Jesse van Winden

Becue’s bakery shop is still there! High time to use it again. On the weekend of 30 & 31 May, we’ll do the first in a series of pop-up shops. It will be in the context of Offestival. We’ll sell all kinds of things: from art, books, music, clothing, prints and design to bread, cakes, your home-made honey, artist-made ceramics, artisanal soap, and for sure still more. Do you want to participate? Welcome!!! Send me something, at least photos and prices. Write in EN, FR or NL as you prefer. Contact: [email protected] or IG: @jessevanwinden . I’ll answer as soon as I can to let you know if it fits. The business side of things: -Becue takes 20% of each item sold (same percentage as the entrance money during events). -You take care of bringing your work(s) before Saturday 30 May, and picking up on Monday 1 June what is not sold (or later, we can talk about it). -I take care of the shop, administration, and communication. -I appreciate a couple of people helping out in the shop for a couple of hours! Opening hours TBA. Slide for some impressions of the shop.

Brussels Artist-run Breakfast For Insatiable Researchers: Thursday morning 7 May 9:30-12:30h @a.pass_artistic_research invited the BARN Core Team to organise a conversation around breakfast. We’re happy to welcome you to join! Besides food and fun, we foresee 2 focal points for thought and talk:  What does ‘artist-run’ mean to us?  
How we can possibly define it? What are its logics, its defining traits, how is it different from instutional contexts? What kind of limiting is relevant? For instance, who and which kind of initiatives can make a profile on the website and who cannot? Where can a productive line be drawn between artist-run and institutional, that makes sense for the Brussels Artist-Run Network and its ecosystems? What kind of events can be uploaded to the shared calendar?  Artist-run artistic research
What artistic research is done by and within artist-run initiatives in Brussels? What ecosystems of research exist and what roles do artist-run initiatives play there? This is also an occassion to reflect on the situation that a.pass has invited 5 different artist-run initiatives to host breakfast conversations at the same time, who are likely having conversations that would be quite relevant for each of them. Let’s come together at another moment?  Practical
Participation is free upon registration, so we can foresee enough food, juice, tea and coffee. a.pass’ registration forms are closed but we accept more participants. Please send us a message to [email protected] on Wednesday 6 May at noon, latest. Food
Let’s have breakfast together! Gluten free and vegan people won’t be disappointed. Bringing some food to the table adds to the fun....Long live the lumbung!  Location
a.pass’ space at Bodeek, Rue de Birminghamstraat 30, 1080 Molenbeek Image
Artwork by Chloë Janssens/Boris the Cat, borrowed from a.pass event page

On Wednesday 22, from 19:00h at Au Jus: Brussels Artist-Run Open Mike! We notice that there is a lack of opportunities and physical infrastructure for the artist-run scene to take the space and time to communicate about their projects, challenges, news, and more. We want to give the floor to the artist-run scene so that they can present themselves, introduce a project, ask for feedback on an idea, and so on. We will invite several people in advance to present, especially when there is a specific occasion. For example, a space that has just moved or reopened, a new collective project, or a cultural policy coordinator presenting a cultural policy plan in relation to the artist scene. Afterwards or in between, everyone is free to take the floor! This is a perfect moment to get to know each other; we will create opportunities and encouragement for one-on-one conversations. Come chat!

Saturday 11 April 20-04h: Funraiser Party >>> Help out the Becue after theft and damage! We need 2.000€. And a lot of love! 🥰 A danceable fundraising night To support the soundsystem of Becue that needs maintenance & to support us after an unfortunate theft. 🧡 Funraiser Party this Saturday is going to be amazing! 🥰🔥 Some of our friends are the coolest DJs in town: DJ Rozi, La Comète, Nizou, DJ Spare Rib and Samsung Kimchi ⚡️⚡️ As always we’ll serve very nice drinks. 🍸 🍷 Come early and stay late = the best of both and more worlds 💜 Image kindly provided by Ece Eren @e.c.e.e.r.e.n

