HAPPINESS. Art, a positive boost for your brain.
HAPPINESS, a new digital exhibition and a family friendly experience full of good boosts for your brain.
It’s official! Art makes us happy. Discover the positive boost of art on your brain in the new digital art exhibition HAPPINESS. Step inside a world of color, sound, music, and interaction. Explore 360° art installations and discover how art gives your life more color. - An immersive experience where art and science meet - Interactive rooms full of good boosts for your brain - Multimedia art installations for young and old - Learn more about the impact of art on your happiness hormones
Studio Irma (Amsterdam, Barcelona) & PLEIN PUBLIEK Brussels
Plein Publiek BXL
Bruxelles
Exhibition
HAPPINESS. Art, a positive boost for your brain.
Cirque du Soleil KURIOS – Cabinet of Curiosities
ING Arena (former Hall 12)
Laeken
Show
Cirque du Soleil KURIOS – Cabinet of Curiosities
Les Adieux de Jacques Brel à l'Olympia
Brel Foundation
Bruxelles
Cinema
![Les Adieux de Jacques Brel à l'Olympia]()
Les Adieux de Jacques Brel à l'Olympia
Chocolate workshop, making chocolates
Discover the wonders of Belgian chocolate and learn how to make these tasty treats at the biggest chocolate store in Brussels. Enjoy a 1-hour workshop with the guidance of expert chocolatiers and have a go at making amazing handmade chocolates yourself.
Discover the wonders of Belgian chocolate and learn how to make these tasty treats at the biggest chocolate store in Brussels. Enjoy a 1-hour workshop with the guidance of expert chocolatiers and have a go at making amazing handmade chocolates yourself.
The experience begins with a warm welcome from your guides and a delicious hot chocolate. While you drink, listen to a short but fascinating introduction into the world of Belgian chocolate and learn an array of chocolate making secrets.
After the intro, the real fun begins with a demonstration of chocolate tempering on a marble table. It’s then time to have a go yourself and make your own chocolate treats with the help of expert chocolatiers. Spend the hour making your very own personalized and tasty mendiants, truffles, lollipops and more. You’ll also taste the ruby chocolate, a newly discovered cocoa bean that is 100% natural but which creates incredibly pink chocolate treats!
At the end of the experience, package up your chocolates and take them home with you to share with friends, or enjoy alone!
Of course you will not become a true chocolate maker in only one hour but I will share with you a little bit of the magic of my job!
Elisabetta Passafaro, Master chocolatier
Patricia Lafargue, Pastry chef
The Belgian Chocolate Makers (Sablon)
Bruxelles
Courses and workshops
Chocolate workshop, making chocolates
With Brel in Brussels - Walking Tour
Brel Foundation
Bruxelles
Exhibition
With Brel in Brussels - Walking Tour
Brussels Highlights Walking and Bus Tour
Discover the Belgian capital during this 3-hour tour which will take you to all the main sites: Grand Place, Atomium, Palais Royale, Parc du Cinquantenaire and the European Parliament.
Our guided tour of Brussels is the perfect introduction to the fascinating capital of
Belgium. You will have the chance to discover the ancient buildings of the city
as well as its splendid modern districts. Our local guides are passionate on sharing information about our city’s past, present and future. The tour will start with the majestic Grand Place, the
cradle of medieval Brussels, followed by our iconic Manneken Pis and the stunning
Royal Galleries. We then hop on in one of our cozy coaches and the next stop will be the world-famous Atomium. After that, we drive along the marvelous Chinese and Japanese Tower. From
the Royal Residence, we will return to the city center to visit the Royal Palace, the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council of Europ Europe. After this
tour… you have seen all the highlights of our amazing capital city!
Multilingual guide
Air-conditioned coach / bus
Brussels City Tours
Bruxelles
Guided tours
Brussels Highlights Walking and Bus Tour
ALLIAGE(S)
Music, visual art
The Trio Xenakis unveil their new piece, conceived with visual artist Vivian Daval.
