Events
Some events I enjoyed working on. More to come.
Here We Are Now
13 October 2010, 21:00. Beursschouwburg, Brussels.
A Courtisane event, in the context of the S.H.O.W. (Shit Happens on Wednesdays) series.
To what extent can we still make a difference between “public” and “private”? According to philosopher Jean Baudrillard, “the one is no longer a spectacle, the other no longer a secret”. Now that the most intimate details of our lives are thoughtlessly shared on the internet and the media, in order to feed an endless, compulsive loop of information, participation and circulation, it seems like ever more constraints and obstacles are being annulled. Surrounded and obsessed by a world of images, overcome by a gnawing insecurity, we submit ourselves to a regime of ultimate visibility. We are well aware of being seen, followed and remembered, but that is precisely what pushes us to all kinds of forms of disclosure, confession and “selfploitation”. The mediatised gaze of the other, at the same time disturbing and stimulating in its elusiveness and omnipresence, has become the paramount point of reference for our obsessive search for identity and belonging. We show ourselves in order to become ourselves, while we irrevocably disappear behind our images. The uncanny transit zone where intimacy merges into transparency is the central theme of this programme. Four recent video works, each in their own way, explore the contemporary conjunction of media and subjectivity, in which it seems no longer possible to maintain an unequivocal relationship between watching and showing, subject and object, seeing and being seen.
With works by Mohamed Bourouissa, Olivia Rochette & Gerard-Jan Claes, Ruti Sela & Maayan Amir, Shelly Silver
More info soon…
ARTIST IN FOCUS: Paul Clipson
Live soundtrack by Ignatz & Paul Labrecque
25 September 2010, Palais des Beaux-Arts / Paleis voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels. Organized by Courtisane & Bozar Cinema.
The elegantly ravishing super 8 films of Paul Clipson (US) are lyrical explorations of light and movement. His images, mostly edited in-camera, reveal the rhythms, energy and sensuality of the everyday that we often fail to see. The influence of experimental filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage, Marie Menken, Bruce Conner and Bruce Baillie is palpable in his multi-layered studies, as well as that of the many sound artists and musicians with whom he has collaborated over the years, such as Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Gregg Kowalsky and William Fowler Collins. For this occasion, a selection of his recent film work will be accompanied live for the first time by Bram Devens (alias Ignatz, BE) and Paul Labrecque (alias Head of Wantastiquet, Sunburned Hand of the Man, US). Both musicians draw their exorcising sound explorations from the tradition of “American Primitivism”, where the dreaded, uncompromising ghost of John Fahey dwells.
Memories of The Future
25 June 2010, Art Centre Vooruit, Gent. Conference in the context of the Archipel project.
The rapid rise of digital network culture has a fundamental influence on the construction of our personal and social memory. The technologies used today to register, organise, find and share information have thoroughly changed our relation to past and present, but also the dynamics between remembering and forgetting. Consequently, the role and function of traditional memory institutions such as the museum, the library and the archive call for a reconsideration. Now that it has become more and more easy to store and share information, new media promise not only an expansion but even a replacement of human memory. At the same time, there is a growing awareness that the accessibility and readability of information is increasingly dependent on different fast-changing layers of technological and social mediation. At first sight, we seem to be caught between two doomed visions: a future in which it will become impossible to escape from a digital mode of remembering and being remembered; and a society which remains attached to traditional preservation and memory practices and therefore is rendered blind to an important part of our history. How to find a new balance?
With Geoffrey C. Bowker, Peter B. Kaufman, Geert Lovink, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Andrew Payne, Richard Rinehart.
Vital Signs
Courtisane Festival 2010. Gent, 17 - 21 March 2010.
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and María Palacios Cruz.
What is meaning? And how do we know when meaning takes place? We know that we can read something, or that we are being spoken to, but what if the words find no resonance? What if text becomes an unpronounceable image? How to decode language without symbols, music without sounds, gestures without verbalisation? We live in world of signs, and yet we don’t often interrogate the processes of conveying and creating meaning through which we define our own existence. Each in their own way, the films and videos in this programme analyse and deconstruct those processes, exploring the limits of human communication. Combining historical and recent works, Vital Signs examines the connections and tensions between significance and representation, communication and understanding, meaningless and meaningful – the “spaces between” where meaning breaks though the outer form in which it’s bound up. Gestures to be heard, images to be read, sounds to be deciphered.
