Parcours d'Artistes: Artistic encounters in Saint-Gilles and Forest

This year is Saint-Gilles' 800th anniversary and it's been 600 years since the locals started cultivating and developing the Brussels sprout on these hillsides overlooking Brussels from the south.

It is also the 14th edition of Saint-Gilles' biennial Parcours d'Artistes (Forest joined the party two years ago) which features 430 artists living and/or working in the two boroughs.

For two weekends and two nocturnes, 360 artists' studios will be open to the public as is usual for the event, but this year a special emphasis has been put on the place of art and the artist in public spaces.

The result is that there will be things to do and see all month long, not just the weekends, with 10 public outdoor installations ranging from Fred Martin's Giant Head in Forest Park to Dewi Brunet's small origami peppering the façades of St-Augustine Church in Forest and Saint-Gilles city hall and substantial exhibitions in various places such as the BRASS, the Abbey of Forest and the Horta Museum.

"Parcours d'Artistes has always had the ambition to create a meeting point between the widest possible public and artistic applications, but not in the conventional locations or manners," the event's manifesto says.

"We prefer to think of this as person-to-person encounters rather than as an event. Our aim is to create a more intimate, informal approach between the public and the artist in his or her place of work."

Speaking of his origami, French expat and urbanist Dewi Brunet explains: "I'm going to put these origami to question the size of this huge building compared to the human scale of the citizen passing by. I'm trying to make people look differently and curiously at questions of scale."

For "L'Etre" (The Being), Fred Martin is creating, with the help of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, a monumental head six metres high in Forest Park with a mouth wide open so that passers-by can enter the head which becomes a stage on which performances or lectures or just encounters will take place.

One of the exhibitions at the BRASS is a photography show entitled The River That Swallows All Rivers by Colin Delfosse. It explores the remnants of various out-sized projects ordered by Mobutu Sese Seko during his 32 years in power, often for his personal use, all across what was then called Zaïre. Now in grandiose decay these projects show us the impermanence of power - even if absolute.

Parcours d'Artistes Saint-Gilles/Forest, 28-29 May and 4-5 June. Nocturnes on 27 May and 3 June from 20.00 to midnight