The Metropole Conference Project

In 1912, a photo was taken inside a room of the Hotel Metropole in Brussels showing twenty-four world-famous physicians who had gathered there to discuss developing states of knowledge in their field, at that time. Among them, Albert Einstein touches index finger to thumb, perhaps a half-hearted attempt to signal that everything is O.K. here. His eyes betray him by saying something different. At the centre of the image, Marie Curie’s concentration further disrupts the already unconvincing notion that something has been accomplished here, that a balance might have been struck. As her arm supports head and her eyes fix somewhere on the page, she is framed within an ongoing discourse that is either unaware or indifferent to the photographer in the room.

All of this is suggesting that there is a difficulty in finding what is or can be known, concrete, stable within a hotel setting. Precisely because hotels are, by function, transitory spaces. The Hotel Metropole, reflecting Curie and her colleague’s research, is a restless and un-ending scene where new routines replace and overlap old ones. That is not to say that the hotel is without any character since it is marked by its clear architectural difference and ornate interior design, reflecting several parts, histories and other aspects of metropolitan Belgium.

        Driven by the Hotel Metropole’s historical role as facilitator of discussion (as, indeed, the city of Brussels is known for doing) was the desire to stage a conference as performance throughout the hotel space. This discussion took place within a salon at the Hotel Metropole in a constantly changing district of the city of Brussels, most recently affected by the Belgian government’s initiative to make cycling the main form of transportation throughout its Capital city’s streets. We hoped to cover a broad range of topics coming out of the five days we spent within Brussels and other nearby cities, Antwerp and Ghent. By taking the form of the conference within the Hotel Metropole, however, the transcript of this conversation is symbolic of the tentative qualities of our pursuit--retaining its edges, uncertainties, distractions, the transcript simultaneously adopts and rejects Brussels’s various indecisions.

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Nick: Who would like to begin?

Hannah: Who has a broad question?

Anastasia: I think I have a broad question. About the construction sites in the city. What do you feel is happening? What’s the ambition of the city? What's going to happen once the constructions are done?

Olivia: Brussels is constantly being rebuilt and, from what I can understand, they aren’t ever going to be done. It’s constantly being rebuilt and changing. Much like any other city.

Elvira: But at the same time it seems like they’re already finishing off some of the current construction. So the whole idea of Brussels never being finished might be a myth of sorts. I feel like that’s been a running theme: Brussels as being this constantly evolving not very authentic place, which is one of the stories that was told by the tour guide who led us around the city on the first day but might also just be a story. I’m not sure. I feel like if we left and came back here in a month, it’d probably be really nice outside.  From what I can tell, by then the construction would feel quite finished.

Nick: But I think there’s a difference between the way people on the street interact with construction work here in contrast to London, where it would be very separate. You wouldn't be allowed anywhere near a construction site and here you kind of weave in and out of it.

Chloe: And there’ll be a bar in the middle of it.

Hannah: I was thinking about how London has this mandate to have beautiful construction sites or hidden construction sites. Or we can think about how when Buckingham Palace was getting renovated, they erected a fake painted wall to continue a bit of the wall that was under construction – like there could be no cracks at all in the façade. Here the cracks seem part of the everyday landscape.

Elvira: It's so weird.

Hannah: Here there’s a tolerance for ugliness. Which is so different than the British way of making sure that everything looks so glossy.

Elvira: You also do it in parts, right? In London if you had to renovate a road, you could never just do the whole road because that would completely stop the city.

Nick: Yeah.

Elvira: You have to sort of do bits of it.

Chloe: You do it through the night.

Elvira: Yeah. You can’t just completely tear everything up and then make everything from scratch.

Flavia: I was thinking about how Beijing is a city where there’s always construction as well. I’ve just been there once but it’s a city where the landscape  is changing all the time. So you don’t have the feeling of this very old city anymore. It’s all mirrored buildings everywhere.

