Constant

Invasive Species Study Group

mia — 2026-06-24T08:27:04Z

The Invasive Species Study Group (Hwa Young Jung, Yi Zhang, and Monika Gabriela Dorniak) warmly invites you to an interactive two-day-programme (26-27 September 2026), to reflect critically on “invasiveness” as biological and social concepts constructed to “other” and exclude particular agencies of democratic systems.

How does political control over more-than-humans or other-than-humans (Marisol de la Cadena) mirror political and social hierarchies? On 26-27 September, we will explore this and other pressing questions through a multisensorial and interactive approach that makes space for participation and critical discourse. The programme begins on Saturday with the “Invasive Species Unconference” led by Hwa Young Jung inviting everyone to share their knowledge, urgencies and desires to reimagine ecological and cultural belonging through multispecies relationships rather than borders or categories. The unconference applies a participant-driven method in which attendees are encouraged to collaboratively propose topics, and gather around shared questions of belonging entered through the scientific categorisations of ‘invasive' ‘alien' ‘native' of plants and animals that also seep into political discourse and policy making.

On the second day of the programme we will dive into a more practice-based approach as a shared activity in the Constant garden between Yi Zhang and Monika Gabriela Dorniak. Yi Zhang invites you to a foraging walk and workshop, to get to know your more-than-human neighbours by learning their stories of migration, followed by a hands-on session to explore healing practices as mutual aid using plants often labeled as ‘invasive'. Together, we will recreate 2-3 recipes, by making tinctures, ferments, balm/salves, and discuss safe foraging techniques. Through these gestures of transforming “unwanted” plants into 'healer' kin, we will turn narratives of exclusion into gestures of care.

As part of the foraging walk, the score-based performance walk “Mediator of Estrangement” by Monika Gabriela Dorniak proposes a human-decentred approach of “being with” the environment. Participants are invited to activate ecosomatic, poetic scores that make us think with plants, breathe with bugs, and immerse oneself in the experience with a local “invasive” adaptation of nerve-strengthening Hildegard von Bingen cookies that may act as temporary causae et curae for politically destabilising times.

– > Places are limited. Please register for the unconference, walk, and workshop by sending an e-mail to: info(at)constantvzw.org

Study days: to blow your cover

mia — 2026-05-27T09:31:42Z

On the 11 & 12 June we will organise two study days around the question 'what could blow your cover?' in the context of Constant's 2026 research trajectory on Unbordering.

Unbordering is a call to critically and radically rethink the technological apparatus of visual control erected near and far from European borders. It is a dive into repressive and authoritarian technologies as an internalisation of the violent politics of Fortress Europe. Unbordering examines border technologies in order to unravel the ways in which the border becomes a means of making violent cuts, literally and figuratively, across bodies, lives, livelihoods, cultures, nations and ecosystems.

What is (allowed to be) in full exposure? What has to remain in the shadows? In this two-day programme, we will touch upon several layers that could 'blow your cover' or - reversely - 'cover you up' – from the large scale perspective of nation borders to the up close internal or inherited knowledges.

Amongst other things, we will gather with herbalist Edith Stefanato for a workshop to create a protective balm using comfrey, a local healing plant from ancient medicine. A session with Sarah Chander (Equinox) will blow the cover of the ways national borders are being fortified. Artist, astrologer and tutorSamah Hijawi* will host a collective cooking session, while she discusses how the concept of unbordering is read in astrology and the characters of the planets.

Join us in uncovering and covering through collective moments of making, reading, drawing, listening and cooking.

Programme
Thursday 11 June:
- 10.00-10.30 Introduction
- 10.30-12.30 presentation by Sarah Chander (Equinox)
- 13.00 lunch
- 14.00-17.00 gathering and collective balm making with Edith Stefanato

Friday 12 June
- 10.00-10.30 Introduction
- 10.30-12.30 Unbordering with the planets and astrology, a discussion that continues into a collective cooking session with Samah Hijawi
- 13.00 lunch
- 14.00-17.00 reading/drawing session

*Bio's
Sarah Chander (Equinox)
Activist, lobbyist, legal advisor
https://equinox.shiftx.space/

Edith Stefanato
Herbalist, skin care artisan and ceramist in Brussels, who makes things under the name Maison ALALA.

