Sous les Pavés, la Plage
Together with Lisa Matthys, I currently work on Sous les Pavés, la Plage, a sound-based exploration of children’s free play in Brussels, unfolding how – across time – they created their own worlds within the city’s public spaces. Amid terrain vagues, urban transformations, and cultural shifts, free play often exists at the city’s margins, an ephemeral, subversive force that resists the logic of productivity and profit, giving children room to dream and imagine otherwise. By conducting interviews and searching archives, we trace stories from three moments in the past century: the Marolles in the 1950s, Rasquinet Park in the 1970s, and the Tour & Taxis area in the 2010s.
More news soon!
Thanks to VGC Erfgoed for funding this project.
Some visual documentation of the process :
The Marolles in 1950s, where Jean Harlez filmed his beautiful ‘Le Chantier des Gosses’
(Photo: Collection Jean Harlez).
Tour & Taxis, in 2009 when it was still a wasteland: during the adventure playground organized by JES. (Photo: Collection JES)
In the 1970s, Rasquinet Park in Schaerbeek was still a vacant lot that has been transformed into a green public park through the activist history of the 'Club des Rues' and local residents (Photo: Collection Asbl. Rasquinet).
A photo from our interview with Eric De Kuyper, writer and filmmaker, who captures play and childhood so vividly in his books. (Photo: Lisa Matthys)