Dear Antwerp
Metropolis is a youth festival and will be organized in 2026 for and by young people, together with numerous cultural, social, and educational partners in the city. How do they (young people) see the future with the man and the machine?
At Dear Antwerp, we kick off the start of this process. Expect a program featuring podcasts, theater, music, music theater, workshops, film, catwalk, spoken word and dance at Kunsthumaniora Antwerp.
Kaz Mose
During the festival, Kaz Mose presents a new video installation entitled The Future Project//:The Nest of Sapiomortus, which questions the distinction between past, present, and future. In a layered visual language, Kaz weaves together personal and collective temporalities into a poetic space where time is no longer a straight line but a circular flow. What disappears returns. And what is yet to come is already palpable.
Kaz Mose is a Tehran-born, Brussels-based artist and filmmaker. Their work moves between film, installation, and text, exploring themes such as time, mythology, politics, and transformation. With a multidisciplinary background, they create poetic spaces where fiction, history, and future visions merge. Their films and installations have been shown at various international festivals and platforms.
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‘Pulse Forward' - BL!NDMAN;
A recording of a workshop that conveys what it is like for a professional music ensemble to work with a group of vulnerable urban youngsters. In the workshop, BL!NDMAN [drums] experiments with describing and exploring vulnerable emotions, such as fear and anger, that they feel in relation to the current state of the world and the perception of their future plans. These emotions are then transformed into something auditory. Using a wide range of percussion instruments and technology accessible via smartphones, they learn to experiment with sound and music.
Credits:
Youngsters of KRAS Berchem
BL!NDMAN [drums] (Ward De Ketelaere, Gideon Van Canneyt)
NO LABEL
At Metropolis @Dear Antwerp, NO LABEL (Abel Baeck) will bring his live set as the closing act. Expect music that will make your hips move.
Abel Baeck obtained his master’s degree in music composition in Antwerp. With a classical background, he specializes in creating EDM in genres such as garage, drum ’n’ bass, house, and techno. Under the artist name NO LABEL, Abel brings together his electronic experiments in a live set or DJ performance. You may have already seen him on stages such as De Singel (Antwerp), Maanrock (Mechelen), Theater Aan Zee (Ostend), Bushfest (Haacht), and many others.
Abel is one of the four members of the music events collective SKUNKED OUT SOUND, which is dedicated to bringing British underground sounds – jungle, UK garage, dubstep, and drum ’n’ bass – to Belgium.
eldarova
At Metropolis @Dear Antwerp, eldarova will bring an experimental musical set of diary tantrums, bruises, and popping candy, in which we as humans reconcile ourselves with the modern machine.
Armed with a hunger for broken tinkering, eldarova creates a howling noise found only in the mind of a child raised by Disney and climate change.
Honey Esohe Azamosa
During Metropolis @Dear Antwerp, Honey will create a live painting inspired by the visitors’ visions of the future. Their dreams, worries, and desires together form the starting point for a collective artwork that brings the shared imagination of the future to life.
Honey Esohe Azamosa (also known as Honeyzinzs) is a multidisciplinary artist, born and raised in Nigeria. His work is nourished by his personal history and environment, and explores the layered reality of human connections. Through painting, he investigates themes such as intercommunication and the search for truth in a world full of contradictions.
Jente Jabob
Jente Jacob will present a musical storytelling theatre piece about both the forgotten German jazz pianist Jutta Hipp, as well as a song inspired by her story. In addition, she will also share her own story about how she envisions her future as a person and as an artist.
As a singer-songwriter, Jente Jacob moves on the borderline between music and language. Her songs – in both English and Dutch – are inspired by influences from the world of jazz and arise from a deep sense of rhythm, emotion, and sound. In addition to her work as a musician, Jente also writes texts independent of music, focusing on the feeling behind language and carefully seeking the right sentence structure and meaning. She investigates how language and music can reinforce one another and strives, through her work – musical or literary – to provoke a direct response from her audience.
