CROSSING WIRES 2026

Free entry.

Come and discover the works of Anna Safiatou Touré, Anyuta Wiazemsky Snauwaert, Marcel Top, Meriem Steiner and Philippe Braquenier in the imposing building M, and stay for a drink at the Usquare Buvette.

Free entry.

This event is bilingual: Dutch & French.
Places are limited – registration required.

Are you an urban planning professional, working within a Brussels administration (Region or Municipality), involved in a social, cultural or civic organisation, or simply a citizen committed to urban democracy? Join us for a workshop dedicated to the potential of artificial intelligence for democracy in Brussels.

AI is emerging as a new actor in the making of cities. It is gradually being integrated into urban professions and citizen consultation processes.
This workshop brings together public administrations, policymakers, civil society and field professionals to collectively examine this revolution: how can AI concretely facilitate or transform local democracy in Brussels? How might it improve the flow of information, public decision-making, or the ways in which citizens are involved in urban choices?
Beyond understanding the issues at stake, a central phase will be dedicated to collective ideation. Drawing on your own practices, come and imagine together concrete uses of AI in service of your missions and local democracy.

As places are limited and to ensure a diversity of participants, applications will be reviewed based on the profiles sought and their balance.
To participate, please send your registration request, specifying your professional (e.g. administration/private sector) or associative profile, before 18 May 2026 to Marie-des-Neiges de Lantsheere: Marie.Des.Neiges.De.Lantsheere@vub.be .

Organised by Brussels Academy and FARI.

In English.
Free. Between 10 and 20 participants – registration required.

Artist Marcel Top invites you to a workshop to discover how video surveillance software works. Together, we will learn how algorithms detect emotions and movements by testing them on our own faces and bodies. Then, in groups of three or four, you will use your creativity to try and outsmart these programs. Create masks, paint faces, and use other methods straight from your imagination: come and try to take back control of the algorithm!

⟶ REGISTER HERE

In English.
Free admission.

Technologies are reshaping our democracies — in our cities, on battlefields, in public space. Between promises of participation and risks of control, how are they concretely transforming our relationship to democracy? An evening of presentations and discussion, somewhere between dystopia and hope.

Researchers, artists and practitioners will explore how AI and digital technologies are transforming the very foundations of democratic life — from the manipulation of information to mass surveillance, from autonomous weapons systems to new tools for citizen participation. Come with your questions, your doubts and your ideas.

Free entry.

This event is bilingual: Dutch & French.
Free admission – registration required.

At a time when democracies are facing mounting pressures, the role of art and culture in their preservation and reinvention has never felt more essential. In Brussels — a world city of remarkable cultural vitality — this question takes on particular urgency: while artistic richness here is abundant, it remains unevenly accessible, and the balances that sustain it are now being put to the test.

How can the cultural sector remain a space of freedom, inclusion, and democratic resilience?

Brussels, a culture for whom?
Access to culture as a fundamental right. Despite mediation efforts, large segments of Brussels’ population remain on the margins of cultural institutions and projects. Who are these “invisible” people in cultural participation? How do social, linguistic, and geographic barriers reinforce one another? The Forum will give a platform to grassroots organizations that every day devise strategies to ensure that the right to culture is not a privilege, but a civic reality.

⟶ MORE INFO & REGISTRATION

Organised by RABKO in collaboration with OHME, BrIAS and GRESAC

This event is bilingual: Dutch & French.
Free admission – registration required.

Safeguarding our freedoms
Artistic autonomy as a vehicle for democratic freedom and resistance. In a context of rising inward-looking discourse and an increasingly restrictive political climate, culture frequently finds itself on the front line. Targeted budget pressures, challenges to certain themes (gender, decolonialism, migration), and latent forms of censorship: warning signals are multiplying across Europe and on our doorstep. How can we protect the independence of artists and venues in Brussels? How can culture serve as a solid bulwark for democracy?

⟶ MORE INFO & REGISTRATION

Organised by RABKO in collaboration with OHME, BrIAS and GRESAC

Free admission – registration required
This event is in English

The Brussels Institute for Advanced Studies invites you to its Season Closing Event, marking the end of the first year of its current programme, “Democratic Governance: Challenges and Innovations.”

Over the past year, the programme has brought together 10 Senior Fellows, chosen among leading scholars and practitioners to explore some of the most pressing challenges facing democratic governance today: from polarization and populism to the impacts of artificial intelligence, as well as questions of sustainability, inequality, and inclusion.

This closing event offers an opportunity to reflect on what we have accomplished and learned from these highly productive and successful months, as well as continuing to engage in conversation on the future of democratic governance in a rapidly changing world.

Join us for an evening of celebration as we conclude this chapter of the programme and get ready for the start of the second year of this Season in autumn of this year.

⟶ REGISTER HERE

Public sharing of the workshop Performing the Public Body Through Art.

What if we could reimagine how we appear, connect, and act together as citizens?
Following the four-day workshop Performing the Public Body Through Art, held in April and May 2026 as part of Kennisnesten, the participants invites you to a performative public sharing that opens up a space to explore the relationship between performance and democracy, and to envision a city where we are more present, more visible, and more deeply connected to one another.

Join us in this shared moment of reflection, encounter, and potentiality.

Join us for a drink and some music outside in front of the beautiful building M, where you can also visit the exhibition.

Free entry.

In English.
Free entry.

Join our colleague Charlotte for a one-hour tour of the exhibition, as she guides you through the intentions, techniques and stories behind each work and artist.

Free entry.