Tenderness, from the Proto-Indo-European root “-ten,-tan” originally means “to stretch, or to be stretched” and shares its root with tantra. This notion is at the heart of our most intimate moments but is also studied and explored by artists and scholars. During this event we will bring together such artists and scholars who contemplate what happens when we allow ourselves to become tender and intimate with one another. Like pillow talk moments, where boundaries become porous, voices soften, time slows down, and touch takes over. 

What makes up this peculiar horizontal space, and could it be a space of healing trauma? What happens to our binary social constructs or our autonomous individualities, when we intersubjectively, intimately and consciously touch, stretch and merge with one another? And might these radical tender intimacies have the potential to critique or at least complicate dominant notions of sexuality?

17:00 - 18:30 | Panel talk -  Building I ( I.2.0.2) (FREE)
Scholars and artists will share the floor to exchange about their works, stretching the boundaries of sexuality and exploring our relationship to intimacy and tenderness.
With Neoza Goffin (artist), Carla Besora (artist-researcher) and Stephanie Koziej (Artist-researcher and moderator). 

19:00 - 20:00 | Exhibition Guided visit  - Pilar Expo (FREE)
Join us for a guided tour of the exhibition Redefining Sexual Energy. With works by Lucas Dewulf, Simeon Van der Hoeven, Viktoria Krug, Neoza Goffin, Ioa Salden, Annique Delphine. Curated by Neoza Goffin and Maarten Vanermen.

20:30 - 22:30 | Live performances - Pilar Box
In the evening, an intimate immersive experiences and performances, combining Stephanie Koziej’s tender sound, visual, and EEG-installation art, with Neoza Goffin’s touch-based rituals*. The performance will invite the audience to co-create and explore the horizontal space of tenderness through sound, visuals, BCI-technology and the haptic.

*For this event, Neoza developed a low-key ritual for individuals who have no previous experience with touch-based practices. This workshop consists of several exercises that work with touch and eye contact. As she guides you, you will learn to slow down, connect with your sensual self, your own body, and that of others through the basic principles of conscious intimacy and touch-based practices. 

Stephanie Koziej is an interdisciplinary postdoctoral researcher-artist at the K.U.Leuven Institute for Philosophy (PDM internal funds) and Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the UHasselt School of Social Sciences. Stephanie holds a PhD in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies (Emory University) and an MA and Mphil in Philosophy (KULeuven). 
Her research and art ask philosophic, feminist, queer, and psychoanalytic questions about the critical potential of tenderness to rethink phallo-andro-euro-hetero-centric notions of sexuality and subjectivity. Stephanie describes her work as tender activism, shifting the focus from the individual to the tender inter-subjective relationships between and beyond us. Across different scholarly and artistic modalities – from writing, to singing, interactive installations, EEG bio-feedback art, performance art, and teaching – her body of work critiques and aims to subvert the emphasis and obsession with autonomous and invulnerable subjectivity, binary sociality, and goal-oriented sexuality.

Neoza Goffin holds a MA in photography from KASK Ghent (2021). She has collaborated with brands such as La Fille d’O and has her own practice with a dedicated space for weekly touch-based sessions. 
She is an interdisciplinary healing artist, touch-based guide and curator. She explores how the fusion of touch-based rituals and art can be used for psychological transformation. Touch-based practices tap into subtle layers of sexual energy through exercises with touch.
Its goals span from raising awareness of the importance of touch and consent, to the relevance of connecting with your own body and communicating a broader interpretation of intimacy. In her artistic practice, she combines contemporary themes such as sex positivity, body diversity, inclusivity and colour therapy with spiritual symbolism based on Tantra, Tao and Buddhism. She uses installation, photography, VR, video and performance. As an interdisciplinary healing artist she builds a bridge between art, fashion and healthcare. She performs touch-based rituals with installations in exhibitions and galleries

Carla Besora Barti is a visual artist and feminist researcher. She is currently conducting her doctoral research in the ERC-funded LiLI project, which examines intimacy in later life and the unruly practices, spaces and representations of women. As part of the LiLI project, she applies a visual anthropological approach to explore notions of erotic wisdom and the unruliness of pleasure. She holds an MA in Visual Arts from LUCA Ghent (2017) and an inter-university MA in Gender and Diversity (2021) organised by the five Dutch-speaking Belgian universities. Her dissertation focused on the figure of the witch as a contemporary counter cultural symbol.  
She has a background in drawing and illustration and has been involved in organising art and self-publishing collectives, shape-shifting book clubs and other forms of cultural agitation. She is particularly interested in the intertwining of the poetic and the political in the fields of gender, sexuality, religion/spirituality and visual culture.