Franz Liszt is often depicted as an eccentric, and the historian Gregorovius once called him “Mephistopheles disguised as a priest.” Eccentric or not, his contribution to the piano repertoire cannot be overstated. Pianist Susanna Braun pays tribute to the Hungarian composer. She begins with a nocturnal pilgrimage to her own Switzerland with Les Cloches de Genève: Nocturne. She then showcases her technical abilities in one of Liszt’s études. She also selected the Sonata in B minor and the Hungarian Rhapsody No. 19 in D minor. That Liszt occasionally drew inspiration from a famous namesake can be heard in Das Sterbeglöcklein from 6 Melodien von Franz Schubert. Liszt at his best. How could it be otherwise, with a pianist who obtained her master’s degree at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar?

Programme

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
– Les Cloches de Genève: Nocturne uit Années de pèlerinage - Première année: Suisse, S. 160/9
– Douze études d'exécution transcendante, S. 139 no. 10 Appassionata in F minor

Franz Liszt / Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
– 6 Melodien von Franz Schubert, S. 563: III. Das Sterbeglöcklein, in A-flat Major

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)
– Hungarian Rhapsody no. 19 (S. 244/19) in D minor
– Sonata in B minor, S.17

Where care is often measured in time and systems, design and art open up space for attention, proximity and meaning. They slow things down, ask questions and reveal what often remains unspoken: how care feels, how it is shared and how it takes shape in everyday life.

In this lecture, two practices meet. De Ambulanten bring art into a residential care context and work with small, caring gestures that deepen relationships and soften everyday life. Merel Stolker's art practice explores how social structures and interactions shape our interactions with each other, and how these can be broken down through participatory and performative methods. Together, the speakers show how art and design can approach care as a shared, human practice — supported by attention, imagination and encounter.

Merel Stolker 

Merel Stolker (1992, NL) works between rituals, visual arts and social-artistic practices. Her work always arises in interaction with others. It takes the form of interactive rituals, scores, texts and handmade tools made of ceramics or textiles. These are created within long-term participatory processes, in which process and humanity always come first. Fascinated by our daily manners, she searches for new ways of being together, leaving room for both the beautiful and less beautiful sides of life.

Merel obtained a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts at St. Joost Den Bosch (NL) and a Master's degree in Autonomous Design at KASK & Conservatorium. She is based in Ghent (BE) and has collaborated with Kunsthal Gent, 30CC Leuven, workspacebrussels, KOAS Brussels, Lasso Brussels, manoeuvre Gent and CAMPUSatelier Gent, among others. Her work has been exhibited at Kunst & Zwalm, Het Entrepot Brugge and BLANCO Gent.

De Ambulanten

De Ambulanten is a collective initiated by Rasa Alksnyte, Justine Maxelon, and Ann Weckx.

Rasa Alksnyte is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus on participatory practices and actions. In recent years, she is particularly active in working with neurodiverse groups and people from other vulnerable strata of society. She is a member of international network FoAM and artistic collaborator at MUS-E. 

Justine Maxelon is a dancer and performance artist whose artistic practice explores the relationship between voice, body and environment. Her work deals with improvisation, structures of repetition, vocal identities, listening and care. In 2015, she founded oracle, a body-voice practice, with Caroline Daish and Michel Yang. She is a member of the core group of State of the Arts and Engagement Arts.

Ann Weckx worked in the performing arts for 25 years, first as a costume designer, later also as a scenographer. Since 2016, she has been working part-time at TOPAZ, the palliative, supportive day centre at UZ Brussel, where she creates connections between culture and care. She also creates her own artistic work, such installations and photos.

Find out more about attending the interior design in distance learning programme during this online info session. Tutors will guide you through the programme and answer your pressing questions.
You can follow the session via Microsoft Teams. Register to receive the link to the info session.

Young Constance (Ingrid Bergman), a somewhat perfectionist psychiatrist from Vermont, suddenly falls in love with a mysterious patient with amnesia (Gregory Peck). Her new love turns out to be not entirely without complications when he is accused of murder. To protect him, Constance tries to unravel his repressed traumas in therapy sessions, hoping to uncover the truth in her practice. Because what is love without a thorough psychoanalysis of your partner? All the clues emerge in a delirium where eyes become liquid and the architecture is at least as unreliable as the patient's memory.

Alfred Hitchcock, master of suspense (and notorious control freak himself), brings his familiar ingredients together again in Spellbound. Cutting tension, cameos, plot twists and tight editing. He gave carte blanche to the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí for the set design of the dream sequence. This iconic scene has become permanently embedded in the collective film memory as a textbook example of how cinema can make you dream.

This screening will be introduced by Film-Plateau coordinator and filmmaker Julie Daems.

Debates about migration often get stuck in the same dichotomy: either you are in favour of open borders, or you want to turn Europe into a fortress. But what if we refuse to be locked into that straitjacket? In this lecture, Albina Fetahaj breaks open the current frameworks of thinking. This starts with the simple, but never asked, question: ‘What is a border?’. Anyone who takes this question seriously is in for quite a journey of discovery. Because it soon becomes clear that borders are more than just dry lines on a dead map. They are mechanisms of power. By intermingling with race, class and gender, among other things, borders determine who is welcome and who is not, who is allowed to feel at home somewhere and who is excluded or expelled.

Fetahaj challenges us to break open that order and make the unthinkable, a world without borders, conceivable. Her plea goes beyond simply thinking away borders: it is an invitation to reimagine the world order itself and to search together for a more just future – for everyone.

After the lecture, Albina will talk to postdoctoral researcher Natan De Coster. Getting the Voice Out, a collective that collects stories from people in Belgium's closed centres, will share testimonies.

• Albina Fetahaj studied Conflict and Development Studies and Gender and Diversity at Ghent University. In 2024, her debut ‘Grenskolonialisme’ was published by EPO Uitgeverij. In her work, she studies borders and migration from a decolonial perspective, with a particular focus on anti-colonial resistance. She is of Kosovar-Albanian descent.
• Natan De Coster is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University, where he conducts research on race and class dynamics in South Africa. He obtained his doctorate in political science with a historical-ethnographic work on a “white” working-class neighbourhood in Cape Town where, despite apartheid politics, people lived across colour lines. He is interested in how large structures such as colonialism and apartheid are experienced by ordinary people. He is currently working on a book based on his doctoral research. Natan obtained a master's degree in philosophy from KU Leuven and an additional master's degree in Conflict and Development Studies from Ghent University.
• Getting the Voice Out is a collective based in Brussels that collects testimonies from people in Belgium's closed centres. Belgium currently has six such centres, where people are detained for administrative reasons while awaiting deportation. There is virtually no access to information about the detention centres and what exactly happens inside them. The website gettingthevoiceout.org was set up in collaboration with the No Border network to publicise the voices of the detainees and the conditions in which they are held and deported. The collective also supports all forms of individual and collective struggle by detainees. By “struggle”, they mean any form of resistance to detention and threats of deportation. They are not advocates of non-violence on principle and support all forms of resistance against these prisons. They also believe that surviving in a closed centre is an act in itself that requires a form of resistance. Getting the Voice Out demands an end to detention centres, prisons and all other forms of incarceration.

This lecture will take place in MIRY Concert Hall. The hall is wheelchair accessible via a lift to the first floor. A sign language interpreter will be provided for this lecture. If you have any further questions about accessibility facilities, please contact the organisation: anais.vanertvelde@hogent.be. Questions can be asked on site to the student assistant at the desk.