EXPLO #4 - a sense of place - unfolds as a route through various spaces in MILL on the Gosset site in Brussels. The architecture of the building with its hidden (non-)spaces is brought to life with site-specific artistic interventions.

'the experiential and expressive ways places are known, imagined, yearned for, held, remembered, voiced, lived, contested and struggled over […]’ —  A definition out of ‘a sense of place by anthropologists Steven Feld en Keith Basso

In EXPLO #4, we wander around inside the Gosset building via a series of spaces that move between public and private space; from the underground car park, to the corridors leading from the stairwell, to the artists’ studios and workspaces of Needcompany. These spaces are connected through the interventions of thirteen artists. The artists explore spatiality in a variety of ways, by activating physical sensations such as looking, feeling, listening, moving and the act of moving in order to play with the perspective of the experience.

The works also relate to the spatiality of imagination and time, with memory as a remnant of a personal relationship to a place, to the traces that remain, to the history that resonates, and to a future that is emerging.

What are the boundaries of these places; where does the physical, tangible space flow into the virtual, imaginative, mental space?

A voice from the underworld which invades the safe space of the house; a horrifying prediction; the contemplation of a conflict from a bygone time and place; the experience of the now that expands and connects to a place beyond: the displacement as a possibility of a game with scale, reconstruction and the suggestion of an alternative.

The artists’ personal connectedness to the environment is a key starting point for a sense of place. It is as a result of routine and a lengthy period of being in a certain place that a sense of place develops. The majority of the artists in this exhibition are invited to react to the architecture of the building. These artists work within the collective studios Level Five, Next Level and Needcompany, which are housed on the Gosset site.

At the invitation of EXPLO #4, the Brussels screening initiative ‘Blue Screen’ put together a film programme to conclude the exhibition route whereby the feeling of wandering through different (virtual) environments or mental spaces is enhanced. The programme comprises works that deal in a specific way with the constructed environments that link spatiality to time and memory. The films of Janis Rafa, Eva L'Hoest, Graham Kelly and Thomas Swinkels are screened in a loop.