Elvira: It says something about the sentimentality of a place. We couldn’t imagine it in Paris – you could never just make this big construction site. It would have the same disrupting effect as in London. So I wonder if the similarity between, say, China and here is again this idea of looking instead of trying to preserve.

Claire: I wondered about this narrative and this myth – which we were told on our arrival – about the city of  Brussels as being in this state of constant renewal, always looking somewhere else for ideas on how to structure itself say culturally or architecturally. And in hearing this myth, I accepted all of the very evident construction happening right in the middle of the city and by aligning it to this myth I gave it some kind of allowance. You wonder whether the people in the city of Brussels also adhere to the myth of constant renewal as as a way of accepting all of the ground level visual disturbance. As if the intrusive nature of ground-level construction is as much a part of the city as any building.

Flavia: I kept thinking about Brussels’ recent terrorist attacks. This week we were in the middle of a largely Muslim neighbourhood, and it very noticeably doesn’t have this feeling of being renovated. It’s like, the renovations are only in specific places, but other regions are kind of left behind – and people left behind as well.

Urshita: It’s rooted in the formation of ghettos in cities and how that creates a certain cultural identity – and interfering in that geography physically in terms of architecture or road construction becomes a more political issue than interfering in something like a downtown area, which is very public. Ghettos are considered private in some kind of a totality – intervening would require council meetings with members of that community so that they would feel included in the narrative. But not everyone from an immigrant community is very open to coming to a table for an interaction with a government interface, which they might feel to begin with is not very accepting of them.

Flavia: This whole idea of renovation as always being in the city centre again ties to that sense of some neighbourhoods being constantly left behind.

Hannah: It’s also complicated to think about restoration in relation to socio-economics, because here old doesn’t at all necessarily mean degenerate or left behind by government. Here the very old buildings correlate with wealth – because the very old beautiful areas have been maintained and restored, whereas perhaps the newest high-rises might actually represent, if not public housing, then “lower culture” in a sense.

Elvira: Public Housing?

Hannah: I’m trying to articulate how sometimes newer buildings – where there is no remnant of old architecture – can ironically be a mark of less affluence. So there’s a correlation between newness and poorness which is an interesting and atypical narrative. In old cities, often construction in affluent areas is really more maintenance and restoration and redoing something so that it looks like it used to – not necessarily constructing new high-rises. Old doesn’t  mean abandoned by the government.

Chloe: Restoration vs Construction.

Chit chat

Chloe: So on the theme of restoration, we went to see the restoration of the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. And we all know that one panel is missing. We’ve been told that it’s probably somewhere in Belgium. Where would you imagine that it might be hidden?

Laughter

Olivia: I think I know.

Urshita: Where is it Olivia?

Hannah: I have a response that’s not actually a response. There’s a really interesting irony around the Adoration of the Mystic Lamb where you have this piece of classical art admired – and mired in secrets and in this narrative where it's missing and there’s anxiety around if it’ll ever be recovered. But at the same time, the image is multiplied everywhere and it’s become this completely inescapable image – a piece of tourist iconography. So there’s an oscillation between a thing being absent but also everywhere.

Olivia: I was shocked at how un-mystical it was.

Hannah: Right. Exactly. It’s funny how this piece of work has actually become so replicated. There’s just this irony in this missing thing being all around us.

Chloe: As an obsession with the original I guess.

Hannah: Yeah this obsession with the original matched with thousands of unoriginals everywhere you look – on keychains and in the gift shop – probably on lunchboxes, certainly on T shirts.

Elvira: Even in the church.

Nick:  In the church, on the doorway into seeing the print-out of it.

Hannah: And it’s like they’re trying to find it. Or like emphasizing it’s missingness by putting it everywhere. It’s kind of an odd thing.

Flavia: It also relates to the exhibition we’ve been to at Wiels. The room full of images of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain – lots of reproductions everywhere. A reproduction of a readymade reproduction. So it’s like a reproduction of a reproduction.

