M HKA Ensembles

‘Solidare’ - solid, dense, hard, strong and, in the transitive sense, ‘to form a whole’, ‘to unite’, is the origin and the meaning of the term ‘solidarity’. As a pillar of our society, solidarity means, from the societal point of view, that members of a group aim at a common good, in favour of all but sometimes at the expense of oneself. Tensions arising from the divergence between group interest and individual autonomy are also reflected in cultural expressions.

The Senate is above all a meeting place for the various communities in the country. A place where the exchange of experiences is possible, formally or informally.

The series ‘!VROUWENVRAGEN?’ (!Women’s Questions?), which Jef Geys (°1934, living in Balen) collected from his female students and presented as a work of art, expresses as much the equality between the teacher / artist and his female students as between men and women (such as the question ‘11. Female work = male work’). The questions addressed to women focus on emancipation versus social order.

In his photographs, Michel François (°1956, living in Brussels) plays with contradictions such as: intimacy and universality, stability and fragility, security and danger. In this sculptural photo, the hands of children playing the ‘warm hand’ remind us that social life calls for the contribution of all.

In their video, artists Victor Alimpiev (°1973, living in Moscow) and Marian Zhunin (°1968, living in Moscow) formulated an aesthetic of conformity and uniformity. The actors perform prescribed movements pertaining to daily actions and reactions. Yet, from time to time, choreographic perfection is interrupted in order to raise questions about the relationship between the individual and the masses.

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