This is a Place for Us, STUK, Leuven, Belgium, 2026

Grind Grind Grind, Release: An Exhibition as a Massage, curated by STUK’s Karen Verschooren, takes bodywork as its curatorial mood and method. Inevitably, such a premise also presses on the underacknowledged ways in which curatorial praxes, and artworks, are massaging their viewers already: applying pressure, granting relief, proposing conduits for intimacy, entering value exchanges, pushing for minor modulations of comportment or mood. It’s funny – weird funny, not ha ha funny – that the same tempo that lulls tense mus- cles into a state of relaxation, the four-beat ‘Grind, Grind, Grind, Release,’ could equally describe bruxism. The last time I got a massage, a hot-stone affair in the American Southwest during a regional

power outage, it felt a lot like bruxism. Pleasure, while probable, is neither guaranteed nor total. There’s always the off chance you’ll grind your teeth to dust.