Chloe: So I guess this is again the theme of preservation – the restoration of the painting happens so frequently. At least every eighty years there’s a complete restoration of the painting and I guess it works in a way that’s similar to the restoration of the buildings around this area. Which raises the question of what’s worth restoring – and what does that mean?

Nick:  Also the idea that this time it’s “closer to van Eyck”– they’re trying to get back to the original. Trying to strip away the previous restorations that have happened.  

Elvira:  But I feel like that’s a general trend, right? In terms of construction versus restoration. Even speaking about these old buildings gaining some kind of popularity and having some kind of status. I think that’s something that has happened in the past fifty years maybe, this idea of seeking authenticity, or trying to find the original. Because there’s been an over inflation of newness and adding on layers, there’s a trend of stripping down and finding the original.

Nick: But I think that’s an interesting thing because it’s always a new restoration. It’s always another layer, really.

Elvira: Well yeah, the whole idea of authenticity is impossible, right?

Nick: I read something quite interesting that said that the people doing restoration work try to emulate the photographs of the painting. So they get the colours wrong because the photographs punch-up the colours and they try and make the restoration match the photographs rather than the way the painting used to look, because there’s no way of knowing that.

Flavia: What’s original then?

Nick: Hard to tell, in what case?

Flavia: In terms of originality? Because from these older paintings we may not have the original feeling of the painting.

Nick: But then in the printing museum there were all these etchings of paintings made around the same time. Etchings of paintings would have been a huge trade. Famous paintings became famous because of etchings that were made of them, as well as painted copies. Those were the ways of reproducing an image and that’s what peoples’ ideas of famous works of art were based on.

Hannah: Yeah. Based on replications.

Olivia: And eventually it became a valued skill to be able to tell authentic works of art from their replications. I don’t think that this is as common now amongst people who aren’t art historians.

Hannah: I do think there’s something interesting in thinking about the whole city as somehow being an attempt at restoration – but not really an attempt at restoring the original city, more so at creating an image of restoration. I’m thinking of that artificial canal that was built in the same area where there used to be a real canal. But the real canal, so we were told, is now part of Belgium’s sewer system. So you’re left with a still canal that’s a simulation of a canal from history. But it’s so un-canal like for it to be still. It’s like a slice of canal.

Claire: It’s effectively a pond.

Hannah: It’s like we took a slice of canal that’s now a pond.

Nick: It’s like a bed made out of a car.

Urshita: And a koi pond, with these goldfish–

Hannah: Which are imported as well. I don’t think koi fish are native to Brussels.

Olivia: We’ve been talking about restoration and authenticity. If we could speculate over an “original” Brussels, before the one with dentures that we are currently in, what do we think is being restored here? In terms of what we can see. What is the agenda that the Belgian government is trying to enact in order to create a character for Brussels, for prosperity?

Hannah: The character of it to me is quite Frankenstein-ed, because it’s based in this history of different people coming in and having sovereignty and then moving out and coming in again. And that makes for an interesting problem – finding the true character of a city that has historically been passed around.

Elvira: When did Belgium become independent ?

Hannah: I don’t know.

Nick: Not that long ago.^[1]

Elvira: It also becomes about when you place that point of originality – was it when they became independent? Was that the original movement? Surely there must have been something after that as well. A period of trying to figure out what the city or region was about? Surely it wasn’t formed in that exact moment.

Urshita: And even if you find a period of time that you can pinpoint it to, that originality comes in tiers. What the government at that time thought was original was probably contested – the country is divided into French and Dutch so the French version of that originality probably looked different from what the Dutch version of that originality was.

Elvira: Remember what the tour guide said about how the constitution was initially very simple and now how everything is hyper layered and really complex? It seems like if you stripped Brussels of that complexity, it would be something really different. So it wouldn’t really even make sense to think of them – Belgium and its constitution – in terms of one being the predecessor to the other.

