With Ab Chao – LaMouseion by the Belgian artist Koen Vanmechelen, a permanent, living work of art on the campus of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Etterbeek.

On Saturday 23 October, Koen Vanmechelen’s new installation Ab Chao – LaMouseion was inaugurated on the VUB campus. The installation is located on previous students Willy Van De Meeren, where new innovative scientific and socially engaged form projects are given. Ab Chao – LaMouseion grows out of an intense collaboration between Vanmechelen and VUB and ULB around LaMouseion; a daring thought experiment with and for young people, that past within the philosophy and broad history of the VUB that connect art and science. Ab Chao – LaMouseion is part of the Humanistic Sculpture Park, the unique open-air museum with permanent and temporary art collections.

Ab Chao is a living and installation that LABIOMISTA, Vanmechelen’s designed artwork about the mix of life in Genk, with Brussels. The artists will place two objects and neon installations on the iconic Willy Van Der Meeren student residences; “Ab Chao” and “Fertility always comes from outside”.

vanmechelen; “I also inject fertility with chaos on campus. That always comes from outside.” The installation refers to LaMouseion’s knowledge boxes at LABIOMISTA, where the AB OVO neons herald the start of the project. The courtyard is formed into a central garden with a wide variety of herbs, (fruit) trees and plants. While this new Brussels garden stands for domestication, LABIOMISTA stands for the as between domestication and wilderness. According to Vanmechelen, life and innovation can arise from the dance between order and chaos. Vanmechelen: “The egg on top of a building signals a movement, an unthinkable future; the other egg has already hatched, and must speed up the world with its inhabitant. But it balances; it may fall or not.”

Ab Chao – LaMouseion was created within the project The Unthinkable Experiment, which started this summer. Last summer, dozens of students, the latter from the VUB and ULB, came to Genk to participate in this daring thinking experiment with the primary focus. On Saturday 23 October, the participating young people will complete their ‘Chapter Freedom’ in the presence of the interdisciplinary team that helped shape the process. The knowledge experiment is part of Vanmechelen’s LaMouseion project, in collaboration with the VUB, ULB and the Mouth Foundation.

(Photo: Thierry Geenen)