The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet

Save the date! Border Buda second edition : 20-22 June 2025

About

I wish that those who take me for granite
would once in a while treat me like mud.
Ursula K. Le Guin

The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet is the closing chapter of Border Buda, a three-year cultural project taking place in Buda, an industrial neighbourhood where the Northern outskirts of Brussels cross into Vilvoorde and Machelen in Flanders.

As a vast landscape of enclosed factories, large-scale infrastructures and bewildered in-betweens, with the Brussels canal and the Zenne river piercing through the area, and the ring road viaduct towering over it, Buda seems an eerie place — empty and unwelcoming.

But is Buda really as inhospitable as it pretends to be? Carefully hidden behind its factory facades, the area is buzzing with activity: car repair shops, caterers, wedding halls, storage spaces, security businesses, small factories, delivery services, plumbers, moving companies, recording studios, slaughterhouses, makeshift homes. A kind of Brussels backoffice, Buda is delivering all the services the city needs, including sheltering what — and who — it displaces.

As effective as Buda’s camouflaging might be for some, it also makes it a target for real estate development and speculation. Its extensive provision of land and space, its vicinity to the city and major transport axes, as well as the general awkwardness that is projected on these so-called leftover pieces of city, rush both private and public redevelopment and ‘optimisation’ schemes.

But what if the ‘friche’ — the urban jungle, the wild beyond¹ — is the ideal to strive for? A ‘nomansland’ that is everyone’s land, packed with ghosts from the past, the present and the future? All this talk of ‘inclusive cities’, ‘mixed-use spaces’, ‘circular economy’, ‘wild green spaces’— what if this is already in front of us, and we’re just incapable of seeing it? What if the future of Buda is already there?

In The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet artists, architects, writers, researchers, radio makers and activists speculate on possible futures for Buda through the many ghosts that inhabit it. In their presence, they experiment with alternative modes of viewing, valuing and being in Buda, to dislodge its ‘development’ agenda and broaden its imaginaries, models and typologies. Together they assemble around the question: who do we develop for and with, and why?

Land is a crucial vehicle through which cities and landscapes are increasingly financialised, but this often happens out of sight. Also in Buda, stretches of land are purchased as quiet commodities for speculation: just lying there, waiting until development drives land prices skywards. Also public lands offer a potential canvas for profit-driven real estate schemes, as authorities often need private investors to ‘develop’ their lands, or take over their models and modes of thinking.

The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet takes this as a cue to imagine and rehearse another understanding of land, beyond property, towards something that is affective and relational, that departs from the different kinds of bodies it holds and grounds. An understanding of land that is a practice of being with land.

Buda is built on a swamp. An unstable, wet and fluid swamp that is contained, stabilized and drained by large-scale factories, bridges and infrastructures. But the swamp has its ways. Cracks in the lands reveal the close presence of the water underneath — probably Buda’s largest ghost. A ghost that is very much alive. It is a landscape that is also a body. It is a Woman and She Thinks She is a Planet².

The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet is Agency & Wim Cuyvers & Raphael Pirenne & guests, Nick Aikens, Kübra Avci, Beverly Buchanan, Elia Castino, Lara Claes, Sarah Demoen, Lucile Desamory, Carola Caggiano & Transport, Delphine Dutoit, José De Jong, Alejandro Rivas Cottle & Ermias Kifleyesus, Radio Fantôme & The Kitchen & RITCS & Radio Haren & guests, Fairuz Ghamman & Mourad Ben Amor, Raphael Grisey & Bouba Touré, Ola Hassanain, Tomoko Hojo, Liesbeth Henderickx, Katja Mater, Jota Mombaça, Laura Muyldermans & Bart Decroos & guests, Tijana Petrović, Bosse Provoost & Ezra Veldhuis, Anouk Roosen, Els Silvrants-Barclay, Vandana Singh, Sarah Smolders, Nadia Verbeeck and more to come.

Credits

The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet is organised by Border Buda, a three-year-project of the cities of Vilvoorde, Machelen and Brussels.

Border Buda was conceived by its coordinator Sarah Demoen.

A working group of local policymakers and representatives of local cultural associations is following the project. Lara Claes is the Border Buda production collaborator.

Koi Persyn and Anna Laganoska curated the first exhibition in the 3-year trajectory, with commissions to make a work in public space to Katja Mater, Evita Vasiljeva, Haseeb Ahmed, Ilke Gers, Nico Neefs & Colas Fiszman, Amel Omar, Elias Cafmeyer, Ignace Wouters, Marine Kaiser, Pieter Chanterie, Nel Maertens, Zinaïda Tchelidze. This took place alongside research on Buda’s heritage under the guidance of a research group called Het Be(h)lang van Buda. This led to an audio walk made by Lionel Galand, an event to collect local stories, and a series of audio recordings by Rina Govers.

Els Silvrants-Barclay is the leading curator for the final chapter of Border Buda, together with Nick Aikens, and assisted by Anouk Roosen and Tijana Petrović. The final chapter is made possible thanks to the Border Buda project funded by the Flemish Government and the city authorities of Vilvoorde, Machelen and Brussels that initiated it, with additional support of local partners Firma, Buda Bxl and GC De Linde as well as support from Kanal Centre Pompidou, RITCS, POM, Province of Flemish Brabant, VGC and the various individuals that carry and support the project.

^[1] Jack Halberstam, introduction to Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, The Undercommons (2013)

^[2] The Woman Who Thinks She Was a Planet is also the title of a short story by Vandana Singh (2008)