Iannis Xenakis transformed the art of his time by manipulating visual and aural space. Adélaïde Ferrière, Emmanuel Jacquet and Rodolphe Théry set up the Xenakis Trio in 2018 with the aim of furthering his ideas. The artists' main aim is to open up contemporary music and all its associated concepts encompassing a wide repertoire to a wider audience, through 'hard-hitting' interpretations both in terms of form and content. Following a tour through France in 2022 to mark the centenary of Xenakis's birth as well as a promotional tour in collaboration with Arte, the dancer Élodie Sicard and CultureBox, the Trio Xenakis now unveil their new piece, conceived with visual artist Vivian Daval. Together, they will take you on a journey through a whole new way of perceiving sound and space, with key works by composers from their repertoire.
Musical programme:
Pierre Jodlowski (1971), 24 Loops
Philippe Hurel (1955), Ritual Trio
Trio Xenakis, ALLIAGE1 (création)
Thierry de Mey (1956), Musique de tables
Yoshihisa Taïra (1937-2005), Trichromie
Trio Xenakis
Adélaïde Ferrière
Rodolphe Théry
Emmanuel Jacquet
Vivian Daval, visual artist
Les Brigittines
Bruxelles
Concert
ALLIAGE(S)
ARTONOV Festival
An interdisciplinary festival that combines architecture and heritage with multiple artistic performances, inviting both artists and visitors to exceptional venues.
For its ninth edition, the Festival ARTONOV will focus on the concept of beauty of the Threshold and aesthetics of Limits.
In the East, especially in China and Japan, the notion of ‘setting limits’ is crucial to the conception of space-time and underlines the architectural aesthetics of homes, sanctuaries and even the design of gardens, landscapes and paintings.
In the West, the Art Nouveau and Art Deco movements embraced this concept to develop a whole new architectural style. In 2023, a year dedicated to Art Nouveau, we thought it would be particularly interesting to ask our guest artists to focus on this notion.
This year’s programme then can be seen a sort of perambulation through the ideas of interior and exterior, between venues and artistic disciplines. What constitutes the ideal abode? What does the ‘elsewhere’ or the landscape represent in architecture? Posing these questions leads us to rethink the world around us.
Join us for the ninth edition of the ARTONOV Festival to cross the Threshold and uncover the fascinating and vibrant universe that lies beyond.
Various places in Brussels
Bruxelles
Festival
![ARTONOV Festival]()
ARTONOV Festival
Visit of the Van Eetvelde Hotel
Opening to the public of the Hotel van Eetvelde and his extension, a jewel of Brussels' Art Nouveau, classified as a Unesco World Heritage Site, with an offer of guided and free visits. Access is made possible through the LAB-An or Art Nouveau Laboratory, a space for the promotion of Art Nouveau that offers a contemporary look at this Belgian and Brussels heritage and the themes it encompasses. In addition, there is a reflection on the conservation of our Art Nouveau heritage through the rebirth of the Aubecq Hotel and an introduction to the links between Art Nouveau and Belgian colonization.
Van Eetvelde Hotel & LAB·An
Bruxelles
Exhibition
Visit of the Van Eetvelde Hotel
Les Souffles
Dance, visual art
Les Souffles is a choreographic and acoustic performance created in collaboration with contemporary dancer and musician Mathieu Calmelet, sound artist Octave Courtin and visual artist Ludivine Large-Bessette.
Like a landscape unfolding on the stage, three individuals encounter strange wind sculptures. Together, they surrender to the rhythm of human and mechanical breaths, electrified by live digital processing. The LAC Project collective invites the audience to a musical and choreographic symphony, rejecting the boundaries between organic and mechanical, acoustic and digital, and conceiving new relational modes between the human body and its environment.
Artistic direction, creation of the soundsculptures, choreography, original music Mathieu Calmelet, Octave Courtin, Ludivine Large-Bessette
Interpretation Lou Cantor, Mathieu Calmelet, Octave Courtin
Light Caroline Carliez
Sound direction Pierre-Antoine Naline
Ecole 13
Schaerbeek
Show
Les Souffles
At Gustave's
Confidential visits to an interior by Gustave Strauven: his former personal house in Rue Luther 28 in the Squares district. Duration: 40min
Maison Strauven
Bruxelles
Guided tours
![At Gustave's]()
At Gustave's
PORTAL overstep with curiosity…
Classical music, world music
Two musicians. One from the East. One from the West. Lots of strings. Very many strings. And a voice. Melancholy. Indefinable longings. Nostalgia. Inspiration. Unity. Tears. Silence. Melodies that make you dream, cry and ponder. Rhythms like distant horizons, rousing forces and soothing currents.