Credits:
Concept, performance & vocals: Jente Jacob
Coaching: Pieter-Jan De Wyngaert
Production: fABULEUS
With the support of the City of Leuven and the Flemish Community
CO-DE.tech
Long Tran Tang will present an ongoing workshop under his brand CO-DE.tech, in which he aims to raise awareness about the possibilities of upcycling. He encourages creativity within the boundaries of clothing that already exists. The blueprint of design.
Long Tran Tang is a German creative with Vietnamese roots, based in Antwerp. He graduated from the Akademie Mode & Design in Berlin and founded his own label CO-DE.tech. With this brand, he focuses on sustainability, uniqueness, and creativity, with the human aspect always at the core of his practice.
Mira Biermans
Mira Biermans will explore the boundaries between the natural and the artificial body, between control and surrender, between humanity and object.
Mira Biermans is a dancer and performer with a classical background. She trained at the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp and later specialized in contemporary dance at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. During her studies, she collaborated with various choreographers and was given the space to create her own work. Her artistic research revolves around themes such as The Metal Body, The Machine Body, and The Puppet Body.
Faux real
DEAR HUMANS ITS TIME TO REINVENT YOURSELF FAUX REAL
This theatrical one-human concert will be performed in English, Dutch, Spanish, French & German.
That way il y a para todas las personas wat wils.
Jip Arickx moves between electronic music and performance. Their work explores the twilight zones of now–later, yin–yang, being–becoming. Where these extremes gently touch and influence each other. In a theatrical way, Jip celebrates the beauty that lies within this endless process of transformation.
TRANSLAB youth project
Muziektheater Transparant & DE SINGEL Summer Sessions
“Young people make the city.” That is the message reverberating throughout our society. But what will that city look like in, say, 100 years? Muziektheater Transparant and De Singel Summer Sessions head out with a new generation of young makers towards the city of tomorrow. They project Fritz Lang’s futuristic cityscape onto their own environment. What do you see, hear and feel in the streets? Who lives there? And is it still even liveable?
Catwalk - Madam Fortuna
Catwalk is a fashion project in which six participants worked together for four months around the question: what will fashion look like 100 years from now?
Using recycled materials, they developed their own fashionable creations, each starting from a personal vision of the future. The result is six worlds, each showing a unique perspective and imagination.
The participants followed a total of eight workshops, in which they experimented, learned, and developed their ideas. From this experience they are now creating a show in which their designs – and the process behind the scenes – are presented.
As a visitor, you get the chance to make a leap in time and experience fashion through the eyes of these young makers.
Credits:
Long Tran Thang (CO-DE.tech)
Jasmine Van Troostenberghe (nonage)
Sttefany Benscome (nonage)
Yohan Chauve Alvarez
Micha Celis
Nazrana Afzali
Under the guidance of Ageeba Kromah
Soldiers of Love
We, the youngsters of Tutti Fratelli, want to launch a “Guerilla of Love” in the city for Metropolis, letting a storm of real love sweep through town.
Why?
Because many people, and certainly we youngsters too, wander around in this fucked-up world searching for a little bit of real contact and real love.
That’s why we decided to become “Soldiers of Love”!!!
From our headquarters we come up with the coolest actions that we want to spread throughout the city.
The first brainstorms are now, at this very moment, being kept secret.
At Dear Antwerp we will show you, in a short documentary of about ten minutes, a few places and plans we are hatching.
Interested? Wanna join us?
Then send us a message!
Address to follow…
Long live love!!!
爱情万岁!!!
Leve de liefde!!!
Viva el amor!!!
Big Me, is Witching Me
A raw look into a work that is still in research.
Together with ten young performers from Belgium, each with their own background, Madam Fortuna explores the themes of self-censorship, censorship, media censorship, and dictatorship. The material is not finished yet, but you are already invited to experience it — through dance, song, slam poetry, theatre, and poetry.
A vulnerable glimpse of what is growing and taking shape, on the way to the premiere in 2026 at hetpaleis.
Credits – Performance & Concept:
- Faisal Muhammadu
- Louai Hashem
- Ellis Slivnojs
- Charity Osei
- Basile Mees
- Ahmed Alhadeethi
- Iraide San José Vega
- Fanny Gevaert
- Ahmed Al Hamdan
- Briseïs Goris
Guidance: Hussein Al-Khalidi
