Wondering what we've been busy with? Planning a great tour of In Many Hands of course! We'll be presenting at venues and festival all over Europe - so check out the calendar to find out where to meet us. 

In the meantime Hans is back in Mexico, writing up the script for his mysterious film project, while Diederik is checking out graveyards to find Dracula's voice.   

SPIN THIS! Radio Show #1 has gone podcast!.... listen here

Recorded and live streamed from Chaff Cafe in Brussels, if you missed it the first time you can listen now. Episode #1 focuses on engagement - social, political and personal....

SPIN GOES RADIO
this Friday 6 May @17h!

STREAM IT HERE:
http://mixlr.com/spin-this

SPIN MOVES GENTLY INTO SPRING...

SPIN is not lazy, but dreams about it and reads about it out loud at the end of February during the next BudaVista at Buda in Kortrijk. In April Hans will take these relaxed thoughts with him to Texas where he will present Wilson y Los Más Elegantes and hopefully make the Texans sing ever so softly.

SPIN has also been involved with State Of The Arts to prepare the symposium on Fair Practices on 27 Feb (everyone’s invited!). And BUDA hosted us to collaborate on their coming program What's The Matter With Cooperation in April.

Meanwhile, Kate is deep in the studio cooking up a new performance… the premiere is set for 14th of October at PACT Zollverein (D) so save the date!

And last but not least, we want to show that this society can be different by actively taking to the streets in the Big Parade of Hart boven Hard - its on 20 March, be there!

SPIN is very concerned about the policy that the Flemish Minister of Culture seems to be setting out... Brutal cuts into project-funding attack our renowned Flemish arts-field at its roots, and if the current imbalance between project and structural funding continues we foresee a disastrous disturbance for the field.SPIN supports actions of HOOGTIJd, and signed this letter, as many others did.

Last year the civil movement Hart Boven Hard kicked off by handing our Flemish Government an alternative September-declaration. This month the governement will announce a new round of austerity measures - and will meet a fresh wave of civil action right in front of the Flemish Parliament. Join!

As engaged artists we feel we can’t be missing, so we are taking the train, bus and bike to Paris together with Climate Express and urge everyone else to do the same! Be part of this historical moment and sign up for the Climate March on Sunday 29th of November or the Climate Games from December 11th to 13th. We hope to see you there!

Meanwhile on stages and screens: In October don’t miss the opportunity for a Diederik-dive: both Red Herring and Hulk are showing at De Werf in Brugge, Belgium. Hans’ film Wilson y Los Más Elegantes will be screened in Brussels. It might also be the perfect opportunity to purchase the first record of this band. Kate is about to plunge into touring All Ears and Worktable through Belgium, UK, Germany and…Brazil! To top it off, SPIN organises a weekend at Occupaïe Le Vivat and a workshop together with Amicale de Production.

The new season has begun and we are very proud to announce the film premiere of Wilson y Los Más Elegantes and the release of the first album by the band with the same name. So if you were wondering what our man in Colombia Hans Bryssinck has been up to, please read more below and pick up an evening dress to join us for the première. Or come see the avant-première and swing by SPIN’s camp at Buda Vista#5.

In the meantime, Kate McIntosh is leading a workshop during Impact14 and so is Diederik Peeters, during Summer School. Kate keeps on touring with All Ears and Diederik is clearing his throat for his first ever opera appearance in Inventer Des Nouvelles Erreurs by old time favourites Grand Magasin. We hope to see you at one of these events!

Meanwhile in Belgium a right-wing Flemish government has been installed and a Federal one is in the making... Policies are changing, therefore we want to support a large scale movement joining forces to care for social, cultural and human values. Everyone is invited this Monday 22nd September to the public meetings of Hart boven Hard in Brussels, Gent and Antwerp. Let’s gather our thoughts and voices.

Summer has definitely arrived! To finish the season in beauty, SPIN cordially invites you to The Flat Shows in several living-rooms in Brussels. During the holidays we organise a summer-camp for the residents of Workspace Brussels Summer Residency. And in the meantime Hans will be Watching & Talking during the Belluard Bollwerk International Festival, as Kate and Diederik continue touring with All Ears, Worktable and Red Herring.

