The performance Trans-architect reflects on the infrastructures of oppression instilled by capitalism and colonialism in cities like Brussels and Kinshasa. Brussels’ city map is a grid of steel and concrete buildings and avenues. Architecture teaches bodies who can access city spaces and how. It creates zoning: rigid social architectures of privilege or servitude based on gender, race and culture.

Colonial and supremacist monuments form the epicentres of this grid, celebrating oppression. Trans-architect transforms these monuments into trans spaces where identities, histories and human conditions are negotiated. Inspiration comes from protest groups (Blm, climate change, lGBt, ...), the Congolese Milandu, the sacred clown tradition, and other practices of critique where the human body is the main site of memory. Performing bodies become moving monuments using stone monuments as a stage for a transnational, -cultural and -gender practice of critique. Sacred clowns use burlesque to challenge zoning. 

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Performance 30-45min

Concept, direction, text and performance: Roland Gunst / John K Cobra
Dramaturgy: Esther Severi

With the support of Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre & Kunstenfestivaldesarts