Claire:  I think of cities as traders in images — curating their projections. So if I think about London, it does this thing whereby it retains and trades in on its history but not to a claustrophobic degree, like somewhere such as Rome. London manages to oscillate between history and innovation. It’s a place where new things happen. But to imagine an insecure city — a city that’s unsure in itself from the off – what is that? How does a city cement itself? Or does it continue to trade on this idea of duality? Is plurality its trading image?

Elvira: But it’s funny, right? Because I was thinking about the difference between Brussels and London because they seem to be driven by the same lack of nostalgia and impulse towards moving forward. Things are being built everywhere in both cities. But it seems, while London to me is more like a city of business and capital, people putting up houses because they want to make money, here it seems like when they’re building new things it’s not just because they want to make more money – it’s also because they want to copy a specific type of culture or take the best from another city. Which is interesting, because there is not only this idea of restoration but also of adding something culturally.

Anastasia: But it’s just that guy – the tour guide – who said that Brussels is copying other cities.

Elvira: No, what I’m saying is completely based on my own observations.

Urshita: Yeah, this is all related to what Zoe Gray said at Wiels, about getting the French contemporary art museum – Pompidou – to come in and produce a contemporary art museum in Belgium. It’s this very Belgian sentiment: “another model works in some way so we don’t need to come up with a model of our own – we can just adapt it to our system and that’ll do the trick.” And it could be successful or it could fail, in which case the idea of that museum would be pushed back to twenty years or fifty years down the line.

Anastasia: But this narrative denies the rights of the city to authenticity or to having ownership over its decisions. In the way that the tour guide introduced it, it sounded like Belgium doesn’t have any of it own ambitions apart from copying what’s successful in other cities. I don’t think we should adopt this view.

Urshita: I don’t think what Belgium does is copying in a cheating kind of a way. It is a valid choice. If you think that a decision made by another governing body works, and you genuinely believe that it could work for you, then I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad thing to emulate it.  

Elvira: I would just like to correct what I said before: I was speaking much more about the surface. When you see Belgium’s architecture for example – it’s very evident that the culture here is specific to Brussels, but that the architectural styles are from everywhere. This is true for London too, but the houses are of poor quality – if they aren’t luxury houses – and often they’re ripped down.  But here, they seem to really commit to whatever architecture they chose, and it remains culturally intact.

Olivia: I think one answer to that would be that it’s trying to preserve a sense of being quite versatile, it being quite a porous city that is ostensibly a point of transit, historically and in a modern sense. I was thinking, when the tour guide was talking about copying cities – how must that feel? What kind of emotion does that create in other governments where they can see that Brussels is now thinking, “oh, the Danish Government has the right idea about cycling.” It creates a sort of validation. Copying another city in a sense is a political commentary through changing your landscape or changing your policies based on something else.

Hannah: I think it’s interesting to think about your question in the context of the images and icons Belgium uses to find itself and market itself to tourists. The peeing boy is obviously a curious thing to have as a national obsession – it seems like there’s an attempt at creating a sort of humour or irreverence around the national identity. I wonder how that connects to some sort of anxiety around the question of what exactly an authentic Belgian identity or history is. It’s quite a classic tool for a body of people who have an anxiety around place or placelessness to use humor.

Elvira: But then it also has the complete opposite sensibility, right? It has the EU headquarter. It also has this history of hosting important meetings where we can assume that a lot of people that live here are fairly serious people - whatever that means. And I guess we’ve seen a very specific snippet of it, because we’ve been walking around mostly in the tourist quarter, and maybe that’s all fries and waffles.

Anonymous Speaker: and the peeing boy...

Hannah: Definitely – it’s sort of this profoundly immature humor operating in a really out-of-context or strange manner against the backdrop of the very serious business that is the EU headquarters.  It makes me think of the way politicians tell jokes in order to appear “human”.

Elvira: But I’m sure if you went around where the EU is, even around Palais de Stoclet, it has a very different atmosphere.

Olivia: Yeah. And Wiels was in the middle of suburbia.

