The Lodgers programme is a collaboration between AIR Antwerpen and the M HKA. Together, they invite some of the most imaginative artistic initiatives to occupy the exhibition spaces on the 6th floor of the M HKA.

The programme offers organisations and initiatives that specifically focus on production and commission assignments, but do not have their own presentation space, i.e., a unique opportunity to address the public. Lodgers can be publishers, commission agencies, research initiatives, labels, collectives, discussion platforms or other initiatives that experiment with artistic practice and are interested in living, working or performing in Antwerp.

ARIA (Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts) develops and supervises research in, about and with the arts. For Lodgers, the institute unfolds activities and presentations that demonstrate both the specificity of research and its wide range. Between March 31 and June 24, performances, lectures, discussions and public lectures are held in an artistic context that highlights the rather 'speculative scholarly' activities of artists. Fiction and imagination are crucial research tools to understand reality. Research in the arts shows that reality can not only be examined, but is also made using research. Art, fiction and imagination are at any rate indispensable to look at reality. Without fiction, there is no non-fiction, without art no reality.