This month Moving Stories arrived in Brussels, the capital of its coordinator Contour Mechelen, the organisation behind the Biennale of Moving Image (the fifth instalment of which starts later this month).

Moving Stories focuses on “new or innovative narrative strategies”. For the majority of the artists, this innovation in storytelling is propelled by some form of multitude. In “The Character”, Berlinbased artist Candice Breitz shows how young Indian pupils perceive child characters in Bollywood films. Their thoughts and reactions are collaged together based on the verbal content. They discuss the nature of happy endings and the possibility of being encouraged by heartbreaking stories.

In other installations, the notion of quantity in storytelling is more formally inspired. Polish artist Pawel Janicki’s “Oceanus” gives visitors of the film museum Cinematek the opportunity to compose their own stories through an interactive touch screen. In a subterranean space of the Coudenberg palace, meanwhile Italian duo MASBEDO uses three screens of different sizes to work in depth. They show a silent film of a man striking piano keys and imagery of a piano being shot at with an unseen gun. Blow after blow, the shattering of the ivories, the strings and the wooden case produces an unsettling score as the instrument is finally destroyed.

Unknown, hidden dangers are also at stake in Austrian artist Rainer Gamsjäger’s “Cluster” (showing an ominous smoke column within the SQUARE meeting centre) and in the no man’s land of Romanian artist Mihai Grecu’s “Under the Centipede Sun” at Bozar. The source of the aggression is absent from the picture, yet its influence is sensible, almost tactile, especially through the droning sounds that accompany Grecu’s desolate battlefield.

Pride of place has been given Flemish filmmaker Nicolas Provost, whose work is located in Brussels’ Central Station. He’s called the film “Moving Stories”, and it has been selected to screen at the Venice Film Festival later this year (as is his feature film debut The Invader). Commuters at the station rush by stock footage of airplanes floating through the still air. Images that are normally used as fillers now form the main components of Provost’s serene narration. It is a brief moment of tranquillity in an otherwise hectic environment.

“The exhibition shows the value of our heritage by contrasting it with new visual art forms,” says Geneviève Planchard of the organisation Kunstberg, which promotes the newly revived museum district in the centre of the city. Moving Stories has been staged to attract attention to the area, though some of the installations could have done with better visibility for passers-by. Still, worth a small detour, before you take off once again.

Moving Stories

Until 11 September
Across Kunstberg area of Brussels
www.moving-stories.eu