Filmmaker Chantal Akerman will present A Family in Brussels (1998), a fictional stream-of-consciousness text, in four performances at Dia Center for the Arts, October 11 through 14, 2001. This will be the first English-language production of a work, Une famille à Bruxelles, Akerman wrote and performed as a monologue in theaters in Paris and Brussels. Laced with autobiographical references and embodying multiple viewpoints, this theatrical reading is informed by Akerman's singular voice as she muses on familial relations, communication, and closeness and distance.

Chantal Akerman
Chantal Akerman was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1950. In the early 1970s, when Akerman was living in New York, she encountered the experimental cinema of Jonas Mekas, Michael Snow, and Andy Warhol. Employing similar approaches -- with lingering shots, minimal dialogue, deserted spaces, and symmetry -- her films explore such themes as the passage of time and ritualistic behaviors. In 1968, at age eighteen, Akerman made her first short film, Saute ma ville, inspired by Jean Luc Godard's film Pierrot Le Fou. Her many other films include Hôtel Monterey (1972), one of two short films she made during her first trip to New York; Je, tu, il, elle (1974), her first feature-length film, which is now considered a classic in its exploration of female desire; Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Brussels (1975), her most celebrated work; Toute une nuit (1982); Nuit et jour (1991); Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (1993); Un divan à New York (1996); Sud (1999); and La Captive (2000), based on one part of Marcel Proust's A La Recherche du Temps Perdu.

Akerman exhibited D'Est (1993), a multi-projection portrait of Eastern Europe, at the Jewish Museum in 1997. She was included in the 2001 Venice Biennale; the XVI International Video and Multimedia Arts Festival at the Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris in 2001; and the Media City Seoul 2000 biennial, in Korea. Akerman lives and works in Paris, France.

Hours and Admission
A Family in Brussels will be presented Thursday through Saturday, October 11, 12, and 13, at 6:30 pm, and Sunday, October 14, at 5 pm, at Dia Center for the Arts, 545 West 22nd Street (between 10th and 11th avenues), New York City. Admission is $20, $15 for students, seniors, and Dia members.

Support for this performance has been provided by AFAA, Association Française d'Action Artistique, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères.

Dia Center for the Arts
Established in 1974, Dia Center for the Arts plays a vital role among visual arts institutions nationally and internationally by initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects in nearly every medium, and by serving as a primary locus for interdisciplinary art and criticism. Its first major projects were long-term sited works of art not likely to be accommodated by conventional museums because of their nature or scale, created by artists such as Walter De Maria, Dan Flavin, and Donald Judd.

Dia presents a temporary exhibition program in its renovated warehouse buildings in Chelsea, New York. Supplementary programming in Chelsea includes commissioned artists' projects for the web, lectures, poetry readings, film and video screenings, performances, scholarly research and publications, symposia, and an arts education program that serves area students. Dia is currently constructing a new facility in Beacon, New York, sixty miles north of New York City, to display its permanent collection, which comprises in-depth holdings of many of the most important artists of the 1960s and 1970s.