Becue’s programme for Ateliers d’artistes 2026: always partly open for anything We take part in the Parcours d’artistes (St Gilles): the weekends of 10, 11, 12 and 18 and 19 April. A range of activities that is somehow a reflection of Becue’s wide scope, bringing together space, time, people and energies for things that we love to happen in our city.  See full programme & details & uncropped images via link in bio. Poster: Gabriel Richard @geszor Friday 10/4: a little bar evening and the opening of two exhibitions. From 18h Saturday 11/4: Protest Sign workshop with the Librarians and a funraiser party 12-16h Protest Sign Library will be activated. Pass by to make a protest sign to add to the library, to have a look into our archive, to cut and paste fridge poetry manifesto or to make and eat protest-pancakes! from 20h - 04h  A danceable fundraising night To support the soundsystem of Becue that needs maintenance & to support us after an unfortunate theft.  The best local artist and DJ’s let our hips move: DJ Rozi, La Comète, Nizou, DJ Spare Rib and Samsung Kimchi Come early and stay late = the best of both and more worlds  Sunday 12/4: No Bread Dreams, Monsters workshop for kids, The Practice & Politics of Yoga from 12h: No Bread Dreams Breakfast club   14h-17h Stickers and t-shirts workshop with Fritz & his Monkey for everyone from 4 years old! 16h The practice & politics of yoga, initiated by Roos 16h - 17h yoga & meditation session 17h30 - 19h conversation Saturday 18/4: The Second Bakery Attack 14h - 20h Sunday 19/4: Monsters workshop for kids, 3 concerts ambient acoustic textures 14h-17h  Stickers and t-shirts workshop with Fritz & his Monkey for everyone from 4 years old! See description (12 April) above   18h at Ferny Berny (Rue Fernand Bernier 25) 2 concerts organised by our neighbours of Ferny Berny 20:30h at Becue’s top floor 3 experimental ambient concerts proposed by Vince Sonrisa:  Veiil (Vince Sonrisa (morin khuur, Mongolian cello), Gui Bfx (gongs), Yann Lecollaire (clarinets)) Gildas Bouchaud (solo feedbacks, quadrophonic textures) Improductions (trialogue, between architecture and music)

Zig Zag is delighted to host the BXL launch of this instant classic published by @roma.publications - the fruit of a confluence of new and old friendships, of seemingly vastly different yet ultimately kindred disciplines and affinities… 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓐𝓻𝓽 𝓸𝓯 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓗𝓪𝓲𝓻𝔂 𝓜𝓸𝓷𝓴𝓮𝔂 毛猴的艺术 𝚁𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝙱𝚎𝚒𝚓𝚒𝚗𝚐’𝚜 𝚖á𝚘𝚑ó𝚞 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚞𝚐𝚑 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚀𝚒ū 𝚈í𝚜𝚑ē𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚝𝚘𝚐𝚛𝚊𝚙𝚑𝚢 𝚘𝚏 𝚂𝚒𝚖𝚘𝚗 𝚆𝚊𝚕𝚍-𝙻𝚊𝚜𝚘𝚠𝚜𝚔𝚒 The Art of the Hairy Monkey unveils the world of máohóu, an obscure and satirical folk art from Beijing with a history spanning two centuries. Tiny, mischievous figures are crafted from materials used in traditional Chinese medicine — cicada shells and magnolia buds — and placed in rich dioramas that mirror society with wit, irony and gentle provocation. Long practised yet rarely documented, the tradition of the “Hairy Monkey” has recently been recognised as Intangible Cultural Heritage in China. This is the first dedicated publication on the subject outside its country of origin. The book sits at the crossroads of social satire, folk art, miniature sculpture and art photography, and will captivate readers drawn to Chinese culture, subversive humour and overlooked artistic traditions. The evening will include a talk of Augustina Cai @augustina.cai (on zoom) and Simon Wald-Lasowski @simonwaldlasowski , who forged a deep friendship and working relationship with Master Qiū, who will send a special video message recorded for this occasion. This presentation will be followed with a short excursion into the necessity of political satire in these challenging times at the hands of rabble-rouser Jesse van Winden @jessevanwinden reading Paul Beatty), with some Zig Zag recommendations for satirical reading lists to boot. Afterwards, there will be opportunity to make your own hairy monkey and ample time to exchange with fresh drinks and spicy insect jazz. ~ Doors open at 19:30, programme begins at 20:00 ~ Entry is free — no RSVP required ~ Copies of the book will be on sale