Sofie and Shahab meet at the threshold where two worlds come together. In their luggage they carry Persian poetry, haunting Renaissance melodies, ancient radif and conjuring Baroque ostinati. Improvisations, early music, own arrangements and new compositions reach out to each other and unveil a pure musical beauty.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth
across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
Rumi
Shahab Azinmehr (Tar, setar, voice)
Sofie Vanden Eynde (Renaissance lute, theorbo)
Maison Saint-Cyr
Bruxelles
Concert
PORTAL overstep with curiosity…
Waterbowls
Music, textile art
Over the past ten years, Tomoko Sauvage has been developing her unique electroacoustic instrument Waterbowls, which combines water, hydrophones (underwater microphones) and porcelain and glass bowls. Tomoko creates sculptural and fluid timbres through techniques such as random percussion with water drops, hydrophonic feedback controlled by hand-generated waves of water, and porous terracotta creating singing bubbles in the liquid.Her musical experiments are based on a live performance practice that explores improvisation and interaction with the environment. By augmenting primal elements with technology, through ritualistic but playful gestures, Sauvage’s work animates, contemplates, tunes and connects with the material and the immaterial, maintaining a fragile balance between chance and mastery.
Since the beginning of her practice, Elise Peroi's work in weaving and the void has expressed that which passes through – breath, the atmosphere… For Sous-tendre, she draws inspiration from vines that connect and intertwine like countless organs moving between heaven and earth.
They grow in all directions, at once spreading out and reaching out with an almost rhizome-like character, forming a network architecture.
Their fluid movement through space could be seen as a race, both soaring in the air and creeping on the ground, in constant dialogue with their surroundings, creating support points and points of exchange.
Tomoko Sauvage (Musique and sound)
Elise Peroi (Textile art)
Maison Hannon
Saint-Gilles
Concert
Waterbowls
On Solitude
Music, literature
A personal reflection on solitude and music, performed by Thomas Baeté, viola da gamba and voice.
All through the ages, artists have had an intense and sometimes troublesome rapport with solitude and loneliness. As much as they have been attracted by the inspiration and concentration that solitude can provide, they have equally fled the exclusion and loneliness that comes with their art. Musicians especially have always led their lives between countless solitary hours of practice, many lonely miles on the road, and, on the other hand, the need for the company of fellow-musicians and audiences to share their art with.
For the 12th Century troubadour, the absence and unattainability of the beloved is the very motor of his art. Baroque composer Henry Purcell was so inspired by the poet Katherine Philips’ eulogy O Solitude, that he composed one of his most hauntingly beautiful melodies to her words, and Monsieur de Sainte Colombe built a cabin in a mulberry tree so that he could practise far from the noise and crowds of 17th Century Paris. For singer-songwriter Barbara, like for Aristotle, solitude is like a curse or an illness to escape from.
I hope that, as I embrace the viol, each listener can embrace his solitude and that we can thus ironically feel connected.
Musical programme
Thomas Baeté will pick from the following selection of works:
M. de Sainte-Colombe le père, Prélude et Chaconne en ré mineur
Richartz de Berbesieu, Atressi con l’orifanz
M. de Sainte- Colombe le fils, Prélude en Mi mineur
Philippe Hersant, Le Chemin de Jérusalem
Henry Purcell, O Solitude
Tobias Hume, Good Againe
Anonymous Catalan (16th century), Soleta só jo ací
Barbara (Monique Andrée Serf), La Solitude
Sources of the spoken text
E. Titon du Tillet, Sur Mr de Sainte-Colombe (Le Parnasse Français, 1732)
Richartz de Berbesieu, Vida and Razó (Rome, Vat. 5232)
Michel de Montaigne, De la Solitude (Essais,1580)
Friedrich Nietzsche, Schopenhauer as educator, 1876
Thomas Baeté (Viola da gamba and voice)
Maison Strauven
Bruxelles
Concert
On Solitude
Pierrot Lunaire
Music, film
Schönberg composed one of his most famous works, Pierrot lunaire, to texts by the Belgian symbolist poet Albert Giraud. In it, he proposed a new way of using the voice, the Sprechgesang, because, as he said, "Pierrot is not sung". In a German translation by Otto Erich Hartleben, the work offers a corrosive, ironic and brilliant take on Pierrot's visions, with a strong influence from Berlin cabaret, which was very fashionable at the time.
