The Residency

Last year at Open Studios, PICAR (an artist-run space in Schaarbeek) organised a BINGO performance called Idle Hours. The artists gathered some ‘support’ from many organisations working in the Brussels performance artfield. After drinking some amazing cocktails, accompanied by some cute performances, performance artist Simon Van Schuylenbergh won the biggest prize of the evening. He didn’t win a coffee with Karlien Vanhoonacker by KWP, nor a walk through the building with Matthieu Goeury from Les Halles de Schaarbeek. His prize was a collection of outdated a.pass catalogues (R.I.P.), "a residency at workspacebrussels in the Kaaistudios", a production budget of 750 euro and a possibility to show a work-in-progress at Open Studios 2026. The 750 euro was spent right away, but what to do with the 2 week residency and a big hangover from all those cocktails.

As an answer on PICAR’S BINGO-evening, which gathered and critiqued the biggest issue in the development of performance arts in Brussels, where most artists don’t win the price and keep on developing work-in-progresses, drink coffees, beg for coproduction, in order to be seen and stay on the radar, Simon Van Schuylenbergh invites performance artists Charlotte Nagel & Micha Goldberg for a one-day only performance called The Residency.

They will in the spirit of the BINGO embody this prize with joy and critical reflection.

The Residency consists of 3 short performances / portraits on the production of development and discourse-based art. The set-up is a fictional studio visit, in between other works-in-progresses. Van Schuylenbergh offers you with irony and direct performativity some contradictions around absorption, artivism and institutionalised institutional critique.

Let’s gather around a fake work-in-progress, in a D.I.Y.-style, in between real studio-visits.

Supported by kunstenpunt, cultuurloket, workspacebrussels, Kunstenwerkplaats, detheatermaker, hiros, Caravan, batard, WPzimmer on an imaginary level.

THANKS Picar for organising the game and thanks workspacebrussels for doing the “aftercare” in regulating the prize. “The residency” was great!

• Simon Van Schuylenbergh (1994) is a Belgian performance artist living and working in Brussels (Belgium). He graduated in 2017 from the Master’s Drama at KASK in Ghent. Starting in 2015 he made several solo-performances with real size zebras. Simon's main artistic interest is creating community, around artistic practices and proposing different modes of production as an antidote for the neoliberal ideology that governs society and the production of art. From 2018 - 2022 Simon lived, runned and worked in Volksroom Brussels together with performers Nathan Ooms, Micha Goldberg, Louis Van Haverbeke, Rosie Sommers and Sophia Rodriguez, among others. In 2019 he founded the performance platform ‘ne mosquito pas’ in which a community of Brussels artists reflect together on their personal notion of failure and success. In the summer of 2025 he started running a cabaret called ANAL Pompidou in Sablon above the restaurant of his fiancé. The cabaret does several ‘actes de présence’ in institutions, but tries to operate without any institutional support. The cabaret is open 3 times a week and is always sold out. He performs in a revue & Give up Old Ghosts! by Benjamin Abel Meirhaeghe, Friction by Sophia Rodriguez and GERMAN STAATSTHEATER by Rosie Sommers & Micha Goldberg.