QUANTIFICTION SALON!

the next two TUESDAYs, we invite you to our QUANTIFICTION room at Kunstenfestivaldesarts for a conversation salon. We offer tasty pie-charts and a lively discussion putting (over)quantification under the microscope... Welcome!

Tuesdays 13th & 20th May / 18:30-19:30
>> Cinema Marivaux / KFDA festival centre, Brussels.

SPIN presents Camping Bella Vista!

CAMPING BELLA VISTA

• - Tent
• - Mattress
• - Sleeping bag
• - Pajamas and toiletries
• - Towel
• - Clean underwear
• - Lashing cord
• - Cooling box
• - Sunglasses
• - Mosquito repellant
• - Good sense of humor

At each BUDA VISTA, the collective SPIN intervenes with a customized action that brings artists and audiences together in encounter, action and reflection. Camping Bella Vista is the third in line. Join us!

SPIN has some lovely performances and interventions coming up so take your agenda and write down these dates:

23-25/10 Kate's next stop is hometown Brussels! She will be performing All Ears at Kaaistudio's. The 24th there will be an aftertalk so stick around if you want to hear Kate tell you all about the performance and more!

     26/10 Join SPIN's workshop in imagining the future and thinking up small revolutions at Vooruit100. During the last day of Possible Futures people come together and discuss plans for the future and what part we can all play in this.

     30/10 Diederik and Nada are ready to entertain you on these cold, creepy late October nights. We hope to see you all at the performance of Hulk in STUK (Leuven)! Mua-ha-ha-ha!

06-07/10 SPIN will be participating in State of the Arts: Call for Action at Beursschouwburg. These two days will create a platform by and for artists where there will be discussed what the 'State of the Arts' will be in an world driven by privatizations, cuts, profit, competition and based on inequality. Because our society very much looks like it's heading that way, it is important, necessary even, to think and talk about these issues and how we as artists can and want to position ourselves and take action.

What Diederik is doing? Getting all excited to show you his new performance HULK! Don't miss the premiere:

11-12/10 Beursschouwburg, Brussels (B)

In this new show hothead Diederik is ready to blow a fuse and awake his inner Hulk! Read more about it here.

Other dates in October: 17-18/10 De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL) - 30-31/10 STUK, Leuven (B)

As October rolls in, SPIN is getting ready to cure your autumn blues with news from our man in Colombia and some new dates!

Hans just got back from a “productive holiday” in Colombia and would like to share his experiences and thoughts on creativity, production and starting a traditional Colombian band with you. Read more about it here. Leaving his aguardiente and exquisite coffees behind, Hans is now in Kortrijk with Kate preparing the SPIN appearances at the BUDAVISTA!#3 festival which takes place this weekend! Kate will be performing All Ears on Friday 04/10 and on Saturday there will be a treasure hunt with our friends of Amicale de Production. Aye! So be there! If you can’t make it this weekend, come and check All Ears at the Kaaistudio’s in Brussels on 23-25/10 or on one of the other dates you can find here! And if you like to roll up your sleeves, you can always join Kate’s workshop Worktable at the Fierce Festival in Birmingham on 03-06/10! So yes, SPIN is quite busy. But what is Diederik doing exactly?

IMAGINE WORK!
SPIN gathering this weekend..... come!
21 September, 2013 - Kaaistudio's, Brussels
18h - 22h30

 For this edition of 'Imagine Work' SPIN invites us to fantasise another sense of time - in our work and in our lives. Invited guests from very different perspectives will offer us a provocation on what work can be and how it can interact with the time of our lives. Can you imagine working only five hours a week? Could you see your procrastination as a skillful practice? Where do the time pressures of work come from, and what do they achieve? If your time seems scarce, if you're unsure how to juggle your own availability, if you dream of slow days or maybe faster ones, 'Imagine Work' proposes an opportunity to reflect, discuss and imagine what other kinds of working time might be possible.