Hanns Eisler, a pupil of Schönberg who often collaborated with Bertolt Brecht, was also influenced by Berlin cabaret and jazz. In 1941, on the occasion of Schönberg's 70th birthday, Eisler took up the dodecaphonic technique taught by his teacher and wrote Fourteen ways of describing rain, which illustrates the film Regen by Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens.
Musical programme
Hanns Eisler (1898 - 1962), Vierzehn Arten den Regen zu beschreiben op.70 (1941) on a film (Regen) by Joris Ivens
Arnold Schönberg (1874 - 1951), Pierrot lunaire, op.21 (1912) 21 songs on poetic texts by Albert Giraud.
Marianne Pousseur (Voice/Sprechstimme)
Les Solistes de la Chapelle Musicale de Tournai
Laurent Houque (Violin/viola)
Hugo Ranilla (Viola)
Cyril Simon (Cello)
Marianne Jossinet (Flute/piccolo)
Anna Ferrandis Vila (Clarinet/bass clarinet)
Thomas Dieltjens (Piano)
Philippe Gérard (Musical direction)
MIM - Musical Instruments Museum (MRAH)
Bruxelles
Concert
Pierrot Lunaire
Dans le pays d’hiver
Theatre, performance, visual art
Be seduced by the subtle, poetic world of Silvia Costa.
For the ARTONOV festival, Silvia Costa proposes a site-specific adaptation of her performance Dans le pays d'hiver. In Dialogues with Leuco, Cesare Pavese delivers an astonishing foray into mythology. Director and visual artist Silvia Costa adapts the work for the stage in a visual and poetic variation where the image inspires reflection and reverie.
Birth, guilt, punishment, our animality, the threat of the Flood and the creative gaze of the gods: these are all themes that the artist transforms into visions through a dialogue between words, bodies and objects, steeped in the beauty of metamorphosis. While the world around us may seem frozen in the mundanity of communication and data, Silvia Costa is a firm believer in the power of poetic invention to revitalise our imagination.
Silvia Costa is a protean artist who, alongside her personal work, has contributed between 2006 and 2019 as an actress and artistic collaborator to most of Romeo Castellucci's creations.
In collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura
Direction, adaptation and stage design Silvia Costa
with Silvia Costa, Laura Dondoli
Sound design Nicola Ratti
Costumes Laura Dondoli
Collaboration on stage design Maroussia Vaes
Stage sculptures Paola Villani
Vocal work NicoNote
Mercerie
Bruxelles
Show
Dans le pays d’hiver
Extant
Dance, music, film
Extant is an immersive interdisciplinary performance that explores the parallel universe of the ‘behind the scenes’ and the creation of a dance film performed in real-time.
The performance explores the relationship and balance between humans and nature as well as themes that are inherent to our existence, such as the phases of life, memories, death, grief and the forces of time that transform the present into memories. The performance is presented as a film created in real-time and juxtaposes its creation and the poetic nature of the film. Extant places the viewer at the heart of this constructed universe and engages the narrative through perspective and perception. The performance pushes the boundaries of traditional theatre and immerses audiences in a parallel universe that reflects our current tension with nature and the permanence of time.
Concept Jamie Lee
Choreography, performance Jamie Lee, Stanislav Dobák
Film Director Jamie Lee
Director of Photography, Aerial Cinematographer Stanislav Dobák
Camera assistants Charlie Cattrall, Naomi Nantois Meadows
Music Composer Lászlo Pálmai
blan Foundation
Ixelles
Show
Extant
Atomium Jazz - ADRIEN VOLANT & PAOLO LOVERI DUO – « Resilience »
The Atomium invites you to discover its "Atomium Jazz" concerts in the magnificent Ilya Prigogine room, a lateral sphere with a breathtaking view of Brussels!
