Several artists accompany us this year in a reflection on the role of productivity in our lives and on the work-life balance, resulting in a poetic investigation of what emerges when production stops.

A factory closing down in Italy, hundreds of workers being laid off, an occupation in solidarity to resist: the Italian company Kepler-452 questions the current logic of production in Il Capitale. Un libro che ancora non abbiamo letto, a powerful hymn to the dignity of work and life.

Choreographer Dana Michel returns to Brussels with the world premiere of MIKE, an unforgettable performance marked by a choreographic reflection on the balance between professional and private life. In the MAD open space, she reproduces a day's work by diverting the gestures of the office and showing the poetry that can arise from the cracks in production.

With Family Portrait, Japanese director Midori Kurata makes her Brussels debut. She recreates an encounter with an insurance broker who tries to convince us that we should make our death profitable. Wouldn’t it be a pity not to have a life insurance, to make death somehow productive?

Amol K Patil pays tribute to the powada tradition – protest songs for workers' rights. With Black Masks on Roller Skates, he creates a performance on roller skates that freely infiltrates the public space. A free exhibition in the Festival Centre at Les Brigittines is also open throughout the festival.

At the Festival Centre you can also take part in the reading club around Nanni Balestrini's 'We Want Everything', a groundbreaking 1971 novel about the strike season and production relations in Italy.