Research 2025

After finishing an intense period of creation for the pieces STILL / ALIVE and STILL RADIANT ALIVE, Mooni Van Tichel is using this residency at workspacebrussels as a way to return to her research interests, reorient herself, consider what she finds relevant to put on stage at this current moment. The question of the function of art within the context we’re living in, with multiple genocides happening simultaneously, is central.

In her studio, Van Tichel has literature by, among others, Sianne Ngai, Joy James, Mohammed El-Kurd, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Virginie Despentes, ismatu gwendolyn, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

With these, she is exploring topics such as: fear as a control mechanism; heightened military budgets and general militarisation; borders of countries/territories/bodies; sweat as that which trespasses the border of the body, as an indicator of work, as that which regulates the system; evaporation; pressure; friction; the fictions of capitalism/finance/the abstract mechanisms of the market; and the very real violence that results from them.