The Atomium resumes its programme in October 2023 with the duo Adrien Volant and Paolo Loveri.
The Atomium invites you to discover its "Atomium Jazz" concerts in the magnificent Ilya Prigogine room, a lateral sphere with a breathtaking view of Brussels!
The Atomium resumes its programme in October 2023 with the duo Adrien Volant and Paolo Loveri. From the very first moment they met in 2008, Paolo and Adrien made a musical and human connection. Sharing a common language where listening, exchange and spontaneity are the key words, the two friends multiplied their musical projects and stages for nearly 15 years before returning to the basics: a refined formula where the sound of the acoustic guitar meets the brassy notes of the trumpet and flugelhorn.
With 'Resilience', they unveil an album of personal compositions inspired by episodes in their lives. It's heartfelt music with disconcerting harmonies and atypical shapes, demonstrating their ability to step outside their comfort zone at the slightest opportunity. That's the principle of resilience! Overcoming difficult events to regain your equilibrium and get on with your life.
End the concert with a drink, a bar will be available in the panoramic sphere with a breathtaking view over Brussels!
Adrien Volant - Trumpet
Paolo Loveri – Guitar
Atomium
Laeken
Concert
Atomium Jazz - ADRIEN VOLANT & PAOLO LOVERI DUO – « Resilience »
E Dio si riposo' il settimo giorno
Performance
A creative and interactive project that investigates and celebrates family ties, understood as a common, collective endeavour. More process-focused than result-oriented, the experience proposed by Italian artist Silvia Costa sees four generations of a family engaged in sharing a task. A great-grandmother, a grandmother, a mother and a son are in front of a blank canvas. They have many colours at their disposal, brushes and pencils. Equipped with a photograph of a landscape they have in common, they set about to reproduce it in the form of a painting. They look at the picture, begin to draw the first lines, paint together, help each other, make choices together to recreate the beloved image - until the painting is finished.
The ticket includes both performances : E Dio si riposo' il settimo giorno + Come in, and please pay attention to the mess
Concept Silvia Costa
Sound installation Nicola Ratti
Production : Voralberger Landestheater Bregenz & FOG Triennale Teatro
In collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura
BOB361 Habitat-work environmentBOB361
Anderlecht
Show
E Dio si riposo' il settimo giorno
Come in, and please pay attention to the mess
Music, acrobatics, circus
Take BOB 361, a breathtaking living space, and seat an audience down in the front of three improvisers.
In the time it takes to bake a chocolate fondant, an acrobat, a trombonist and a double bassist get together and whip up a performance in which space and time are completely reorganised by simultaneous physical and sonic actions. The body interacts with gravity and equilibrium while sounds reshape our acoustic perception and weave a whole new musical fabric.
The temporal ellipse suddenly seems to tip over into the dimension of disorder and patchwork, until the absurd becomes reality and brings us back to the present.
The ticket includes both performances : Come in, and please pay attention to the mess + E Dio si riposo' il settimo giorno
Acrobatics Majo Cazares
Double bass Mattia Massolini
Trombone and concept Christophe Morisset
BOB361 Habitat-work environmentBOB361
Anderlecht
Show
Come in, and please pay attention to the mess
Avion Papier
Film, digital art, music, marionette theatre
Avion Papier is a caravan show at the crossroads of digital arts, music and object theatre.
Inside this mini cinema, the characters from an animation film escape and move about around the audience. Mechanical inventions rattle in our ears. We are not alone on this journey: a musician welcomes us into a childlike, dreamscape, juggling a variety of instruments to create a series of bright melodies.
HAM
Saint-Job (Uccle)
The address will be given upon purchase of the ticket.