Samah Hijawi
Artist, Astrologer, Writer, Cook and Tutor at DAS Theater, Amsterdam
https://www.samahhijawi.com/

Participation + Reservation

Participation is free.
Registration is open until the 9th June
Reservation is required as places are limited; first come, first served. Please, reserve by sending an email to: info@constantvzw.org
The two days will start at 10:00 till 17:00, with several breaks throughout the day.
It is possible to take part in one of the two study days.
A vegetarian lunch is provided on Thursdays by Apus & les Cocottes Volantes and on Fridays by the collective cooking session led by Samah Hijawi. Please let us know when you make your reservation whether you have food allergies.

Accessibility

The two days will take place in the studio of Constant. Address: Jetsesesteenweg 388 Chaussée de Jette, 1081 Koekelberg (Brussels).
Wheelchair accessible entrance + toilet + meeting space.
Parking in the street is usually available, we can block a parking spot if asked in advance.
More info: https://constantvzw.org/site/Accessibility.html

Language
The main language of communication is English. Whisper translations to French and Dutch can be organised on the spot.

Image flyer: Enora Déas

Tree times workshop

mia — 2025-10-22T11:53:33Z

Anne-Laure Buisson, Gijs de Heij, and An Mertens welcome you to a three-hour workshop around the Tree Times installation.

One of the installation's components is the diaries of the three Scots pines. You can request fragments via text message. Each fragment consists of two parts: an automatically generated sentence based on the measured data from the trees, and a handwritten fragment. The fragments are sent via a Python script running on Termux, an app you can install on a smartphone that provides an Android phone with a terminal, a basic computer interface.

During this workshop, we will look at how to easily generate automatic sentences based on a spreadsheet. You are welcome to bring your own spreadsheet with data!
Depending on time and enthousiasm, we will also explore the automatic sending of the generated sentences via text message.

You are very welcome!
No programming experience is necessary; being interested is enough. Please bring a laptop and an Android phone if you have one.

Weft: Patient, patience

mia — 2025-04-10T10:38:20Z

In the context of the thematic year A cane, sticky notes, another body we looked at various perspectives on time, and invited Al Versieux to work on a weft*. This article took a snapshot of what time perspectives can look like in the context of chronic and terminal illness.

*A weft is an article that Constant publishes specific to a thematic central to the current works in constant, transversal to several activities.

This article is an edit of a conversation, held on the 24th of June 2024. It was recorded with automatic closed captions in the open source video conference software BigBlueButton (BBB), and later edited into a somewhat coherent piece of text. Parts of the text were also written as audio transcription, because the English became too blurry for BBB closed captions to follow, so sometimes you might see time stamps. It is split into 7 parts, and can be read as a whole, as a remix or the bold text only.

You can read the weft "Patient, patience" here.

View online : https://constantvzw.org/wefts/time....

Open Call Worksession: Otherworldly Communications

mia — 2025-03-25T14:57:51Z

IN SHORT:
Otherwordly communications will look at interspecies coexistence and their different arrangements of life. By life in this context we mean biological, geological, digital, immaterial, time/space or beyond.

With a wish to find other ways of relating and engaging with technology than through damage, we look closer at the less obvious communication streams and currents happening around us.

We will use the harbour of antwerp as a starting point with special attention given to the life organized in and around water. In this friction zone we want to highlight the various extraction flows and interrelations involved.

We invite participants to come to take part in a week of listening, tuning into and making vibrations.

—
INDEX OF OPEN CALL
—
✦ WORKSESSION & CONSTANT
⫸ PRACTICAL INFO
Ⓐ ACCESSIBILITY
◉ HOW TO REACT TO THIS CALL
▲ COLLABORATION GUIDELINES
◪ WHO IS ORGANISING

—
✦ WORKSESSIONS & CONSTANT
Constant is an artistic organisation based in Brussels. Our work is oriented on research. We use experimental formats to critically engage with technology.

