Imagine the city not being its buildings, but its inhabitants.
After all: stone does not breathe. Asphalt does nothing but lie there. A tram does not move by itself.
A city made of inhabitants is a soft city. A bodily city. A city of living and dying. A person lingers in the park, a person brings a flower to a neighbor, a person rushes to daycare, a person pitches an idea, a person studies their smudged face in the mirror of a nightclub bathroom.
If you consider the city to be its inhabitants, it could suddenly change shape: everyone raises their hands in succession, like a wave in a football stadium, and the city ripples. Everyone shouts and it trembles.
With A Mass on the Move, Benjamin Vandewalle and Johannes Bellinkx explore the movemental possibilities of the city, the soft city. How can it move within the stone? What is the potential of a mass—a non-intimidating, but empathetic mass? To this end, they bring people together during residencies in Utrecht, Graz, Hasselt, Brussels, Heerlen, and Copenhagen. You can join from 1 to 4 August at the La Strada festival in Graz, on 6 August at Park Poetik in Brussels, from 7 to 9 August in Heerlen during the Cultura Nova festival, and—now that you’ve got your calendar out—from 3 to 5 September in Brussels again, and from 14 to 20 September at the Metropolis festival in Copenhagen. Join in and move the city!