For this session we hear from several guests - Mark Fisher (author of 'Capitalist Realism, Is There No Alternative?'), Gilad Reich and Yael Messer (curators of the exhibitions 'Time/Resistence' and 'Our Work is Never Over'), Hiroya Hirano (researcher on Basic Income and 'temporal autonomy') and Siegmar Zacharias (WOW-WE WORK HERE) - and you are invited to join as a discussion partner on the ideas they propose. Prepare to meet, to think, to listen and argue as we imagine together how radically different our working life and times could become.

IMAGINE WORK! CALL

SPIN is organizing a gathering titled Imagine Work!

In preparation, we are asking friends and colleagues to send us a short statement in response to the question: If you were free to invent your way of working and your working conditions - what would you imagine?

This proposal of a possible, desirable or imagined work-life can be as crazy or as down to earth as you prefer. It can be focused on a minor detail, or it can be very broad. It can but doesn't have to be realistic - radical imagination is surely allowed.

Try to keep this desire statement short: 3 or 4 lines of writing is great, a few strong words is fine too. If you prefer recording a short video-message, or sending an image, these formats are welcome too. It would be great if we can have your answer by next Wednesday 5th of June.

News from our new base camp at Kaaistudio's in Brussels!

There are some great SPIN performances coming up so save these dates in your agenda:

09.02.2013

Diederik Peeters will be presenting Red Herring at VirusFestival in De Spil, Roeselare (B).

15-16.02.2013

After Roeselare, Peeters will take his Red Herring on a trip to BIT Teatergarasjen in Bergen (NO).

14-17.02.2013

Kate McIntosh's Worktable will be all yours to explore at the In Between Time Festival in Bristol (UK).

13-14.03.2013

Untried Untested by Kate McIntosh will show at De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL).

In March we recommend BUDA VISTA!#2 at Kunstencentrum BUDA in Kortrijk (B), where SPIN will be a guest contributor...

We hope to meet you on one or more of these delightful events!

Last week we sat together with our friends of Amicale de Production for some in depth sharing of tips and tricks for production and for discussing the challenges of our artist-run organisations. It gave us some exciting insights. These kind of exchanges should happen more often! And as we are writing this Peeters & Bryssinck are losing it in the underground art scene of Mainz (DE). They are showing Los Viernes at the artist-run Performing Arts Depot.

Meanwhile SPIN is looking for beautiful strong built men who can help us with a double move. We will finally be released from the cage (aka our office) at Beursschouwburg to move to a co-working space (details will follow). And we will leave our old storage space with leaks to move into a new one without leaks.

Brutal cuts are being made in the cultural budget of Wallonia-Brussels!

The Minister of Culture of Wallonia-Brussels, Fadila Laanan, has made a budget for 2013 in which there will be massive cuts, especially for the theatre. The joke of it all is that the sector had to read about it in the newspaper (La Libre Belgique) on 12th November.

After taking note, protest was quickly being organised, led by the group Conseil Dead. There was a petition, a protest letter and a Facebook group and website launched. On the 20th there was a kind of funeral march towards the office of the minister. There, protesters held a small demonstration and a delegation talked to the minister and gave her the protest letters and petition signatures.

The news spread rapidly and the protest grew. On 26th November there was a demonstration in front of the office of Rudy Demotte who is the "minister-president", the prime minister, of Wallonia and Brussels and has made a global budget for the region for 2013 (with an avalanche of fresh cuts of course).

Some numbers:

The global budget of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels: €9.640.558.000

The project subsidies are being reduced by 25%, from €657.000 to €490.000

In the performing arts, these project subsidies are being cut from €9.248 million to €8.272 million, a diminution of 10%

The Commission of aid for theatrical projects is facing a 45% budget cut! There will be €700.000 to work with instead of the €1.260 million in 2012

The Commission for non-classical music will have its budget cut from €475.000 in 2012 to €340.000 in 2013

The Commission for dance will get €275.000 instead of €450.000 in 2012

(sources: La Libre Belgique, Le Vif)

As you can see, the project subsidies for theatre are being cut on a hallucinatory scale. Not that the other performing arts are being spared. These measures hit especially the artists, as structural organisations and cultural centers are mainly left untouched.

Support the artists and your colleagues and show your solidarity by signing the petition!

More info on our blog. 

