Part of this year's OFF program is OUT OF SIGHT, a venue for contemporary art founded in 2018 by artists Dušica Dražić and Wim Janssen. With the start of the Antwerp Art Weekend, OUT OF SIGHT proudly opens their long awaited new location with an extensive program.

On the first floor of their new venue, you can visit 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' by Ursula, an Antwerp based collective of female artists working with the moving image. Named after Ursula K. Le Guin, and inspired by her “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction”, the group aims to gather and meet, rather than conquer or hunt, to exchange stories, network, knowledge and friendship. Amorph and egalitarian in its structure, Ursula wants to create a common ground for cineasts as well as visual artists working with film, either established or new to the field.

'The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas' tells the story of a seemingly perfect city, Omelas, where the happiness of the people is built on the suffering of a single child. The story raises questions about the ethical foundations of a utopian society and the individual's responsibility in the face of collective well-being. The exhibition is supported by Flanders — State of the Art.

OUT OF SIGHT invited Doplgenger to present 'Images of Past as Images for the Future', a part of an artistic research project called 'Fragments Untitled' that examines the media’s participation in the construction of historical narratives. The lecture-performance, taking place May 17 at 18:00, discusses the problem of remembering, representing and giving voice to distant histories through images from the media, the politics of archiving, audiovisual experiments and the impact of this language on the viewer.

Doplgenger, Isidora Ilić and Boško Prostran, is an artist duo from Belgrade, who engages as a film/video artist, researcher, writer, and curator. Doplgenger is Serbian transcription for Doppelgänger in German. Doppelgänger is a stranger, a foreigner, an outsider, a social deviant, anyone whose origins are unknown or who has extraordinary powers. It threatens to dissolve dominant structures, it points to or suggests the basis upon which the cultural order rests – the unified individual. The event is organized in collaboration with MORPHO, and with the support of Flanders — State of the Art.

CAR DECONSTRUCTION is a durational performance in which the artist Dina Rončević, together with a group of girls, calmly deconstructs a car. Girls get a chance to work with tools and learn to use their bodies in relation to heavy forces. Performed in front of an audience but lacking a need for its gaze, car deconstruction proposes agency over our own female bodies while relentlessly following our curiosity.

The participation is open for girls from 6 till 15 years old. Do you have interest in joining? Send an email at office@out-of-sight.be by April 30st. Please note that spaces are limited up to 4 participants.

Dina Rončević graduated from Art Academy in Zagreb, Croatia (2010) and Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2015). As her graduate work in Zagreb she retrained as a car mechanic and continued to deconstruct cars and construct vehicles with girls and women. In her practice, she works in the grey area between art and life, fighting discrimination with calm stubbornness and feminism. She works as a technical welder in Deeside, Wales.

Out of Sight organises CAR DECONSTRUCTION: THINGS NEED TO BE TAKEN APART. A LOT OF THINGS. in collaboration with Werktank, and with the support of Flanders — State of the Art.

Inspired by Allen Hynek's categorisation of UFO witnesses, Out of Sight opens its brand-new location with the CLOSE ENCOUNTERS programme. Hynek proposed three steps:

1. Visual testimony from a distance of less than 150 metres, on which a degree of detail becomes clear and an angle of movement can be deduced.
2. Physical traces of the event: impressions on the landscape, power failures or physiological effects on people.
3. The final step involves direct contact with a living entity.

In the first chapter they focus on collective processes and collaborative practices, starting with the SHARED OPENING DINNER on May 16 at 19:00, hosted by Hafsa Elazzaoui & Latifa Saber, founders of BAYA collective: a creative collective which focuses on slowly adjusting the rhythms of our society through collective work, cultural & artistic exploration and the cultivation of intentional space. They hold this space with BAYA’s third member Soukaina Bennani.

As cooks, exploring how food is deeply intertwined within our relationships, our cultures, our identities and our politics, is their bread and butter. When hosting dinners, Hafsa and Latifa underline the importance of what it means to be one with the dinner table and those you’re sharing it with, while paying close attention to each ingredient that’s intentionally brought to the table. “Eating for research purposes” also is a quintessential part of their practice. The event is supported by Flanders — State of the Art.