied in Halifax (CA), Pforzheim (DE) and Stockholm (SE) until 2013. From 2018 to 2022, she completed her PhD at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp & University of Antwerp (BE). Since 2018, she has been teaching there and working in parallel on her own artistic projects.

Touloumidi has given numerous lectures and workshops. Her work is represented in the collections of the Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim (DE), the Ilias Lalalounis Jewelry Museum (GR), the Cominelli Foundation Permanent Collection (IT), Galerie Marzee (NL) and numerous private collections. She has been nominated for the Friedrich Becker Prize, the Herbert Hofmann Prize and TALENTE, among others.

The Deutsches Goldschmiedehaus will dedicate a monographic exhibition to the artist in 2026.

​www.goldschmiedehaus.com​

Screenings, as well as special events with Q&As and panel talks will take place throughout April, May, and June. On Wednesday, April 30 at 19:00, the cinema release will kick off at Cinéma Aventure in Brussels. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director. 

In hold on to her, we follow a people's tribunal—organized by both undocumented and documented resident activists—that demands accountability for the murder of two-year-old Mawda Shawri in 2018, a case of police and state violence tied to migration border controls in Belgium. 

The film – a production by Visualantics, in co-production is distributed by 𝔸𝕣𝕥𝔽𝕒𝕔𝕖𝕤 𝔸𝕣𝕥 / 𝕋𝕚𝕟𝕟𝕖 𝔹𝕣𝕒𝕝, in collaboration with Filmpact. This follows earlier Belgian festival screenings at the Official Competition of Film Fest Gent, Tournai Ramdam Festival, and Festival En ville! 

Most screenings are subtitled in Dutch and French (BIL). Selected screenings at Cinéma Aventure in Brussels will also feature English subtitles — see the calendar below. New screenings are announced weekly — stay updated via holdontoher.be

CALENDAR 

Tuesday, 29 April, 20:00
Lumière ∣ MOOOV Filmfestival, Bruges
Q&A with Robin Vanbesien, Henriette Essami-Khaullot and Benoit Dhondt  

Wednesday, 30 April, 19:00
Aventure, Brussels (French & Dutch subtitles)Q&A with Robin Vanbesien   

Thursday, 1 May, 14:30
Aventure, Brussels (French & Dutch subtitles)

Thursday, 1 May, 20:00
UGC ∣ MOOOV Filmfestival, Turnhout
Q&A with Robin Vanbesien   

Friday, 2 May, 17:00
Aventure, Brussels (English subtitles)   

Saturday, 3 May, 14:30
Aventure, Brussels (French & Dutch subtitles)   

Saturday, 3 May, 17:00
Cinema Storck, Oostende 

Saturday, 3 May, 19:15
Lumière ∣ MOOOV Filmfestival, Bruges   

Monday, 5 May, 14:30
Aventure, Brussels (French & Dutch subtitles)   

Tuesday, 6 May, 17:00
Aventure, Brussels (English subtitles) 

Tuesday, 6 May, 19:45 
Studio Skoop ∣ Openbare Werken Festival, Ghent 

Friday, 9 May, 20:00
Plaza Arthouse Cinema, Mons
Q&A with Robin Vanbesien 

Saturday, 10 May, 17:30
Studio Skoop ∣ Openbare Werken Festival, Ghent 

Thursday, 15 May, 19:30
Studio Skoop ∣ Openbare Werken Festival, Ghent
Q&A with Robin Vanbesien, Albina Fetahaj and Flor Didden 

Friday, 16 May, 20:00
Cinema Storck, Oostende 

Saturday, 17 May, 17:00
De Cinema, Antwerp
Q&A with Robin Vanbesien, Henriette Essaumi-Khaullot (Comité des Femmes sans Papiers) and Pascal Gielen (University of Antwerp), moderated by Samira Bendadi (MO* magazine) 

Sunday, 18 May, 19:30
De Cinema, Antwerp 

Thursday, 29 May, 16:30
De Cinema ∣ Antwerp Art Weekend 

Friday, 30 May, 16:30
De Cinema ∣ Antwerp Art Weekend 

Saturday, 31 May, 16:30
De Cinema ∣ Antwerp Art Weekend
Q&A with Robin Vanbesien 

Sunday, 1 June, 16:30
De Cinema ∣ Antwerp Art Weekend 

Sunday, 10 June, 20:15
BUDA, Kortrijk 
Q&A with Robin Vanbesien and others (tbc) 

Friday, 20 June, 20:00
NW, Aalst
Q&A with Robin Vanbesien and others (tbc)

This April issue of FORUM+ celebrates interwovenness and the sense of community that can be felt within diverse artistic collaborations. At the heart of FORUM+ is a dynamic network of researchers, artists, and thinkers who interact across the boundaries of artistic disciplines, institutions, languages, and countries. With the support of all contributors, a community emerges that not only documents research in the arts, but actively shapes it – borne through exchange, critical reflection, and a shared curiosity. We hope you will enjoy reading this issue of FORUM+ as much as we enjoyed making it.

“Make it look real,” the clients of a photo studio in Pakistan urge the photographer. They want a photo of themselves with girls, and preferably holding a gun or sitting on a motorcycle, even though they have none of these things. So their photos are pasted onto stock photos. In a sense, these studios are selling a lie, but at the same time the photos bring to light the dreams and ambitions of their clients.

Photojournalist and director Danial Shah focuses on the fake to reveal the real. While a photographer polishes away imperfections, they discuss why white skin is considered better than black. And amid the photoshopped images, the photographer shares his desire to flee the country, while he tells Shah about the genocide of the Hazaras.