Flavia: Can we try to think about the national identity of a country with mainly three different groups: the Flemish, French, and German speakers? I have this friend – he speaks French but his wife only speaks Flemish, so it’s very curious. Even in some schools they don’t really care about teaching two languages here.

Anastasia: Is that a fact?  

Flavia: Yes – yes it is a fact. I think it is a fact.

Olivia: So they don’t teach Flemish?

Flavia: They don’t necessarily teach two languages. So if you are in a certain community of Flemish speakers, they are mainly Flemish – that is, they identify themselves as Flemish.

Urshita: I think that might have other reasons too. When we were at the Passa Porta bookshop, or when we were at Wiels Gallery, they were talking about the economic model with which these institutions function. And if for instance a school is receiving money or has some kind of sponsorship from the French community or the French government, then it will probably teach in French - and if it receives funding from the Dutch, then it will probably teach in Dutch. So funding affects how language topography is decided.

Flavia: I’ve been thinking about Belgium as this place where they live together in a very peaceful way even though they have very different identities and cultural backgrounds...

Urshita: But that also forms the overall identity for Belgium, right? That they have these multiple identities – that’s such an iconic thing about Belgium – that if you’re visiting a city, then that city will be predominantly Flemish or predominantly French.

Flavia: And the flag. Even the flag has three colours. I wonder if that’s because they have these three different groups.

Elvira: I think that’s the case for most European flags though. Brussels also literally has different flags – there’s also a Flemish flag.

Niyoshi: Emily and I were discussing it the other day. It’s so similar to the German flag that I went and checked up on it. Turns out there’s no connection there. They may have borrowed the vertical bands from the French flag. I remember the tour guide saying their constitution was definitely inspired by what was happening in France at the time, with the revolution’s principles of liberty, equality, fraternity. But, besides that, I don’t think the three colours have any direct relation to the communities here.

Urshita: We keep making these observations about the city, comparing it to London or how we experience London. Claire and I were also talking about how we were in Brussels for two days and then we went to Ghent - and how you form a lot of impressions of a city through another city. Being in Ghent created certain comparisons - or observations about Brussels in comparison. What were our thoughts when we were in Ghent or what conclusions did we come to?

Anastasia: It was quite striking, I thought, that it was so Flemish. I felt relief coming back to Brussels because there was this other dimension, which you wouldn’t necessarily find in Ghent or in Antwerp: the French speaking dimension. And it was strong in Ghent – the way people hold themselves with a sort of Nordic strictness or order. I’m familiar with this from Germany – it felt very proper . Whereas here it feels more wild and potentially dangerous. It’s great – a totally different vibe.

Elvira: It’s funny, this whole idea of understanding a city through comparison, because I always feel slightly guilty for doing this. I arrive at a city and immediately think, “So, what would be the Shoreditch of this city or what would be its Kensington?” Not really allowing for that city to exist by itself, and maybe to do something else entirely. I think it’s a very natural way of understanding...

Chloe: –the world–

Elvira: Yeah, it’s anything, right? By saying what it does or doesn’t do...

Hannah: Definitely – I think this week I was making comparisons the entire time. And because I felt that Ghent was somehow the most “beautiful” or aesthetically successful or appealing or idyllic space – for me at least – I found myself feeling like a sucker – sucked up – by what I feared was a “tourist trap”. And that’s a really strange anxiety. It seems like we’re at a point in tourism where we’ve been sold pseudo-authentic space as a tourist commodity for so long, that we actually are constantly suspicious. Because I think Ghent might just have been legitimately idyllic. And it’s kind of difficult or anxious to think about how the tourism industry has jaded the way people approach space. Like with the question Is this authentic? Does it just look authentic? Am I being duped into thinking this thing is authentic?

Elvira: But it’s also like the new tourist trap, because now you want the hidden. That’s what people are seeking now, so the tourist industry is catering to that.

Hannah: So even when you find one of those places you’re wondering is this one of those hidden spots? Or is it a simulation of a hidden spot? Because those exist now too.

Elvira: Yeah, so now there’s this problem of seeking these “authentic” tours.

