In The Spotlight: Rather witch?!

Rather lesbian?! Rather queer?! Rather witch?! With Shif—t*, we reclaim these questions as the starting point for an exploration of the witch as a historical and contemporary battlefield. Not a dusty past, but a flashpoint where mechanisms of control and resistance converge. The witch hunts were a tool to discipline bodies, sexuality, and labour. That struggle is not over; it echoes in today’s pressure on reproductive rights and the exploitation of marginalised groups.

In the archives of the Suzan Daniel Fund and Amsab-ISG, we found traces of the Ghent-based left-lesbian collective Liever Heks (Rather Witch), which broke the silence in 1978 with their newspaper Heksenvoer (Witch Feed). We recognise their anger and their refusal to conform to the ‘heteromyth’, though we also look critically at where their discourse chafes today. For them, witchcraft represented the grievance of the oppressed: a revolt against a patriarchal culture.

In the S.M.A.K. collection, we encounter a silence representative of many institutions: historically, only 16.5% of the acquired works were created by women. Queer voices are barely traceable in the collection; they remained under the radar of a society that for decades operated from a heteronormative standard. This void in the narrative is not evidence of their absence, but of an active exclusion from historiography. Shif—t claims the space to make these frayed edges of history visible at last.

During three activations on 4, 18, and 30 April, we turn the archive into a public process. We invite you to share your own stories and materials alongside the archival pieces. Through collective actions such as collage, screen printing, and montage, individual contributions will grow into a raw, polyphonic whole. We conclude on 30 April, Walpurgis Night, as a gesture of celebration for the practices that have flourished in the shadows.