A new de-performance project by Koen Vanmechelen
With Breaking the Cage, LABIOMISTA opens a new philosophically art project that takes you into a shared experience of growth, limitation, and liberation. The listening piece and sculptures together form a poetic parcours that invites you to pause, to listen, and to feel what is moving within our own,often invisible, cages.
Breaking the Cage resonates within the annual theme Never Alone: a reminder that life, growth, and creation always arise in relation. It is an ode to vulnerability, to connection, and to the shared nature of being.
A story that spans generations
Breaking the Cage finds its origin in an image that never left artist Koen Vanmechelen since childhood: a chick hatching from its egg.
That simple, universal moment of liberation evolved over the years into a sculpture, a book with Gregie De Maeyer, a philosophical school trajectory, and international exhibitions.
Today, this story returns to LABIOMISTA and takes on a new form in a co-creation with slam poet Lisette Ma Neza:
a de-performance, a living installation in which sculptures, sound, voices, and movement flow into one another. Not something that is performed, but something that emerges, together with you.
Breaking the Cage invites you to be present in what is unfolding, in what is breaking, between place, sound, and movement.
Beyond the Cage.
Please note: the listening parcours is currently available in Dutch only.
In movement, transformation unfolds.
A listening work along mental, social, and structural cages
Breaking the Cage is a site-specific listening experience that guides visitors from The Ark, beneath The Battery, into the park, all the way to the marble Cosmogolem.
A collective project
Breaking the Cage — Listening work, de-performance, 2026
Concept & sculptures — Koen Vanmechelen
Poetry & vocals — Lisette Ma Neza & The Poetry Band
Podcast & audio — Raf Stevens & Peter Dupont
With contributions by — Aiko, Rani, Byonde, Jonathan, Ilham, Kyra and Jill
Music & soundscapes — Igor Maseroli (sax), Stoffel Hias (guitar), Nektar Kiopex (didgeridoo)
Produced by BatProductions (Joris Peeters)
Coordination — Petra Remans
With special thanks to Il Granito and the Dual Learning metal programs at SyntraPXL