Hannah: And then there’s the post-ironic tourist who will be like, actually I want to be in the kitschiest or ugliest spot  – and that’s due to this anxiety that anything beautiful or authentic looking must surely be constructed. I’m describing something very cerebral.

Elvira: Or people suddenly go to places that aren’t supposed to be touristy. Do you know what I mean? They keep on pushing the tourist-zone, until suddenly you’re just in a residential area! It’s so authentic  - but you were never supposed to be there. Which is problematic – having these tour groups walking around Hackney. It’s kind of strange.

Hannah: Yeah poverty tourism, or fetishizing “realness”. Tourism is really cannibalizing. But I wonder if we could bring the conversation towards the art world, maybe. Or to art publishing.

Elvira: I have a question about this idea of Belgium wanting to build a national museum for contemporary art - or its current lack of a contemporary art museum - and the role of a museum for contemporary art in a city. Let’s think about our assumption that a city needs a contemporary art museum – why is that? If there are many models that we could imagine as doing the same thing - or maybe doing something more interesting than a museum – do you need one? Because right now it feels like Belgium has assumed that that’s the way to move forward. But in reality, is it even necessary? Or, what are the pros and cons? Why would you want one? Could you imagine a  successful scenario in which a city didn’t have one?

Hannah: Well, first of all, I feel like the word “museum” is very prestigious and probably tied to the assumption of a certain type of funding and a certain collection that you’re going to generate – one that’s probably going to be a huge asset for the city it belongs to. It’s a loaded idea. Whereas it seems like a gallery has to continually - in order to get funding - position itself as a community centre or somehow as a gallery but also as something more. It struck me how the Wiels Centre was at once this huge project space with residencies, and obviously a gallery, but then also outfitted with a restaurant, a bookstore, a community center for small children. I also had some questions regarding their literacy outreach program in the neighbourhood and the extent to which a gallery is qualified to do that. Should a gallery stretch its function towards something like social work? It’s a nice idea, but can a gallery adequately do that? Is it just optics? It made me think that galleries seem like anemic arts institutions that are constantly stretching themselves, and having to be more than their art function in order to prove their usefulness to a community. Whereas a museum is somehow allowed to be about art, maybe in a more focused way.

Flavia: A museum is about canonisation. But what does that mean for this country - with so many different people, so many different identities, so many interesting connections? At least in Antwerp I could see some very interesting abstract art that really resonates with the Neo-concrete movement in Brazil. And I believe there’s a conversation going on between contemporary art that’s produced here and contemporary art produced elsewhere. So I think a museum is a place to establish this communication and to evolve these conversations. And I don’t think you can do this without having an institution that thinks of itself with more of a historical perspective than a gallery does. Because commercial galleries have this goal to sell art – they aren’t necessarily cultural institutions – by definition, they’re commercial spaces. There are so many galleries coming to Brussels, maybe because they’re seeing that a museum is about to be established here.

Mod

Olivia: The commercial galleries are coming here?

Flavia: Yeah, they’re popping up everywhere.

Olivia: Because I was thinking of a few points in relation to what Hannah was saying about art adding value to a place. Wiels is in the suburbs and it’s not really a tourist attraction because it’s quite difficult to get to – it’s gesturing towards a more permanent visitor audience. So it does sort of position itself as an arts institution and education centre rather than just an exhibition space, because it does have so many different elements to it.

Nick: Also it was in this post-industrial building – an ex-brewery. In London we have the Tate Modern, which used to be a power station, so there’s this precedent of ex-industrial buildings being turned into art museums. I’d be on board for a contemporary art museum like that, in terms of part of its function being to regenerate a defunct building.

Olivia: And their collection was non-permanent. Wiels has no collection, so it’s this whole different kind of anti-commercial art.

Flavia: But they aren’t considered a museum. Wiels is an independent institution that happens to be there because they wanted to preserve an industrial building in the context of a complex immigrant neighbourhood. Maybe Wiels feels committed to engaging with that community through art education programmes that can bring the neighbours in.