Fast Degrees of Freedom A group exhibition at Becue, 10 April – 17 May 2026 Opening Friday 10/04, 18h during Parcours d’artistes St Gilles 🔺Alessandra Craba @bellissimi_nightmares 🔺Erro Rasker (from 18 April) @galeria_erro 🔺Fritz & His Monkey @fritzandhismonkey 🔺Gabriel Richard @geszor 🔺Luis Campos @33luis_campos 🔻Invited by Jesse van Winden @jessevanwinden , in collaboration with Fritz Albas @fritzandhismonkey The freedom to be ourselves in our deviations, our slowness, our limitations, our lust for life  The first group exhibition in the ‘triangular prism’ staircase of the Becue takes five artists up to ricochet and cascade. Their works are precise and all over the place.  Who are the agents of our freedom: we, or the days of acceleration we live in that bleach our rhythm? What obstructs our freedom, the repressive structures that surround us, or we who can´t escape? When acceleration is capitalist, how can we be fast? How can we be slow? In his short story ‘The Second Bakery Attack’, Haruki Murakami offers a critique of free will, contrasting it with an inherent self-affirming conviction that allows the protagonist to act as if he had neither doubts nor ethics. The opening lines: I´m still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack. But then, it might not have been a question of right and wrong. Which is to say that wrong choices can produce right results, and vice versa. I myself have adopted the position that, in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not. This fast story full of joy and desperation is the inspiration and script that is deconstructed and refueled with artistic interventions for ‘The Second Bakery Attack’, a programme organised and curated by Marie De Broeck @mariedebroeck and Friedrich Trost @trostloop , in collaboration with Erro Rasker @galeria_erro and Becue, on Saturday 18 April 14-20h. This first one of the activations of ‘Fast Degrees of Freedom’ (more to be confirmed) marks the opening of a second chapter to the exhibition, with Erro Rasker adding his intervention.

Peer View: Art & Research Talks# 2 On Social Practice. With Anna Rispoli and Katinka de Jonge Wednesday 08/04, 17:00 at Becue Peer View is a series of evenings where artists are invited to share their ways of working and to delve deeper into the research behind a finished work of art. For this second session, we invite two social practitioners: Anna Rispoli and Katinka de Jonge What kinds of dialogues with the world do artists create during the development of new work? What relationships do they have with their sources of inspiration? Which texts are read, which (personal) archives consulted, which conversations held, which field trips undertaken? And how is thinking and working shaped through this material? 
In other words: how about the work behind the work?  Anna Rispoli works on the boundary between artistic creation and civic space, developing prototypes for sharing material resources, intelligence and affect. Since twenty years her transdisciplinary projects, performances, urban installations have been created in Europe, the United States, the Middle East and Asia. As an artistic researcher, Katinka de Jonge questions the role of collectivity, polyphony and authority within different professional and nonprofessional contexts, and combines this theoretical approach with her artistic practice. Curated and organised by Dorine van Meel and Jesse van Winden Location: Becue top floor (no elevator)
Chaussee de Forest 138, 1060  Entrance: free donation 
Please bring cash for the bar and food Doors open, food and bar: 17h
Start: 18h
End of presentations: 20:30h with possibility to stay informally Many thanks to 1060CultureCultuur and the bicommunautary teams for culture in St Gillis/St Gilles for the support!

Reading Room #48: Agency & Translation Thursday 26 March, 18-20:30h Jubilee’s 2025-26 cycle of Reading Rooms focuses on the book collection of artist Kobe Matthys (1970–2023). This tenth reading session is the first where the guest is invited by Agency: Amit Leblang. She selected fragments from Scandals of translation: towards an ethics of difference by Lawrence Venuti (1998). Leblang cites the book’s publisher: “Translation is stigmatized as a form of writing, discouraged by copyright law, deprecated by the academy, exploited by publishers and corporations, governments and religious organizations. Lawrence Venuti exposes what he refers to as the ‘scandals of translation’ by looking at the relationship between translation and those bodies – corporations, governments, religious organizations, publishers – who need the work of the translator yet marginalize it when it threatens their cultural values.” (Routledge, 2022) I chose to read Venuti’s Scandals because of its ethics-of-difference framework, which, at the time of its publication (1998) and now, remains a challenge to our world. Through translation, Venuti shows how the fiction of the singular author erases the labour of those who carry a work across languages and cultures. His critique of “domestication”, the demand to smooth over the cultural foreignness so that a translation reads as if it were never translated at all, is something I keep confronting in my own life and work. Venuti’s critique of translation’s invisibility connects to questions of cross-cultural knowledge production, language, and power, where the politics of translation are both literal and territorial. Location:
Agency’s Praticauthèque
Rue Theodore Verhaegenstraat 18
1060 Brussels Each reading room takes place from 18-21h. Bites are provided The Praticauthèque is located on the top floor of the building. There is an elevator. As there is no intercom, there is someone at the door – until 18h. Please be present before that time.

