On 5 May, the second edition of the Bruges Triennial for contemporary art and architecture will get underway. This year’s theme is ‘Liquid City’, based on the work of the Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. With this, the Bruges Triennial builds on the key question posed by the 2015 edition: ‘What if the five million tourists who visit the city every year actually wanted to live there?

As Zygmunt Bauman argued in his books, we seem to be living in an age marked by fear and uncertainty. We seem to be swept along by a series of currents, such as the influx of refugees, the impact of global climate change, or the consequences of the information and communication world in which we are expected to be constantly online and reachable.