Radio Papesse

In the spring of 2018, the temporary lesbian bar Mothers & Daughters opened in Brussels. This opening brought together a community in deficit. In deficit of place, of celebration and of collective rituals. In the wake of this event whose near disappearance made its presence all more precious, Severine Irène V. Janssen for BNA-BBOT recorded testimonies, conversations and sounds. These recordings took place in the bar and outside the bar and resulted in this radiophonic piece. 

BNA-BBOT is a Brussels-based organisation dedicated to the past, present and future sound memory of Brussels. Since 2000, BNA-BBOT generates a history and memory of the city through the stories and memories of its inhabitants. We’ve compiled closed to 20.000 items of sound data – witness accounts, snippets of conversations, monologues, songs, soundscapes and raw sounds – that form the history of the city. A kind of documentative experience over a very long course, which is not only intended to capture the voices and sounds that pass, but to also create multiple forms that can be heard and returned to the city. All this, in order to have the city actively rework its living memory, and the memory – both present and future – constantly reworked by the city.

Séverine Irène V. Janssen lives and works in Brussels. She studied philosophy but her passion for the way in which history is conceived, written, commented and transmitted, as well as her interest in memory as a political and aesthetic subject led her to take on coordination for BNA-BBOT in 2009.