On the narrow Naamsestraat in university town Leuven, there stands a building that seems to breathe with time. Today, it houses STUK – the House for Dance, Image & Sound – yet its walls still remember both scientific laboratories and the vibrant student energy of the 1970s. The history of this place is a prime example of how an artistic institution can reinvent itself without losing its core. From 12 February to 1 March, STUK hosted the “Artefact” festival (launched in 2007) with its unusual title and theme, Grind Grind Grind, Release. An Exhibition as a Massage. The first three Gs signify the grinding of teeth, since each of us experiences touch and massage with a wide spectrum of sensations – from pleasure to discomfort. We attended this art-massage session with the art historian and KU Leuven master’s student in philosophy and cultural studies Anna Volkova.
A few words about the institution itself, which is very much part of KU Leuven. The organisation was founded in 1977 as the student cultural centre ’t Stuc – from STUdentenCentrum. It was a grassroots initiative, born from the university environment and closely linked to KU Leuven. In 2001, a symbolic and structural merger of Stuc and KLAPSTUK (Leuven’s dance festival, established in 1983) took place. The letter C changed to K – and STUK was born. This was no mere cosmetic change: the K referenced KLAPSTUK’s dance legacy while simultaneously establishing the centre’s new identity – larger, interdisciplinary, and open to the city. In Dutch, stuk in a cultural context means “fragment.” STUK in capital letters represents a kaleidoscope of contemporary art, assembled from fragments of dance, music, and visual arts.
The building itself – the former Arenberg university complex of the 1920s – was given a new life in 2002 by architect Willem Jan Neutelings. He transformed the austere academic structure into a “house with many halls” – transparent, permeable, and open to dialogue with the street. The architecture itself functions as a curator: corridors, staircases, windows, and internal courtyards create a sense of movement and intersecting trajectories. Moving from one part of the building to another, we “rebooted our interface,” preparing ourselves to encounter the next set of artefacts.
The Artefact festival posed an unusual question: can an exhibition feel like a massage? Grind Grind Grind, Release. An Exhibition as a Massage, guided by Anna Volkova, invited us to turn our attention to our bodies, where both pleasure and tension reside. The artists explored questions like “what does it mean to desire?” and “what does it mean to come home or feel a sense of belonging?” The candid exhibition both challenges and releases anxiety, with its motto promising, “May you wake up refreshed!”
Key highlights included the performative installation Slowed Landscapes, where Swiss choreographer and visual designer Moni Wespi created a landscape of stones, integrating the human body into the environment. Fabric prints blended participants and performers into the landscape, or conversely, made the landscape itself a performer. In a fast-paced world, slowness became central: micro-movements and stillness blurred boundaries, strengthened connection, and left only the present. Visitors could watch or become a “stone among stones,” aided by a 15-minute audio track, making presence itself a slow journey through space and time.
In Chaque souffle une danse, Lee Mingwei presented alabaster slabs with “breath drawings” on tripod stands forming a swirling constellation. Each drawing emerged at dusk from contemplative breaths, capturing the moment’s atmosphere and emotion. During the festival, the installation was activated at least 12 times in 30-minute meditative performances, with a performer lighting and extinguishing candles to gradually reveal and hide the drawings.
British artist Nicola Turner filled the Studio with large, dark tentacle-like forms made of netted tubes, horsehair, and sheep wool. Each installation is unique, responding to the “genius of the place,” and the organic, uncanny forms elicited curiosity, attraction, and unease, evoking Russian fairy tales of the Baba Yaga hut on chicken legs.
In the sentimental installation The Kiss, French artist Ange Leccia placed two spotlights facing each other, creating a “conversation” and a metaphor for lovers’ encounter. Warmth and energy of the beams extended the fleeting emotional moment. Referencing the sculptural tradition of kisses from Auguste Rodin to Constantin Brancusi, the work subverted familiar codes and preserved a sense of unresolved desire. Even a two-year-old attempted to bring the “light lovers” closer together.
Oliver Beer’s Composition for Face and Hands explored the hidden acoustic properties of the body. Two performative films featured male and female percussionists using each other’s faces as instruments, building gestures from gentle touches to stronger contact to create rhythms and musicality. The piece was both tender and unsettling, its intensity present even in moments of stillness, developing Beer’s earlier work, Composition for Mouths (Songs My Mother Taught Me, 2018).