One earns his living by making fake photos, the other sells realistic news photos to US newspapers such as The New York Times. Although the photographers and the filmmaker relate to reality in opposite ways, the boundaries between them begin to blur. They direct their cameras at each other and thus become the subject of each other’s work.

​https://www.festivalenville.be/make-it-look-real?lang=fr​

The "Laureate of the Academy" award is one of the most prestigious awards that the Academy presents at the Public Assembly. Since 2001, a young Flemish researcher or artist has been awarded annually in the categories of Natural Sciences, Humanities, Arts and Technical Sciences (since 2009). The amount for this award is €10,000.

Sammy Baloji (Laureaat van de Klasse Kunsten) focuses on the heritage of the Katanga mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He translates his research results into video, installations, sculptures and photography. Time and space are manipulated to compare old colonial stories with contemporary economic imperialism. His critical view points us to cultural clichés in the collective memory and to the socio-political power game that continues to dictate human behavior.

​Read more (in Dutch)

5 December 2024, Center for the Humanities, New York

How can we break through a culture of mistrust? Suspicion regarding our fellow beings, the authorities and enterprises is growing, blamed on passing the buck and feelings of impotence. 

'Trust: Building on the Cultural Commons' highlights the crucial role played by cultural commons, shared common life and its customs, practices, knowledge and values.

​Read more​

We do what is expected of us with great discipline. And in between the frenzy and stress, another need presents itself: the need for rest, vacation, for contemplation and quiet reflection perhaps, or even doing nothing, standing still, dwelling. The desired transition does not come easily. It is hard work to let go, to slow down, to get out of our routine by slowing down and 'de-disciplining'. We hope you'll pick up this edition of FORUM+ to read as an opportunity, as a space, as an intervention, or delay. Please take ample time for it. Note the surprises, the interruptions and the invitation to allow fuzziness, let the reading also be underwhelming, and take a preposterously long time. In reading FORUM+, we wish you a meaningful slowdown.

^{(Image: Anton Cotteleer, Orange, 1980-2024)}

Selected for the Official Competition of the 51st edition of Film Fest Ghent, hold on to her by Robin Vanbesien will have its Belgian premiere on Wednesday 16th of October 2024 at 19:30 at Kinepolis Cinema in Ghent.

Two additional screenings will be held on Thursday, 17th of October and Sunday, 20th of October. Tickets for all screenings are available right here.

• 16.10.24, 19:30

• Belgian Premiere
• Kinepolis 1 + Q&A with the director and the cast


• Subtitles: Dutch-French 

• 17.10.24, 10:00

• Kinepolis 1 + Q&A with the director and the cast
 
• Subtitles: Dutch-French 

• 20.10.24, 14:00
• Kinepolis 8
• Subtitles: English 

Robin Vanbesien’s hold on to her traces a lived social infrastructure of care, solidarity and struggle that addresses a recent case of police and state violence in the context of migration border control in Belgium.  

In 2018, two year-old Mawda Shawri, daughter of Phrast and Shamden and sister to Hama, was shot dead by a Belgian police officer during a car chase on a central highway. In 2023, over 40 people, both undocumented and documented resident activists, assembled before the camera at La Voix des sans papiers in Brussels to stage a collective hearing of documents from and reactions to Mawda’s case. Together they produce the counter-evidence of this deadly Channel crossing, and they practice justice as a sensuous social space for collective mourning and healing. 

“This film is an invitation—an invitation to attune ourselves to a collective hearing, an invitation to rehearse, together, the capacity to hold transformation.” - Robin Vanbesien

Hold on to her is part of the doctoral project 'Ciné-Place Making' by Robin Vanbesien at Sint Lucas Antwerp and the University of Antwerp.

This April issue of FORUM+ includes a fascinating diversity of contributions from the various fields, genres and disciplines of the arts and artistic research. The contributions all situate themselves as being in the world, rooted in the society of which we are all a part. You now have this brand-new issue of FORUM+ before you, to be explored and discovered. Wishing you a joyful read!

Laurence Petrone, PhD researcher at ARIA and the Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, has won the first Marion De Cannière Prize. As part of the prize she will present a solo exhibition at FRED&FERRY in 2024.  

​Read more​

ARIA is deeply concerned about the situation in Gaza. We urge our political leaders to stop and denounce the violations of international law and the deaths of innocent civilians and to urgently work towards a lasting peace in the region.

At ARIA, we have researchers who have strong ties with (people in) Palestine and Israel and research projects working towards justice for Palestine.

We want to repeat here our solidarity with this research and acknowledge that these are extremely difficult times for the researchers.

In the coming weeks, we will amplify the initiatives of ARIA-affiliated researchers that help raise awareness and stimulate dialogue about the war in GAZA on our social media and website.

>> Read all about the upcoming events here.  

This October issue of FORUM+ is dedicated to exploring the art school as an ecosystem in the 21st century. What does the 21st-century art school look like? What remains of the original mission of conservatoires and academies, after a series of institutional reforms and the introduction of research in the arts? And what challenges does the future hold? These are some of the questions that this new dossier "The art school as an ecosystem" seeks to address.

FORUM+ generally comes out three times a year. This time we are making an exception, accommodating the winter edition in this spring issue. This double publication presents a great diversity of contributions. At the same time, they are remarkably interwoven. Discover these connections for yourself in the February | May issue of FORUM+.