For three years running, an artistic project of poems and/or drawings has been commissioned to appear on the pages of the festival programme. This edition presents Cecilia Vicuña, a visual artist, poet, filmmaker and activist based in New York, her work deals with themes of language, memory, dissolution, extinction and exile. In the 1960s, she created the concept of arte precario (precarious art) to name what disappears and express the precariousness of life. Her consistent reflection on ecological destruction and cultural homogenisation resonates with this edition’s Free School.

Vicuña created intriguing images of stains made by plants and visual poems in which words almost disappear. It was a startling discovery that inspired this new work—intensifying heat from global warming is reducing photosynthesis in plants. Life on earth depends entirely on this fundamental process. Without it, we cannot breathe, eat and live.

The full series can be found in the brochure that is distributed at various locations in Brussels.