Kate McIntosh's Worktable will be presented at brut in Vienna (AT) from 5.12 till 9.12. Get to work! 

In the meantime, in the secrecy of their living rooms, Diederik Peeters and Hans Bryssinck are working on an impossible project... 

Also, we are trying to pimp our Facebook presence. So hey, check our page out! 

If you haven't seen the great Red Herring by Diederik Peeters then make your way to BUDA Kortrijk on 28.9, or to Vooruit in Gent on 17+18.10. For the ones who like to travel you can also see it at the 4+4 Days in Motion Festival in Prague (CZ) on 27.10.

You can see Untried Untested by Kate McIntosh in Mousonturm in Frankfurt (D) on 27+28.09. If you want to see her onstage, go and see Although we fell short by Tim Etchells in Frascati in Amsterdam (NL) on 6.10. Or take the rare chance to go and see Hullapolloi that she has made back in New-Zealand together with Jo Randerson and the Footnote Dance Company. It will be shown in Mousonturm in Frankfurt (D) on 13+14.10.

Hans Bryssinck just came back from Colombia with plenty of video footage and is now working in his studio-livingroom on the editing of that material. 

For German speakers!
A radio interview with Kate about Untried Untested playing this weekend at Pact Zollverein in Essen. Click here and scroll down to find the interview...

This Saturday we gather for SPIN DAY #5!

EVEN ANGRIER & KINDER: Three Tables for Testing Art & Political Action

Still some places left - book at tickets@beursschouwburg.be

More information about the event here.

And preparation reading on our blog here!

In the frame of the SAPERE AUDE - DARE TO KNOW!-festival at Beursschouwburg there is an open call to participate in Chto Delat's seminar-rehearsal of a new Learning Play: "Russian Woods"

Seminars will take place on Sunday 18th, Monday 19th late afternoon time and the whole day on 27th of March, with a general rehearsal and public presentation on 28th of March 2012.

This seminar, initiated by the Chto Delat collective, continues a series of seminars dedicated to different issues of political and aesthetic representation and realized in a form of the rehearsal for the staging of a new Learning Play. It will be introduced to the public on the 28th of March in context of the festival Sapere Aude. Dare to know! at Beursschouwburg.

APPLICATION DEADLINE: March 12th, 2012

Please send your application with a self introduction and your previous experiences to: Dmitry Vilensky dmvilen@gmail.com and Séverine Debecker severine@beursschouwburg.be

Holidays are definitely over and so we're spinning!

Kate is in the final sprint towards the première of her new show 'Untried Untested', commissioned by Campo in Ghent, where the show opens next Thursday (9, 10, 11/02). Meanwhile Hans is warming up with Zhana Ivanova for a new episode of 'Now We Do It For Real' in Beursschouburg next Saturday (11/02). Diederik is hiding in the studio with Sarah & Charles, cooking up a new part in their 'Props for Drama' series entitled 'Plot Hole'. Diederik will also pop up in Vooruit in Ghent during 'Inside Superamas' next Wednesday (8/02), when Vooruit and Superamas officially kick off their long-term collaboration. A week later (14/02) you can catch him in STUK in Leuven where he joins Anna Rispoli for 'Casting Out The Nines', Anna's project for the Artefact Festival there. - It goes without saying it would be phenomenastic to run into you on of these occasions.

Just a couple of hours ago we were all still dancing in Sarah & Charles' living room, and now we can safely say that the first edition of the Brussels' Living Room Festival is officially closed. We're very happy everything went (relatively) well: nice living rooms, good audience, good performances, lectures, films and concerts...

Once more a big hug and massive thank you to all the organisers, to all the artists that performed for free... It's absolutely great to do something that only thrives on the enthusiasm of everyone involved! And also thanks to our lovely audience of course! Hope to see you again next year.

But first, a good, deep winter sleep...

Hans Bryssinck & Christoph Hefti will perform in Les Thermes, an installation with a swimming pool with 20000 balls that have stoic thoughts engraved on them. It's conceived by France Distraction (Belinda Annaloro / Antoine Defoort / Julien Fournet / Halory Goerger / Sebastien Vial) for Musée de la danse (Rennes) on 17 + 18 + 19 November.