Céline Gillain — ANTENA. Listening to the walls
19 Feb 2023 - 18 Feb 2024
How can we consciously take care of our attention in an increasingly loud and oversaturated world? Such was the question raised during ANTENA, a year-long programme dedicated to listening. Conceived by artist and musician Céline Gillain, the 2023 cycle of Superhost offered a diverse sequence of performative, discursive, and listening sessions spanning the year. ANTENA brought together guest artists, DJ’s, musicians, and thinkers from Belgium and abroad in a collective endeavour.
+++ Céline Gillain was our SUPERHOST in 2023. +++
Nested on the top floor of Muhka and accessible free of charge to all, ANTENA servedas both a safer space for collective listening practices and an observation post critically aware of its surroundings. ANTENA invited us to listen—with our bodies—to the walls (be they physical or intangible) that delineate the spaces we inhabit as individuals and communities.
Compounding a variety of the themes, ideas, and experiences conceptualised by Céline Gillain in her work over the years in the margins of the music industry, art institutions, and education systems, ANTENA asks: How can we develop a more environmental attention—based on reciprocity and less on consumption, competition or profit—in order to care for the relations that sustain our individual and collective lives? How can we decolonise listening and expand critical sound practices?
ANTENA’s immersive environment offered optimal conditions for listening, it was equipped to receive and transmit live and recorded sounds.
LIVE PROGRAMME
During the exhibition, several live events took place, including listening lectures, performances, and workshops with artists such as Céline Gillain, Valentina Magaletti, Fanny Chiarello, Anouchka Oler Nussbaum, and Loma Doom. The activities explored themes such as listening, rhythm, female desire, and collective musical creation.
In a collective workshop led by Céline Gillain, participants collaborated on an experimental choir project. Drawing from feminist theory, storytelling and rituals, they explored—through voice, rhythm and homemade instruments—what it means to occupy space as a group. The workshop culminated in a public live performance.
ONGOING PROGRAMME
A cycle of hybrid soundtracks conceived by Céline Gillain was available for listening in the immersive environment of the Superhost space on the sixth floor of Muhka.
Chapter 1: Listening to the walls
Chapter 2 2: Female Desire
Chapter 3: Rhythm
Chapter 4: Futurabilities
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Céline Gillain is a musician, performance and video artist based in Brussels working across the fields of experimental music, electronic music, and visual and performing arts.
The representation of her voice and body through diverse artistic scenes as well as her acute analysis of communication and relationships have forged a posture that is driven by movements of liberation and empowerment. The artist has performed extensively in Europe during the last ten years in venues ranging from music festivals (such as Non Frequenze Festival, Torino; Listen Festival, Brussels, and Horst Festival, Vilvoorde) to museums and art centres (such as Flagey, Brussels; Beursschouwburg, Brussels; MACBA, Barcelona and Lafayette Anticipations, Paris). In 2017, Gillain released her first single together with Lexi Disques titled What Happens If I Open My Mouth?, soon followed by her debut LP Bad Woman with Drama (2018). Mind is Mud, Gillain’s second LP (12-inch), was released with Cortizona in 2023.
Céline Gillain has presented her videos, sounds, and installations in both group and solo exhibition contexts. In 2021, Muhka invited her to conceive a new work on the occasion of the pandemic edition of Arts Birthday which resulted in the performative video, titled Resist. Her foundational years as an artist were marked by her membership of The After Lucy Experiment (2010-2015), a collective practice of female artists active at the crossroads of performance and visual arts. Inspired by listening methodologies applied in feminist group discussions, Gillain leads various workshops and is the co-founder of a class dedicated to sound creation and experimental music at La Cambre School of Visual Arts in Brussels.
Céline Gillain lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.
SUPERHOST
Superhost is a programme investing in a yearlong relationship between an artist or a collective practice, the museum and its participating communities, and supporting the production of artworks, performative or discursive creations. Every year, one artist or collective is invited to be Muhka’s Superhost. By embracing the ambiguous and interrelated dynamics of hospitality in which the host is always a guest and simultaneously the guest is always a host, Muhka affirms a longing for increased institutional transformation, permeability and exchange. The commission materialises freely in the museum’s top floor gallery spaces and as programmes of discursive and performative events. Within the larger scale of the institution, Superhost offers an intimate space for conversation with specific artistic positions, discourses, and scenes.
Muhka’s Superhost series offers a focused and shared terrain of investigation for and around a guest’s practice. Each edition is an opportunity to explore the core interests, language and expertise of our guest(s) whilst also contributing to the dissemination and further development of the work itself.
Muhkacollaborated with Hanne Lippard in 2021 and Falke Pisano in 2022.
Superhost is jointly curated by Anne-Claire Schmitz and Joanna Zielińska.
