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Sous les Pavés, la Plage

Sous les Pavés, la Plage is a sound-based exploration of children’s free play in Brussels, how, across time, they’ve created their own worlds within the city’s public spaces. The project is created in collaboration with Annelies Vaneycken. 
Through interviews and 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.
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.

In the pictures: 1. Tour & Taxis, back when it was still a wasteland: during the adventure playground organized by JES in 2009. 2. Rasquinet Park, a small green space in Schaerbeek, shaped by the activist history of ‘Club des Rues’(Collection Asbl Rasquinet). 3. The Marolles, where Jean Harlez filmed his beautiful 'Le Chantier des Gosses' (Collection Jean Harlez). And Eric De Kuyper, writer and filmmaker, who captures play and childhood so vividly in his books, and shared more with us in an interview. Thanks to VGC Erfgoed for funding this project. More soon!

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