On 7th February I’ll be back in Brussels for a performance at Public Domain Day

The Public Domain Day is celebrating works of art which enter into the public domain because their copyrights have expired. These works can be freely enjoyed, used, changed, republished by everybody. Worldwide, this The Public Domain Day is celebrated on the first of January, and this year we celebrate, with a slight delay, the works of authors and artists who died in 1944. In Brussels, the Public Domain Day is celebrated by a yearly event that is organised by Constant, CRIDS (Centre de Recherche Informatique et Droit, FUNDP Namur), Cinema Nova and the Royal Library of Belgium.

The afternoon takes place at the Royal Library and is dedicated to Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the writer of Le Petit Prince. He
is a special case because he ’died for the fatherland’ and that delivered him a copyright extension of 30 years according to the French law. In Belgium as in the rest of the world, his work is free of rights since 1th January 2015.

The evening programme takes place at Cinema Nova.

For this performance myself, Michael Murtaugh, Anne Laforet, Gijs De Heij, and An Mertens will be performing in the Botopera.

Fats Waller, Nicolas Tesla, Beatrix Potter, Sergei Rachmaninov and Henri La Fontaine are some of the many artists who have left this world during the second world war. These authors will be reanimated in the form of a “chatbot”: a small software program that automatically intervenes in a chat conversation pretending to be human. The bots, the public, the printers and the projected images work together in this interactive performance.

With : BotsWaller, NICKola tesla, Beatrix Plotter, Rachmanibot, henrIRC lafontaine & their plotter

It’s all free and starts from about 20:00