Hannah: This goes back to Claire Bishop’s writing about politicized art. It’s the question of whether or not it’s actually possible for a contemporary art gallery to “help the community”. Are relational aesthetics possible?

Urshita: The article was Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics.

Hannah: Do art galleries ever realize their often quite ambitious social mandates?

Elvira: There’s something in between as well. I’m not against the idea of national art – or a contemporary art museum in general – but I think both of your points about how smaller institutions are often more directed at the community that they exist in are important. It seems at least when there’s talk about a museum of contemporary art, it’s often to attract tourists, or it becomes a question of prestige. At least this is the conversation around Belgium’s prospective contemporary art museum. At the same time, they’re talking about how there’s no funding for these other smaller institutions. So, maybe it’s worth imagining an alternative model – maybe founding more initiatives that have a local function.

Flavia: I don’t know if I see a contemporary art museum as something that is highly institutional and completely apart from the artistic community. I think a contemporary art museum is usually very connected to the art that’s being made locally. Curators should be in permanent dialogue with local artistic communities.

Olivia: That’s the paradoxical thing about both Wiels and Passa Porta – they’re attracting international artists and international authors to do residencies and shows. So even though they’ve got this outreach programme, which brings people into the institution for a weekend or a day, they’re still kind of not related solely to a cultural scene in Brussels. In the opposite direction, you go to Antwerp and see a Belgian fashion designer’s show – and there’s that contrast between a museum, which is kind of an exhibition for national figures or artists, and galleries, which may be less nationally positioned. The Brussels institutions seem to be conscious of the fact that Brussels is a point of transit for many people and the question of how you could best utilise that for your community, by making it highly accessible.

Urshita: But being the national museum of contemporary art, there would be some pressure on them to represent art that is being produced in Brussels - or Belgium in general. Although that’s not what they’re doing right now, are they?

Nick: Well Wiels does that. I know it’s not a museum and it doesn’t have a collection but they do that. At least one show out of three a year features a Belgian artist.

Urshita: I feel the idea of a national museum for Brussels has a lot of potential in the future but right now, it seems as if they’re starting off on the wrong foot. They’re trying to jumpstart something by getting a big international name in, and then hoping that later on they can make it more rooted in Belgium.

Flavia: Is it decided or is it under discussion?

Chloe: I think it’s decided.

Olivia: Maybe we should wrap up with one last question.

Nick: Does anyone have any last questions?

Olivia: Or a statement?

Flavia: Should we talk about translation?

Nick: I feel it’s interesting that we didn’t hear from anyone who felt strongly that one language should be dominant. I think the language of tourism is significant – you will be addressed mostly in English and often in French. And maybe this is two different points now; but I wonder if there is any opposition to multilingualism. Most people we spoke to seemed weirdly proud of it.

Anastasia: I think that’s only Brussels. Everywhere else it’s different communities, either French or Flemish - and Flemish is the more dominant. And the right-wing party is Flemish, and they wanted independence a couple of years back – so it’s not all harmonious. But Brussels is a good representation of how it could work, that is, people taking care of all the languages being represented.

Olivia: But presumably it’s the same throughout Belgium in terms of funding institutions – there’s the harmonious play between the Flemish and the French.

Flavia: I keep thinking about the Germans. Because we were talking to somebody and we’ve made reference to the two official languages, and he said, “actually, there are three – there is German as well.” So, if there are three official languages, there are two dominant. I couldn’t hear German anywhere.

Anastasia: But maybe the German gets absorbed by the Flemish because they’re so similar?

Hannah: It’s also interesting that when you’re an English person and there’s someone who doesn’t speak English in a shop, they’ll assume you can at least speak French in addition to English.

Chloe: Well it’s assumed that most Europeans speak French.

Flavia: We went to an Italian restaurant where they couldn’t speak a word of French actually.

Urshita: It was all Italian and Spanish.