Michiel Vandevelde

Under the title THE CHILDREN'S PARLIAMENT, Belgian artist Michiel Vandevelde has been working on a series of projects with Hamburg children and young people between 8 and 13 years of age since the current season. DAS KINDERPARLAMENT is a democracy-building project that deals with the question of what human coexistence, but also the future of all living beings on the planet could look like or how it could be shaped. Michiel Vandevelde is an internationally renowned artist who began his dance career in the production house fABULEUS in Leuven. Since graduating from P.A.R.T.S. in 2012, he has distinguished himself as a choreographer, curator and author. Political and artistic activism is the common thread running through his work. Michiel Vandevelde regularly examines what constitutes or hinders contemporary public spheres. He investigates what other social, economic and cultural alternatives can be imagined in order to question and change dominant logics and modes of organisation. 7 years ago Michiel Vandevelde initiated the project »The Political Party«. This is not a real political party, but a kind of think tank to question western democracy and reflect on alternative ways of thinking and making politics. The initiative was prompted by his deep concerns about the fragmentation and weakness of public discourse in Western societies - and the inability to develop or implement political visions.

As part of the project series THE CHILDREN'S PARLIAMENT, Michiel Vandevelde, in collaboration with Elen Braga, organized several workshops at Kampnagel 2019 and 2020, in which the participating children and young people used choreography, costume design and music to explore possible future worlds - utopian as well as dystopian ones. At the end of May 2020 Vandevelde would have presented the three-day installative long-term performance DAS KINDERPARLAMENT at Kampnagel; due to the Corona pandemic the project has to be postponed until spring 2020. The children involved in the previous process were spontaneously invited to develop a poster campaign with Michiel Vandevelde, which links the thematic discussion of the previous workshops and the material created (e.g. costumes) with the children's visions for society after the Corona pandemic and incorporates their current experiences. The aim is to use the posters to revive the socio-political discourse and to bring it back into the public, analogous space where it was suppressed by the ban on assembly in recent months. Using digital communication tools, Michiel Vandevelde and graphic designer Ward Heirwegh have developed a campaign poster for the future after (or with) Corona with each child, expressing the children's worries or fears, their wishes or demands. The posters will be hung in the city from 22 June 2020 and distributed by the children themselves - for example in (display) windows. Watch out!

The postponed project DAS KINDERPARLAMENT is planned for the Hamburg March and May holidays, with performances in May 2021. An announcement and further information will follow in late autumn. Interested children can register at presse@kampnagel.de.