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registration

RESEARCH DAYS 2026
PLAY
18, 19 & 20 March
Bijloke Ghent

What if play no longer happens on the margins, but sets research itself in motion? With Play as its central theme, KASK & Conservatorium announces the first edition of the Research Days: a threeday festival for researchers, artists, students and visitors to explore playfulness in thought and action – through performances, lectures, panel discussions, exhibitions, workshops and interventions.

PLAYFULNESS AS A RADICAL GESTURE

Playing is a fundamental way to engage with the world. How we play both reflects and shapes our ways of being and knowing. Playing also introduces instability and imagination, placing us in a fluid, indeterminate field of experience. In artistic research, playfulness can function as a mindset and as a research method. Here, playing becomes a critical tool for exploring ideas, testing assumptions, and generating knowledge. When researchers and artists fully embrace play, they tap into its disruptive potential, using uncertainty and improvisation to challenge norms. Yet play is never neutral. It is situated, embodied, and negotiated: shaped by movement, territory, materials, social structures, media, and the technologies through which it unfolds. When does art or research in the arts become a playful proposition? Who is allowed to play, and who is excluded? And how might playfulness be understood as an attitude that opens up possibilities and moves beyond normative constraints?

The programme of the Research Days is structured around four thematic categories. These form the underlying structure of the festival and reflect the lines of thought used by the programmers. At the same time, they can serve as a possible guide through the programme without imposing a fixed route.

Each category brings together different practices, perspectives and forms of research and culminates in a round-table discussion in which insights, questions and tensions are explicitly shared.

Play as method and mindset

Exploring playfulness as a research strategy and artistic tool, these events question how artists use play to think, test and discover. Here, play is a generator of alternative realities, encompassing speculation, storytelling, myth, role-play and future thinking.

Embodiment, sensation & physical play

How does play operate at the level of the body? These events look at which kinds of knowledge are produced through physical play. Embodied practices are explored to teach us ways of imagining otherwise.

Access, power & exclusion

Who is allowed to play, and maybe more importantly, who is not? Some materials or technologies invite play, while others resist it. The events in this category look at who controls the conditions of play, and how play is distributed unequally across society.

Collectivity, participation & social play

When play is used to create forms of togetherness, which communities emerge? In these events, play is approached as an experimental material practice in which humans, non-humans, and their environments participate.

registration

With Research Days, KASK & Conservatorium is launching a new annual festival dedicated to artistic research. We see it as an open moment of exchange between researchers, students and staff within our school and in dialogue with research communities from other institutions.

All activities are free of charge. When booking, you can indicate whether you will be attending the opening lecture and reception on Wednesday 18 March. You can simply walk in for most activities, except where it is explicitly stated that additional booking is required. These are workshops in which you actively participate or activities with limited capacity. During the event, you can check in the Zwarte Zaal to see if any places have become available if an activity is marked as full.

18.03.26
19.03.26
20.03.26
LOCATION
Louis Pasteurlaan 2
9000 Gent
STARTING POINT
From the Zwarte Zaal, you can easily reach the other locations. During the
festival, it also serves as a shared meeting space for exchange and conversation. There will always be someone there to talk to.
Getting there
The site is easily accessible by public transport. From Ghent Sint-Pieters station, take tram T1 or T3 to the Bijlokehof stop. Due to roadworks at the intersection of Godshuizenlaan and Groot-Brittanniëlaan, parking options in the vicinity of Louis Pasteurlaan are limited. The site remains accessible by bicycle or on foot, although some detours apply. The most rousible route (including for wheelchair users) is via the entrance at STAM, Godshuizenlaan 2.
ACCESSIBILITY
The Zwarte Zaal is located on the ground floor of the Marisal building on Campus Bijloke. Via the bicycle passage in Jozef Kluyskensstraat, the Zwarte Zaal can be reached without using stairs. Informational texts are mainly available in Dutch and English. Events take place in English or Dutch, unless stated otherwise. Do you have a specific need or question? Please contact us at schoolofartsnieuws@hogent.be.
tickets
All events are free of charge, with reservation
required.
PROGRAMME
catering
KASKcafé is open throughout the entire festival. You can enjoy freshly prepared meals or a drink there.
Research in clusters

A shared space for artistic research

Artistic research at KASK & Conservatorium is organised into five research clusters. These clusters bring together artists, designers and theorists from diverse disciplines around a specific research field that connects them through their research or artistic practice. Within a research cluster, there is space for experimentation, the exchange of expertise, interdisciplinary approaches, and the organisation of study days, symposia, presentations, publications and master seminars.

Once a year, the clusters jointly organise the Research Days. This festival creates a moment of encounter that builds bridges – between clusters, between researchers and students, and towards the wider research community beyond the school. In this way, the Research Days are explicitly situated within the everyday practice of artistic research, while also serving as an invitation to exchange beyond institutional boundaries.

clusters