Inspired by a meteoroid sighting in the desert Steur started investigating the impact of an impact. An apple that suddenly falls out of a tree and lands at your feet, a pandemic, the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs; there are events that are unforeseeable. With the (literal) release of an enormous weight, attention is focused on this inevitable, unexpected moment, which leaves us with an impression. The question is which one. Both the preparation of the impact, the falling of the stone, and the stone that remains permanently as an art piece, are part of the work. IMPACT is the (free) opening performance of OORtreders Festival 2020.

FAB (Festival international des arts de Bordeaux) presents FREEZE. As a child, Nick Steur used to play balancing rocks on top of each other. At an important point in his artistic career, he developed this skill and set out to create stone sculptures. No glue, cement or any other trick is used. Everything is based on concentration: finding the balance between your own force of will, and that of the stone.

IN SITU ACT Days organized by the IN SITU network, together with CIFAS Brussels present FREEZE.

With laborious precision, he plays with gravity and orchestrates an intimate relationship between natural forces, infusing the flow of the city with poetry through his slow gestures. His meticulous attention for raw materials invites the audience to slow down and join him in a world of stone and metal.

During this FMF edition our moon reaches a distance to the earths surface of almost 364.000 km. It will be so close to us that we call it a ‘super moon’. She looks much bigger than normal, although her size doesn’t change. Are the things or people closer to us also more important? The gravitational pull of the earth and its moon, the mass and importance of both heavenly bodies make me wonder… When do we collide? During this evening we take a closer look (at the surface) with installations and performances.

“What happens when we disrupt or accelerate a natural process (such as the splitting of stone due to erosion)? And if I split a stone, are there then two new stones or two halves? When are they, and we, attached?” Visual artist Matea Bakula and artist/performer Nick Steur asked the question: what if we take the materials chemical polyurethane and raw stone – materials we regularly work with and are incredibly attached to – and seek to combine them? Can these materials adhere to each other, despite their enormous differences? We Do Matter consists of both a performance and an installation in which material and people seek connection.

During Art’s birthday 2020 Steur performed FREEZE in M-HKA Antwerp for several hours, balancing stone onto 24 steel tubes. The resulting installation was exhibited that same weekend. For photos see ‘works’ > ‘FREEZE’ > info button.

On behalf of Toma, Joachim, Nil and Tanar I’d like to invite you to be part of the upcoming edition of our Full Moon gathering. The sixth edition is all about circles. How we move in circles, how we think in circles, how we orbit around each other. We start by raising a glass to 2020 at 20h23, the exact moment when the moon reaches full phase.

This is the start of a new research for a project about matter that pushes and pulls. More than half of all stars are binary: they orbit each other due to their gravitational pull. It’s invisible to the naked eye. It seems that if we zoom in (or out) far enough, all matter twists and turns. No matter how hard we try, we are never standing still. So today we’ll take a walk together. We each bring a stone. We will let it orbit around another one, that of someone else. We’ll observe a kinetic installation and put our weight in.

“What happens when we disrupt or accelerate a natural process (such as the splitting of stone due to erosion)? And if I split a stone, are there then two new stones or two halves? When are they, and we, attached?”. Visual artist Matea Bakula and artist/performer Nick Steur asked the question: what if we take the materials chemical polyurethane and raw stone – materials we regularly work with and are incredibly attached to – and seek to combine them? Can these materials adhere to each other, despite their enormous differences? We Do Matter consists of both a performance and an installation in which material and people seek connection.