Installation by Alexandre Mulongo Finkelstein and Livia Cahn
Opening: Thursday 28 August 2025, 18:00 - 21:00

To build upwards, takes a lot of digging down.
Brussels is partly built on sand (SiO2, silicon dioxide). This sand was probably deposited by a tropical sea or a delta. In the Middle Ages, sand was extracted from the subsurface of Saint-Gilles, near the rue du fort. The sand was used for construction works and to level the ground. The expansion of the city, put a stop to this extraction at the end of the 19th century.

Multi story buildings and even urban agriculture, embody the upwards pull of the city. The Brussels sprout was supposedly first cultivated in St-Gilles to grow vertically as the space for growing crops also diminished with the densification of the urban fabric. These are just two soil histories that depend on the underground to take root in this neighborhood.

Bringing sand into the vertical plane of the shop window is an invitation to ask questions about the history and the composition of the underlying underground that typically lies underfoot and out of sight. The speculative archival document in the window is mineral.

The presence of sand in the window also recalls one of the ongoing applications of the mineral extraction of sand in the production of glass. It highlights the omnipresence of geological materials in the urban context.

Alexandre Mulongo Finkelstein and Livia Cahn met in Lubumbashi (DRC) in 2023 around questions related to extraction. Alexandre is an artist and writer, currently in residency in Brussels. Livia is conducting research on the underground for a PhD in social sciences.

On Wednesday 17 September we organise an informal and speculative get together, a collective reflection on what the underground holds. We’re calling on neighbors with stories, local historians, amateur archaeologist, geologists, and sand enthusiasts to attempt to read the mineral document in the vitrine.