Peer View: Art & Research Talks# 1 On Music. With Roman Hiele and Ben Bertrand Wednesday 25/03, 17:00 at Becue Peer View is a series of evenings where artists are invited to share their ways of working and to delve deeper into the research behind a finished work of art. For this first session, we invite two musicians: Ben Bertrand and Roman Hiele. We focus on the creative process that often remains out of sight once a work is finished. We can think of questions such as: what kinds of dialogues with the world do artists create during the development of new work? What relationships do they have with their sources of inspiration? Which texts are read, which (personal) archives consulted, which conversations held, which field trips undertaken? And how is thinking and working shaped through this material? 
In other words: how about the work behind the work?  Rather than a comparison or a dialogue between the two artistic practices, each Peer View unfolds two different approaches in order to show a scope of ways of working. The audience is warmly invited to ask questions during a conversation afterwards. Ben Bertrand uses the bass clarinet and a plethora of machines to create hypnotic pools of sound that dilate time and space. Bertrand has been working up his own interpretation of the bass clarinet as an instrument of the avant-garde. Touching upon ambient and cosmic as well as earthy sceneries, his is a gentle musical paradox come to life. Roman Hiele is a musician and composer trained in improvised music. His electric live shows built on improvisatory approaches, translated into a sonic world, of eclectic harmonic content and rudimentary rhythm.  Curated and organised by Dorine van Meel and Jesse van Winden Location: Becue top floor (no elevator)
Chaussee de Forest 138, 1060 Brussels St Gillis Entrance: free donation 
Please bring cash for the bar and food Doors open, food and bar: 17h
Start: 18h
End of presentations: 20:30h followed by DJ sets by both artists Many thanks to 1060CultureCultuur and the bicommunautary teams for culture in St Gillis/St Gilles for the support!

Words Take No Prisoners, a storytelling night at Becue Friday 06/03, 19h With:  
Boris The Cat & kivanc 
Ines Marita Schärer
Héléne Meyer & Stephanie Quirola
Jesse “anthology” Van Winden Words Take No Prisoners is a series of open, exploratory encounters where language is incarnated as a material to work with, stretch, and transform. Spoken word may stand on its own, but will also be interwoven with other artistic forms such as music, film, two-or three dimensional images, or practices yet to be discovered. Rather than fixed formats, each evening invites experimentation, allowing different rhythms, voices and collaborations to emerge. What we do is tell stories. They can be non-linear, nonsensical, non-fiction, notes, nocturnal, noisy, novel fragments, not funny, not your cup of tea, noble, nourishing, no no limit, naughty, no holds barred, they can be everything. They can even rhyme. Because telling stories means reinventing what we know, they can rewire our ways. Stories can be powerful if the teller wants to be. But they can also, just, tell a story.  As with everything at the Becue, this project grows out of curiosity and being together. It is an invitation to poets, writers, performers, musicians, audiences and other artists to gather, listen, and take part in shaping what these evenings can become together. Date & time: 6 March, doors 19h Location: Becue top floor (no elevator)
Chaussee de Forest 138, 1060 Please bring cash for artists and bar

Poster by Boris the Cat

18 April @metarage.bxl MoAW presents SOPRATERRA + TIO MADRONA + ISLAMABAD DISCIPLINE Address – Metarage, Rue du Metal 32, 1060 Brussels Doors – 7 30pm Tickets – €11 + booking fees pre-sales; €14 OTD Ticket 🖇️ in bio 50% of all surplus will go towards the maintenance of @becuebxl , A fantastic space in St Gilles  Sopraterra - Dark ambient / Drone / Medieval Sopraterra, a music duo formed by Magda Drozd and Nicola Genovese in 2023, reimagines the traditional timbres of the saxophone and violin, crafting hauntingly eerie electronic dark post-medieval soundscapes. Brooding, alluring compositions of ambient, drone, electro-acoustic experimentation, baroque / medieval tonalities + shades of post-rock, shoegaze & psychedelic music. An era-spanning odyssey reimagining the timbres of the saxophone & violin for music both sublimely ancient & utterly modern.  Tio Madrona - Flamenco / Industrial / Art-Rock Tio Madrona's music is created from improvisations and field recordings, to which he adds lyrical vocals expressed in a language that navigates between Spanish and intuitively invented words. It features Arab-Andalusian influences and a certain ferveur inherited from both punk rock and flamenco. Islamabad Discipline - Raga / Field recordings / Post-Rock Islamabad Discipline is the project of Pakistani-French musician and educator Ambroise Yon, a kaleidoscopic exploration of his cultural heritage filtered through a collage of field recordings, guitar mantras, and experiments in traditional forms influenced through his studies with the late Ustad Mohammad Ajmal Khan.  His album Complex Zero Point Faizabad is simultaneously focused and startlingly eclectic.  If there is any comparison to be made, it is to the long night of the dreamer - the arcane procession of faces, sounds, impressions, and memories one cannot quite place or verify.  Artwork by the incredible Andrea De Franco @metarage.bxl @sopraterra_sound @tiomadrona @radiokhiyaban @scarlatsabina @jessevanwinden @suonidisorganizzati #darkambient #drone #industrial #raga #flamenco