Chapter Freedom The Future

Chapter Freedom VUB.jpg

October 2021: The Future

In the autumn of 2021 The Unthinkable Experiment (the young people, partners and the transdisciplinary team) came together for the last time in Brussels at the VUB - Etterbeek campus. Together they took further steps for the next edition. The alumni of the first edition opened the doors and windows for the next group, and in doing so, helped to make The Unthinkable Experiment sustainable.

The closing session of this first edition of LaMouseion coincided with the installation of Ab Chao - LaMouseion, Vanmechelen's permanent, living work of art on the campus of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Etterbeek. The installation is located on the former student housing Willy Van Der Meeren, where new innovative scientific and socially committed projects take shape and is part of the Humanist Sculpture Park, the unique open-air museum with permanent and temporary art collections.

Ab Chao is a living and growing installation that connects LABIOMISTA in Genk, to Brussels. On the iconic Willy Van Der Meeren student dwellings the artist places two gigantic eggs and neon installations; "Ab Chao" and "Fertility always comes from outside". Vanmechelen: "I also inject fertility with chaos on campus. After all, that always comes from outside." The installation refers to LaMouseion's knowledge boxes at LABIOMISTA, where the AB OVO neons herald the beginning of the project. The inner courtyard is transformed into a central garden with a wide variety of herbs, (fruit) trees and plants. While this new Brussels garden stands for domestication, LABIOMISTA stands for the axis between domestication and wilderness. According to Vanmechelen, life and innovation can emerge from the dance between order and chaos. Vanmechelen: "The egg on top of a building signals a potential, unthinkable future; the other egg has already hatched, and must soon amaze the world with its inhabitant. But it balances; it can fall or not." 

Margot De Smaele captured the experience of Chapter Freedom in a beautiful closing letter