‘Art and Bike Tours’

With Anthea Missy, Benjamin Tollet, Anne Paulicevich & Pascal Verbeken

​​​​​​​As part of Urban Summer, Bozar, in collaboration with the ProVélo association, invites you to join in a series of thematic bike rides across Brussels. For this occasion, we asked four artists based in Brussels to imagine a route through the city inspired by their artistic practice and their personal experience, each telling a different story of Brussels. From the Mont des Arts to Tour&Taxis, from Porte de Namur to the Parc du Cinquantenaire, join us to discover the places and the stories told by these artists: Anthea Missy, Benjamin Tollet, Anne Paulicevich & Pascal Verbeken

​​​​​​​In case of rainy weather, the bike tours and film screenings take place as planned. Even in the rain we can cross the city by bike! In case of extreme weather conditions (strong wind, storm) Pro Velo and Bozar reserve the right to cancel the tour. In that case, the tours will be refunded.

​​​​​​Anthea Missy
Anthea Missy is an artist from street art culture and lives in Brussels. In her murals, she creates stories around cute characters with a pop-art design. Her most notable Brussels works include Ihsane Jarfi, a portrait of an LGTBQI victim, as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the integration of diversity, and Women Bike the City, a work that sees the bicycle as a means of freedom for reconnecting with the inner child and serving female emancipation.
​​​​​​​Anthea : "L'amour vaincra!" Bike tour, a magical journey of poetry, romance and resilience through the city walls.

Tours with Anthéa (FR & EN) on June 26 and 27 at 3 pm. 
 

Benjamin Tollet 
Benjamin Tollet leads guided bike tours for Pro Vélo since 2005, then walking tours for Brukselbinnenstebuiten since 2008. Instead of a taking tourist-based approach, he proposes seeing Brussels, a city he considers too little known and neglected by Belgians, with a critical, analytical eye. During these unusual visits, issues emerge such as history and current events, industrialisation and de-industrialisation, the various waves of migration, the multi-faceted and multicultural city, urbanism, mobility, architecture, green spaces, gentrification, and social exclusion. As part of this guided tour proposed by Bozar, Benjamin has chosen to address two of his favourite subjects, namely decolonisation and the multicultural city.

Benjamin will take you on 2 different tours: 

Decolonisation around the Porte de l'Amour (Porte de Namur)

The bike tour will link the old Leopold-era institutions on Rue Brederode and around the Place Royale, the colonial institutions, Porte de Namur, the equestrian statue of Leopold II, the Matongé district with its Place Lumumba, and then on to the Cinquantenaire with its "Arcades des cains coupées" and the Monument of the Belgian pioneers in Congo. Then the Avenue de Tervueren will take us to General Jacques, a soldier with a controversial colonial record.

BXL Melting Pot (Mixity/Brussels multicultural city)
This bike ride will show you the diversity of the districts in our capital, the second most cosmopolitan city in the world after Dubai. It will take in the Portuguese in Flagey, the Eurocrats between Place du Luxembourg and Schuman, the Congolese in Matongé, the Moroccans in Molenbeek, the Turks on Chaussée de Haecht, the French in Châtelain and the Flemish in Rue Dansaert.

Tours with Benjamin (FR & NL) on June 26 at 10 am and July 4 at 10 am.

Decolonisation around the Porte de l'Amour (Porte de Namur)

BXL Melting Pot (Mixity/Brussels multicultural city)

Anne Paulicevich
After working for eight years in different theatre and dance companies in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Berlin, Anne Paulicevich decided to leave the stage to start writing screenplays, while occasionally acting in films such as JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri), Le premier venu (Just Anybody) (Jacques Doillon), Un petit boulot (Odd Job) (Pascal Chaumeil), Earth Rising (Netflix/BBC series by Hugo Blinck) and La fille au bracelet (The Girl with a Bracelet) (Stéphane Desmoustier). Her screenplays include Tango libre (Jury Prize in the Orizzonti section at the Venice Film Festival, Grand Prix at the Warsaw International Film Festival), co-written with Philippe Blasband and directed by Frédéric Fonteyne, in which she plays one of the main roles alongside François Damiens, Sergi López and Jan Hammenecker, and Filles de joie (Working Girls), co-directed with Frédéric Fonteyne.
Anne Paulicevich, Belgian actress and scriptwriter, takes us to ‘her’ Brussels. Along the canal, in the heart of the Marolles, in a hidden garden. At the crossroads of the small history of her memories and the big history of the city, another way to grasp the city!

Tour with Anne (FR) on June 26 and 27 at 10 am
 

Pascal Verbeken 
Pascal Verbeken learned to read, write and gaze out of the window in primary-school classes taught by Mr Walter in a railway estate in Ghent. Since 1990, he has been working for publications such as De Standaard, Humo, De Morgen, Knack, Le Vif/L’Express, De Groene Amsterdammer and Wilfried. He has written books and made several documentaries.
Since October 2020, he has been the Chief Editor of the Dutch-language edition of Wilfried mag, the first Belgian magazine using reports and photographic journalism to cover the entire country, and not only the local region and language group. Wilfried is a quarterly magazine published on paper in Dutch and French. It is produced by a mixed team of Dutch and French speakers, and based on the journalistic philosophy of author Georges Simenon: “Comprendre, ne pas juger” (Understand, do not judge). 
'We travel from the Mont des Arts to the Canal, where we explore a number of neighbourhoods which are undergoing rapid evolution. The Tour & Taxis site, post-industrial Molenbeek, the garden district of Het Rad/La Roue in Anderlecht, Kuregem and its car trade, and the market at the Abattoirs. Districts with a rich history and which reveal the city's future.'  ​​​​​​​
Tour with Pascal on July 3 and 4 at 3 pm

This initiative is part of the Bike Station, a long- term reflection of the Centre for Fine Arts around soft mobility, bike infrastructures, arts and cultural heritage. Supported by Urban.Brussels, it will initiate a series of artistic and discursive initiatives around bikes in 2021-2022