M HKA Ensembles

Since the Renaissance, inventio(n) has been a key concept in Western art. The painter, sculptor, architect, once a craftsman, became a "free artist", recognised for the concepts he came up with, more so than the execution of those concepts. But art does not have the monopoly on invention: every enterprise, institution and organisation must show inventiveness daily, under threat losing momentum.

The Senate is a unique, unusual, unprecedented parliament. It is composed mainly of indirectly elected representatives, it deploys its activities almost without intervention or pressure from the government and its mission is essentially one of advice and recommendation.

Time has been ‘standardised’ since ages now, and we believe in the objectivity of the vibrations of quartz and the ticking of seconds. Suchan Kinoshita (°1960, living in Brussels) reinvents time and develops mechanisms for deregulating the measurement; an ultra-fast instrument that measures only its own moment or the serene slowness of acacia honey flowing in a honey hourglass.

Biology teaches us that novelty always appears in the form of an anomaly, a monster. Jacques Lizène (°1946, living in Liège) postulates that we are all, as human beings, an accident, the accidental accumulation of two halves of genetic material. Once this monstrosity is accepted, the world turns into a grotesque celebration, whose exquisite corpse is the common thread.

For this work, Taus Makhacheva (°1983, living in Moscow, London and Makhachkala) has transformed three museum pieces into puppets, which she wants to see debating their role in history. While they seem animated, they’re just puppets reminding us of an important question throughout history: "Who has the floor?"

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