LONDINIUM | Elisabeth Woronoff

A reflection on dissolutions of communities and destruction of spaces. A weave of languages speaking of different ruptures, all aiming to imagine a multiplicity of possible reconstructions: “Hopes for a Future Space”.

The grief of the mother, the grief of a building, a community, an island. It traces the waters that connect these dissolutions and explores how their fractures merge. Today I conceive LONDINIUM as an evolving performance that will each time become part of the place and the human fabric of the place where it will be presented.

LONDINIUM teaser

Plan of Evacuation / Plan d’Evacuation / Evacuatie Plan. A performative guided tour through the B2 corridor of Studio Citygate where I used to have my atelier between July 2019 and July 2022. An in-situ art piece mixing performance art, theatre ("Londinium" by Demian Vitanza), installation, painting and video-documentary materials I collected in the UK in 2020 ; as well as audio interviews of the residents of this corridor in 2022.

This building that used to be the pharmaceutical factory Vesdre Continental was bought by CityDev in 2015. It is run by SPRL Entrakt. It is an alternative artistic hub under a tenancy-at-will lease, a precarious temporary third space that will be destroyed and is awaiting permits to be transformed into a real estate project in 2023.

“LONDINIUM is a tribute to London and the river Thames which flushes the city’s slag in and out with the tide.” Demian Vitanza

The river Thames in London echoes the Canal in Brussels. What is the waste of our metropolis, what is destroyed and thrown into the water?

The Londinium play talks about grief, the part we are using is "Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song": three lifeguards from the Royal National Lifeboat Institution spending their nightshift in their lifeboat station on the River Thames. They are dealing with the death of their mother whom they could not save. My strong connection with the UK was wounded by Brexit. Indeed I've always been very attached to this culture since I moved there when I was fourteen to start studying art at school. It made a long lasting imprint on me. It was a boarding school and there was a real feeling of belonging to a community. When Brexit happened it opened up this wound of separation that was created when I left the UK and came back to Brussels. I feel the destruction of Citygate reignites within me this same wound of losing connection with a place, a space that contains relations.

The project gives shape to grief. The grief of the mother in "Sweet Thames", the same Mother who grows to become the Building itself and the Island itself. We explore the spaces of resonance, the spaces of dissolution and irrigation between these different losses and how they merge into each other, through the tracing of the waters. Considering impacts and bypasses of fracture lines in a community, the process aims to invent a multiplicity of possible reconstructions towards an epilogue : Hopes for a Future Space.

How to start imagining and building foundations for a long-term future shared space through a dialog between artistic institutions, politics, the Anderlecht neighbours and the residents of Citygate; around their dreams, needs and realities. Showing that this destruction can give birth to a new space where destroyed unions can be repaired and new ones can be born.

a girl passing in front of destroyed buildings — "Models of the dissolution of the Citygate building" by Elisabeth Woronoff, models by La Gadoue Atelier ©Kurt Van der Elst
(2022)

a destroyed building in clay — "Models of the dissolution of the Citygate building" by Elisabeth Woronoff, models by La Gadoue Atelier ©Kurt Van der Elst
(2022)

models of a dissolution — "Models of the dissolution of the Citygate building" by Elisabeth Woronoff, models by La Gadoue Atelier © Audrey Werthle
(2022)

a woman in a giant dress — "The Londinium Dress" in collaboration with Bojana Draca (FFCS) & La Gadoue ©Kurt Van der Elst

a woman and other women helping her walk with a giant plastic dress — "The Londinium Dress" in collaboration with Bojana Draca (FFCS) & La Gadoue ©Kurt Van der Elst

a woman walking backwards in a corridor — "The Londinium Dress" in collaboration with Bojana Draca (FFCS) & La Gadoue ©Kurt Van der Elst

a painting of a woman with a giant hand — ©Kurt Van der Elst
(2020)

people walking in front of a painting — ©Kurt Van der Elst
(2020)

Pieces of a Queen

a painting of two people holding each other — ©Kurt Van der Elst
(2022)

london eye in black and white — London Eye when I was 15
(2007)

london eye in colour — London Eye when I am 30
(2022)

Pieces of a Queen

A Kiss

Blood Queen