I recently read Zadie Smith’s latest collection of essays, Dead and Alive. In it, I came across a thought that continued to resonate with me: ‘It’s through other people’s novels, other people’s paintings, or other people’s poems and other people’s music that I am made aware that everybody is not like anyone else, and yet we are all stuck inside these flesh cages.’ With this in mind, we shape our programme at Bozar – not from a conviction that we know best, but out of curiosity and a desire to embrace many voices. Like life, art is at once radically solitary and rooted in solidarity. Art celebrates our otherness. Art celebrates our togetherness. At the same time, Smith reminds us that artists never stand alone. What appears original and ingenious, she writes, is at most a rearrangement of existing elements. 

Rearranging. Reassembling. That is the theme of the new season at Bozar. Every year, we invite a Grand Invité to be our central guest. They are welcome to stay in the various rooms of our palace and to invite guests of their own. William Kentridge and The Centre for the Less Good Idea are kicking things off. The name of this artistic workspace says it all. Often, it is not the brilliant ideas but the detours – the seemingly ‘less good’ ideas –that open up new possibilities. 

Reassembling. It means both putting things together differently and coming together again. The Jean Brusselmans retrospective; Edith Dekyndt’s encounter with fashion designer Cristóbal Balenciaga’s legacy; the current-affairs programme Checkpoint Brussels, which brings Dutch and French speakers together; the commemoration of John and Alice Coltrane in the company of their son Ravi; and the Total Immersion music festival: all are invitations to come together and imagine the world differently.