Vincent Meessen in residence at Agency

Vincent Meessen is one of the six artists invited to activate Agency’s Praticotheque in 2026. The Praticotheque is the space where the List of Things and Kobe Matthys’ library are installed. Meessen will mainly focus on Thing 000782 (Bruits de la nature n.2), in relation with a film work in development.

Agency vzw was founded in 2019 by artist and activist Kobe Matthys (1970–2023) together with a group of people to support the activity of Agency as a practice.

Agency is the generic name of a Brussels-based agency that was established in 1992. Agency constitutes a growing list of things that resist the split between the classifications of “culture” and “nature” and consequently between ‘expressions’ and ‘ideas’, ‘creations’ and ‘facts’, ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’, ‘humans’ and ‘non-humans’, ‘originality’ and ‘tradition’, ‘individuals’ and ‘collectives’, etc… These things are derived from juridical processes, lawsuits, cases, controversies, affairs and so forth around intellectual property more specificaly copyrights, patents, trade marks, etc… The concept of intellectual property relies upon the assumption of the division between ‘culture’ and ‘nature’. Each thing on the list calls forth the moment of hesitation in terms of this division. Agency invokes things from it’s list in varying assemblies. Each assembly explores topologically a different question of the performative consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property for an ecology of art practices.

The organisation’s purpose is ‘to explore the interference of the apparatus of intellectual property law for an ecology of artistic practices and to revive a sustainable diversity of practices.’

A praticotheque is what Kobe envisioned the ensemble of the space, the List and library to be. An environment built to allow research, debate and alliance between practices.

In a trajectory supported by the Flemish Community, Agency vzw is today working on ways to open up the praticotheque to the public and continue the practice of Agency.