For Brussels, this is the renovation of the century. The KANAL-Centre Pompidou, on an area of 40,000 m², is without exaggeration will become the most powerful art cluster in the Belgian capital. Construction has entered its active phase and the professional curatorial team has launched a PR campaign, inviting all the media to the construction site, providing us with helmets and finding out in advance the shoe size for our serious boots. The scale of the reconstruction of the former garage of the Citroën automobile producer, built in the 1930s in the modernist style with its characteristic abundance of glass and metal, is a gigantic performance in itself, astonishing in its scope. From the very beginning, the project was divided into stages, controversial (the Belgian art community was polarised over the Centre Pompidou prefix and the participation of the French exhibition monster) and visionary. A couple of years ago, we were lucky enough to see a stunning performance by Romeo Castellucci in the preparatory phase with what appeared to us, sitting on cushions on concrete slabs, to be surrounded by giant actors flipping and breaking old Citroens (whose garage it was!). Each stage achieved a different goal. There were a couple of exhibitions in the southern side of the building. The general manager of the project, Yves Goldstein, seems to have nerves of iron to spin the flywheel of the giant machine so gradually.

So far, the building is just taking shape: concrete walls, scaffolding, huge spaces. But you can already feel the incredible energy and scale of the project in the air. Empty squares, where concrete is replaced by communications, and only rare architectural elements hint at future grandeur. The cosiness of the usual museum is not here yet, but there is a living pulse of the construction site, which the curators call ‘a place without strict frames, where life itself fills the voids’. And when you feel this energy, you realise that it will be so.

The halls were particularly impressive: some of them reach 1500 m², providing space for grand installations and exhibitions, a cinema-concert hall and a library. A special place is the children’s playground, which is designed by the famous British studio Assemble. At the moment it is still sketches and first constructions, but what is important is that local children are already involved in the process. They are organising workshops and playtests here, creating a playground in co-creation. As a response to the criticism of ‘foreign agents’ (Centre Pompidou), from the very beginning KANAL has been developed as a real social project. The team actively engages with the residents of Molenbeek, Laeken and Quartier Nord, gathering feedback and setting up committees of local people. The curators admit that they don’t yet know how to use many of the spaces themselves and are waiting for life to come up with solutions. This, in my opinion, is the art project of the future! The museum is far from being completed, but already today KANAL-Centre Pompidou looks like a space for experimentation and open dialogue. There are still more questions than answers, but this is what makes the project alive and interesting. And it seems that it is in this dialogue with the city that the future of KANAL is born.

The art-director and an architect of a new museum since 2021 is Kasia Redzisz – Polish art historian and curator. She was appointed to this position after being selected by an independent jury. However, the board of directors initially proposed to split the artistic director role between her and Bernard Blistène, director of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. This decision sparked criticism from cultural figures who saw it as sexist and ignoring the jury’s opinion. In response to protests, Redzisz was confirmed as the sole artistic director, while Blistène continued collaborating with the institution in a different role.

Bio

Kasia Redzisz has got a master’s degree in art history from the University of Warsaw in 2007. From 2010 to 2015, she worked as an assistant curator at Tate Modern in London and then became a senior curator at Tate Liverpool. Before that, she held the position of curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and was director of Open Art Projects in Poland. Her independent work includes numerous interdisciplinary projects, including the first exhibition at Muzeum Susch in Switzerland in 2019 and the fourth edition of the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara in 2021. She is also the author of books, exhibition catalog editors, and contributor of articles to journals such as Frieze, Mousse, and Tate Etc.