The cause? Filip Gilissen's large-scale light sculpture being lifted up and over the Sint-Lukas University College of Art & Design. Suspended from the top of a crane and made from about 1,000 light bulbs, the installation read "It's All Downhill From Here On". It could be seen flickering across the city, part of the Brussels' skyline.
"It was just a piece of fiction until last night," Gilissen tells me as we look at the now-empty space. "There were so many things working against us: the license, the budget, the crane not working properly..." But it all came together, and a mini-Times Square was created for a few hours.
The Brussels-based artist, who graduated from Sint-Lukas in 2008, still doesn't quite believe they pulled it off. "I'm not an architect. I'm not an engineer. It was madness really," he laughs.
The next opportunity to see the installation will be the evening of 25 March, when it will be suspended from a crane in front of the Brussels Law Court.
Given the location and the timing, many people will read "It's All Downhill" in terms of Belgian politics. It wasn't really meant to be political, "but the timing is very right," Gilissen admits. "It highlights the political non-situation." As with most of his work, he wanted the creation to be "a jolting experience", one that raises questions.
Although the light installation has now left Sint-Lukas, an exhibition of three of his video pieces remains throughout the month. The main screen shows an actor in a gold sequined tuxedo walking around the entrance hall of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, shouting "It's All Downhill From Here On!"
The actor becomes a combination of variety entertainer, preacher and success coach, highlighting a recurring theme in Gilissen's work: the use of platitudes and excessive kitsch to reflect the thrill and celebration that characterises our success-driven society. But there's also an underlying emptiness and disillusionment.
Gilissen made the two other works during a residence exchange in February between Sint-Lukas and the Woodmill in London. His work, plus pieces by the UK's Annie Davey, are on view at the university's gallery under the title Here is there, there: BXL-LDN.
Both Gilissen's London films were shot in public spaces - one in Hyde Park, the other on the London Underground - and continue with the themes of gold, kitsch and ephemeral happiness.
Gilissen always works in gold somewhere: take, for example, his "The Winner Takes it All" at the 2010 Liverpool Biennial, made out of glitter cannons and 100,000 pieces of golden confetti. "It's not gold on which you can build cities or futures," he says. "It's gold that makes you happy for one night - and then it's gone."
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