The ticket includes both performances : Avion Papier + Atmos
Collectif La Méandre
Drawings, editing, music, machinery (acting): Arthur Delaval
Acting: Noé Lémac
Script: Guilhem Bréard
Machinery, construction: Mathieu Fernandez and Jordan Bonnot
Mapping: Guillaume Bertrand
Director: Laura Dahan
Assistant director: Manuel Marcos
Consulting and production: Mélissa Azé
asbl ARTONOV
Ixelles
Show
Avion Papier
Atmos
Music, sound installation, performance
Atmos is a fluid project straddling the boundary between the visual and musical worlds, as much a visual installation as a collection of mechanical, air and water-based musical instruments. Within this ensemble, the performer acts, manipulates instruments and composes. Atmos reflects on the possible autonomy an instrument can have using physical phenomena such as gravity or the elasticity of materials. How do chance and humanity fit into this organic-machine world, leaving more room for interpretation and musical play? This long-term project alternating between instrument making and musical research is constantly enriched through experimentation and borrows from the organ the image of being 'all-encompassing'. Always keenly aware of the creation, disappearance and transformation of sounds, the artist performs more as a response to their environment than in front of an instrument.
HAM
Saint-Job (Uccle)
The address will be given upon purchase of the ticket.
The ticket includes both performances : Atmos + Avion Papier
Sound installation, performance Octave Courtin
asbl ARTONOV
Ixelles
Show
Atmos
La Jeune Fille à la fenêtre
Music, opera
Eugène Samuel-Holeman's La jeune fille à la fenêtre is a sung monodrama based on a text by the writer Camille Lemonnier, a major figure in Belgian literature. A contemporary of Debussy and a close friend of Maeterlinck, Samuel-Holeman plunges us into the Belgian fin de siècle, between Symbolism and Modernism. With its subdued tonalities, innovative harmonies and original instrumentation, this lyrical prose bears witness to the emancipation of musical language at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.
A painting of souls steeped in the "tragedy of the mundane", the tragedy of a monotonous life going on smoothly, always the same, this little chamber opera is a remarkable work for the voice it gives to women at the end of the 19th century, through empowerment and emancipation from the male fantasy, to express the reality of their own inner lives.
Musical programme
Eugène Samuel-Holeman (1863-1942), La jeune fille à la fenêtre, lyric prose for mezzo-soprano, harp, horn, oboe and strings (1904)
The visit to the exhibition "JOSEF HOFFMANN: Beyond Beauty and Modernity" is included in the ticket. https://www.artandhistory.museum/en/josef-hoffmann
Mezzo-soprano Pauline Claes
Conductor Thomas Van Haeperen
Ensemble Sturm und Klang
Violin Claire Bourdet
Violin Maxime Stasyl
Viola Karel Coninx
Cello Catherine Lebrun
Double bass Natacha Save
Oboe Kristien Ceuppens
Horn Sze-Fong Yeong
Harp Anne Zeuwts
Art & History Museum (RMAH)
Bruxelles
Concert
La Jeune Fille à la fenêtre
*EXTRAMUROS* Sgraffito-decoraties in Liège
The Cauchie House invites you to an exciting walking tour! Discover the artworks of Paul Cauchie and others artists in the city of Liège.
This walk takes you to those places in Liège that were transformed or urbanised during the Art Nouveau period, a style that features on several façades de la ‘Cité ardente’. Important architects such as Paul Jaspar, Victor Rogister, Clément Pirnay and Arthur Snyers made large use of sgraffitos to decorate their façade. Their incredible diversity has recently resurfaced thanks to several restorations. Come and discover this exceptional heritage with our expert guide.
Meeting point : 42 rue Dartois.
Time slots avalaible :
10am : guided tour in Dutch
14pm : guided tour in French
The Cauchie House
Etterbeek
Guided tours
*EXTRAMUROS* Sgraffito-decoraties in Liège
Museum Night Fever
The museum night is back on 21 October from 7pm to 1am in 33 Brussels museums.
Museum Night Fever is back on 21 October in 33 Brussels museums. Between 7pm and 1am, young emerging artists reinterpret the museums' locations, collections and exhibitions. Visual arts, dance, music, video, circus, performance... all the disciplines come together and guarantee a unique and festive atmosphere for an ever more enthusiastic public. An afterparty will keep the party going until the early hours.
Museum Night Fever is organised by Brussels Museums, the association that links more than 120 Brussels museums, in partnership with the museums, artists and numerous partners.
More info: www.museumnightfever.be
Brussels Museums
Bruxelles
Festival
Museum Night Fever