A 'worksession' organised by Constant is a form of collective artistic residency of about 25 people. We bring together people with different backgrounds to do open-ended research. We invite people who want to rethink and experiment with concepts, phenomena, tools and infrastructures related to digital culture and life. Together we tinker, try things with electronics, we read together, study and exchange. We don't believe in expertise, but we value experience. We aim to mix the digital and non digital. We do like weird stuff.

We warmly invite you to bring something to share, something banal, extra-ordinary, something frustrating or intriguing, something appealing that could trigger the imagination or curiosity.

No pressure is placed on the creation of a finished product, but there is space to think together about ideas and prototypes for future development. An informal sharing moment open to the public takes place at the end of the week.

Otherwordly Communications is part of a 5-year research programme (2023-2027) Constant develops around the theme we call SPLINT, "Speculative, Libre, Intersectional Technologies". With the intention to answer the question: What could/should libre, intersectional technologies be or do? SPLINT explores the potential of technology for artistic practice and vice versa, at the intersection of intersectional feminism and open source software.

—
⫸ PRACTICAL INFO
Where: Borrewater, Borrewaterstraat 1, 2170 Merksem
(workspace provided by Morpho)

When:
Worksession: Monday 09/06 - Saturday 14/06
(arrival Sunday 08/06 is possible)

Conditions:
Travel costs, accommodation and lunch is covered by Constant.

—
Ⓐ ACCESSIBILITY

Activities will take place on the ground floor of the building.
There is a large toilet available, but not fully accessible according to standard.
You can reach the location by public transport which are not always aceesible.
Guide and assistant dogs are welcome
We provide masks, hand-gel and will air out the spaces regularly. We trust people to inform us and stay at home if they have contagious viral infections.
We will have a rhythm of more intense input in the beginning of the week with working moments in the second half of the week.
Main language used will be English, but we are able to provide informal, whispered translation from other languages.

Please don't hesitate to communicate your accessibility needs to us, and feel free to go in detail (for example: audio describers, sign language interpretation, childcare ... ) and we will let you know exactly what we can accommodate before you commit to participating in the worksession. We will also try to adapt the programme to the participants needs.

—
◉ HOW TO REACT TO THIS CALL

Send an email to: info@constantvzw.org by 21/04/2025

Your email contains:

A short proposal and/or reason you want to come to this worksession (maximum 1 A4)
Something about yourself, interests, life experience, CV, ... ?
What your access needs are.
Feel free to drift of from the above if you think something else makes more sense.

Confirmations of this round will be sent out on 05/05/2025

—
▲ COLLABORATION GUIDELINES
Constant works with a set of collaboration guidelines for public and non-public activities. These guidelines will be used and discussed in different environments, situations and constellations. We will then take the feedback and update them for the next worksession.

https://constantvzw.org/wefts/orientationspourcollaboration.en.html

—
◪ WHO IS ORGANISING
This session is initiated by Constant and organised in collaboration with Morpho.

https://morphoantwerp.be/

Pains Perdus - Verloren Broodjes on Mastodon

mia — 2023-11-28T17:12:25Z

With the central position that commercial social media is gaining, Constant wanted to do a push to support federated social media and has re-activated its Mastodon account. The account is hosted on the Lurk server with the handle @constant.

As we are an organisation that engages a lot with editions, versioning and threads from our archives we will also do a monthly post here which we have called Pains Perdus – Verloren Broodjes, where we share a selected fragment from the Constant past. Additionally to this, the account is of course also a way to share some live updates, engage with our network and do some more informal posting.

View online : https://post.lurk.org/@constant

S P L I N T game night at Au Jus

mia — 2023-02-24T13:00:13Z

In the framework of the symposium by Cybioses - Life in the Future Imperfect*, which run from 2nd-5th of March and delved into the thematic of slow futures, Constant organised a SPLINT game night at Au Jus on Friday the 3rd of March. It was open to everyone who wanted to play some speculative rounds about what a slow SPLINT future might look like.

