Q-O2 has been a workspace for experimental contemporary music and sound art since 2006, and has its own space in the Brussels canal zone.

As a workspace, Q-O2 straddles both the burgeoning of artistic ideas and their concrete materialisation with presentation to an audience, and as such is above all centred around process and research. In musical terms Q-O2 explores mainly three lines of approach: improvisation (both acoustic and electronic), composed music, and installation/sound art. However, through its conceptual preoccupations, Q-O2 easily finds itself open to other disciplines, whether they be artistic or scientific.

In practice, the Q-O2 workspace operates at different levels. At the heart of its activities, it offers working residencies to artists with (if required) the opportunity of feedback and/or visibility as a result of organising demonstration moments. At set times and places, artists who are already established on their own path and are associated with what is happening in and around the workspace, are invited to present concerts, either at the workspace itself or in cooperation with larger venues.

Q-O2 believes that the innovation of art is above all a collective event, in which ideas and strategies can be compared against one another, picked up and further developed, with this inspiration then turning into something concrete which can be communicated in a corresponding form (for example, as a presentation, installation and such like). In this sense, Q-O2 behaves in similar way to a beehive, in that access is available to all at their own pace. Q-O2's own projects help to remind itself of its mission statement and, if necessary, to update it. Its projects interact with those of its residents, and constitute a status quo of what is going on in the workspace in relation to the artistic world outside.

Q-O2 started offering working residencies when it became a workspace and had acquired its own space to work in. Just like any scientific laboratory, it allows time and space to experiment and carry out research. The continuous influx of personalities, artistic ideas, ways of approaching things, technical and logistic questions, has fueled its ongoing continuation. The output is just as diverse as the different aspects of the residencies. Whilst some experiments eventually proved to be fruitless, or remained unnoticed by the outside world, others prompted artists to make a giant leap forward, to find their way to bigger stages, in releasing an important CD or in joining forces with others in blossoming collaborations. If useful and desirable, Q-O2 helps artists move on to more visible venues and contexts. Linked to this, there is cooperation and partnership with larger establishments to include experimental music and sound art in their programmes, thereby reinforcing and raising the profile of these mediums themselves.

Q-O2 Residency offer:

− music, sound art, composition, improvisation
− open to visual art, still and moving image, performance
− field recording
− urban multicultural context: geographically, politically, socially, urban planning
− language, gender, identity
− studio work (no soundproof studio)
− meeting local artists and organisations
− basic technical equipment, technical support, rental budget for specific material
− accommodation, travel expenses, small per diem
− request to working with, or presenting to a group once a week (youth, amateurs, students)
− flexible dates

Connected are the residencies at the School van Gaasbeek (BE), Moks (ES), Koumaria (EL)
www.q-o2.be
www.facebook.com/qo2workspace