WHAT WE WILL is a collective of artists who convene in and use public space for learning through interaction and production. ‘What We Will’ was a slogan used by various 19th century labour movements as part of the struggle to reduce working hours. One proposal was to partition the days into 3 equal parts of 8 hours: designated for work, for rest and for ‘free time’ or indeed “time to do what we will”. We adopted this motto as we aim to re-evaluate the meaning of ‘work’ in the current socio-economic conditions through our collective practice.
We’ve come to focus on the process of felting and on the possibilities for felted rugs to serve as a platform to
generate activities, stories or ideas. The nature of such rugs – which are both produced and later used on the ground– underlines the horizontal organisation of our collective. The wool we gather is a natural product with unique material properties but is nonetheless considered a waste product in the Central-European context. The slow production processes that we engage with stimulate conversation within the group, and working in public space allows encounters with coincidental guests. Both informal group-learning, skill-sharing and other types of exchanges were the early foundations of our collective. In fact, we got started when a farmer offered a large quantity of wool in exchange for help with the physically demanding harvesting of apples at his orchard. We gathered to clean, dye and felt this first batch of wool, and as we progressed more people expressed their interest to participate.

Our intention is by no means to be restrictive in terms of materials or techniques, however we decided to continue exploring the potential which felting processes hold, as there is much more beyond the mere processes or histories of carpet making. We search for answers through practising. Can traditional techniques continue to be relevant nowadays, perhaps through their potential as communal activities? Can they be re-interpreted and adapted to contemporary public spaces? And can public space temporarily become an open work space? What tools are readily available and what still needs inventing? What does it mean to do things slowly?

This brings us not only to the context but also to the lengthy working period offered through the Associated Artists Program, which is part of its appeal to us. We would like to explore what the significance can be of collective labour and commonality in the context of the capital as well as the origins and meaning of existing ornaments as they occur in the hyper diverse socio-cultural landscape of Brussels.
The deep-dive residency periods would challenge us to set up local supply chains for wool and other materials and build new networks for sharing or exchanging resources, spaces and so on. Whilst not all current members of our collective are based in Belgium these would be the main moments for us to reconvene, and to invite people from local communities and other guests in order to exchange expertise. In terms of our own internal learning goals, it is urgent for us to rethink how we ‘show’ the results of our existing work (with more focus on their activation) and develop ideas around wool’s potential in an age of ever greater scarcity of energy and resources.