The SPLINT card game was recently developed by Constant as a tool to speculate and find language for what SPLINT - Speculative, Libre, Intersectional Technologies might look like. On this occasion we combined this tool with the premise that Cybioses was looking into this spring: what if we imagine a future that is not accelerating, but rather slowing down? Bringing the potential of such slow futures to the foreground undermines the premise that speed is characteristic of technological change and that constant social pressure underpins technological disruption, economic growth, and an ability to be detached from its impact on material worlds of great complexity.

*Cybioses – Life in the Future Imperfect is a study group which is part of the Nordic Summer University, a migratory non-hierarchical group of international researchers.

SPLINT Print&Play-Party

mia — 2023-01-12T16:05:37Z

For the next five years of its program, Constant is asking:
What could/should Speculative, Libre and Intersectional Technologies (SPLINT) do?

To start finding the language and open up our thinking around these questions a deck of cards, the SPLINT cards, were created by Constant and allies. This first version of the card game was tried out with different groups with varying goals, future fears/hopes, urgencies and temporalities in public and private settings.

On the 15th of December 2022 we hosted a SPLINT Print&Play-Party where we printed decks for everyone, discussed the game and enjoyed Christmas drinks.

SPLINT is a thinking/imagining/dreaming/oracle game, that is set to explore the potential of technology for artistic practice and vice versa, at the crosspoint between intersectional feminism and open source software. The goal is to investigate the discriminations and structural problems inherent in technology, while nurturing the imaginative capacity of techno-realities of an open, experimental and equitable digital art field.

This game was inspired by The Oracle for Transfeminist Technologies, which incited Constant to make-up its own version of the game.

Open call for the symposium : Cybioses – life in the future imperfect

mia — 2023-01-10T14:43:28Z

Between 2 and 5 March 2023 Constant will collaborate with JV 24 and SpecXcraft on a winter symposium about "slow futures" called Cybioses – life in the future imperfect.

The full open call can be read here: https://www.nsuweb.org/study-circles/circle-2-cybioses-life-in-the-future-imperfect/

An excerpt:

We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in our Cybioses study circle which is part of the Nordic Summer University, a migratory non-hierarchical group of international researchers.

The winter symposium on "slow futures" will be the first session of a three year symposium series. In this iteration Cybioses want to look into the impact of "slow futures" figurations in science, technology, media and art. Bringing the potential of such "slow futures" to the foreground undermines the premise that speed is characteristic of technological change and that constant social pressure underpins technological disruption, economic growth, and an ability to be detached from its impact on material worlds of great complexity. Therefore, Cybioses welcome both critiques of such "linearity" and affirmation of the value of "slow futures", their imagination and practice. We hope this topic will continue, deepen and re-new our collaborations with artists, hackers, designers, technologists, theorists and more. We are open to various formats of presentation, creative contributions and experimental forms of sharing knowledge.

Deadline for abstracts: Friday the 23th of January, 2023

View online : https://www.nsuweb.org/study-circle...

SpecXcraft

mia — 2022-10-26T12:22:49Z

Speculative crafting for un/common futures, or Specxcraft for short, is a co-creative, artistic research project between 4 Brussels-based organisations: Urban Species, Natagora, Centre Vidéo Bruxelles and Constant. Using concepts from SF (sci-fi and speculative fabulation) and methods of crafting and prototyping the project tries to find answers to the following research question: Can fostering a particular form of imagination - speculative, embodied, materialised, responsible and multi-situated - lead to less resignation and more resilience facing Brussels' future and its multiple crises?

More specifically, can the co-creative training and crafting of a 'speculative imagination' reconfigure aspirations, fears and values that are opposed - or on the contrary allied - in Brussels debates today?

Specxcraft starts from the hypothesis that the capacity of imagining futures and projecting oneself into the consequences of present situations and choices is a citizen's pivotal skill in the current context, continuously confronted with the threat of crises; and that the pluralisation of imaginaries of futures, working with underrepresented publics, constitutes a cornerstone of the democratic character of Brussels public action.

The project is funded by the Innoviris Co-create grant and will run from September 2022 to February 2024.