With works by Paul Abbott, Sven Augustijnen, Robert Beavers, Manon de Boer, Keewatin Dewdney, David Gatten, Jacqueline Goss, Gary Hill, Pavel Medvedev, Yvonne Rainer, Kathrin Resetarits, Peter Rose, Anri Sala, Paul Sharits, Guy Sherwin, John Smith, Imogen Stidworthy, Peter Sulyi, Katarina Zdjelar
ARTIST IN FOCUS: David O’Reilly
Wednesday 17 March 2010, Cinema Sphinx, Gent.
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2010 (Gent, 17 - 21 March 2010). KASK lecture on 16 March (in cooperation with KASK)
David O’Reilly (EI, 1985) is without a doubt one of the rising stars in the animation firmament. Based in Berlin, he evenly divides his valuable energy between commercial work (for, among others, music acts such as U2 and M.I.A.) and utterly personal experimentations which recklessly exploit the potential of 3D computer animation. He regards this medium as a Pandora box which was just recently opened and still needs to be examined. His work primarily explores the creative free zones where the pixels on the screen swing between abstraction and representation, between artifact and image, resulting in a highly original universe that brings together an outspoken artificial form with an emotional impact. “We should forget everything about the idea of right or wrong, of beauty and ugliness, and focus on the idea of coherence.” His “turbodrama” Please Say Something was awarded a Golden Bear at the Berlinale 2009.
ARTIST IN FOCUS: Morgan Fisher
Saturday 20 March 2010, Film Plateau, Gent.
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2010 (Gent, 17 - 21 March 2010). HISK Masterclass on 22 March (in cooperation with HISK and KASK)
Morgan Fisher (US, 1942) examines and deconstructs with wry humour the machinery of cinema in his 16mm films, operating within the unlikely triangle of avant-garde cinema, film industry and contemporary art, only possible in a city like Los Angeles. Fisher’s films are an exploration of the film apparatus and its physical material, as well as of moviemaking production methods : from film’s standard gauge (35mm) to the use of production stills, the narrative role of inserts and the invisible importance of the projectionist. ”One thing my films tend to do is examine a property or quality of a film in a radical way,” he says. “Being radical is a modest form of being extreme. They each examine an axiom of cinema and say, ‘What if ?’”. Fisher, who counts among his influences the work of artists such as Sol LeWitt, Marcel Duchamp and Ad Reinhardt, uses avant-garde procedures in order to comment on mainstream cinema; as a result his work was marginalised for a long time for not fitting too neatly into any of the usual avant-garde categories. Too concerned with the specifics of industry procedures for the underground; too minimal and conceptual for Hollywood’s taste. In recent years, his film work is finally getting the recognition it deserves, following retrospective programmes at the Whitney Museum and Tate Modern.
ARTIST IN FOCUS: David Gatten
Sunday 21 March 2010, Film Plateau, Gent.
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2010 (Gent, 17 - 21 March 2010)
For the past fifteen years American filmmaker David Gatten (US, 1971) has conducted a conscientious filmic investigation of the intersections between text and image, representation and abstraction, the emotional and intellectual. Using traditional research methods as well as experimental film processes he delves into the annals of private lives and public histories, in search for a cinematographic synthesis of biography, philosophy and poetry. His silent, handmade and rigorously structured films betray a certain influence of avant-garde filmmakers such as Stan Brakhage and Hollis Frampton, but at the same time reveal a strong personal identity, driven both by theoretical and spiritual considerations. Based on the writings of the same title by William Byrd’s family in 18th-century Virginia, the series Secret History of the Dividing Line forms the core of his oeuvre. The handsome results of his search are, in his own words, “bookish films about letters and libraries and lovers and ghosts that are filled with words, some of which you can read.”
Surface Tension
An evening on… Frictions
Friday 19 March 2010, Vooruit, Gent.
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2010 (Gent, 17 - 21 March 2010)
What happens when, before our eyes and ears, an event unfolds in time without simple representation, causality or possibility of identification? We are thrown back upon ourselves, upon the power of our imagination to create mental images. The real is brought back to the possible. In this series of works, most points of reference and information have been reduced to the minimum, as if the outside was folded inside. It’s up to us to break through the surface, to put our imagination to work, to search for connections, to discover what it all can mean…
with Paul Abbott, Seymour Wright & Ross Lambert, Karen Mirza, Brad Butler & David Cunningham, Dominique Petitgand, Lis Rhodes
Night Vision
An evening on… Illuminating Darkness
Thursday 20 March 2010, Vooruit, Gent.
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2010 (Gent, 17 - 21 March 2010)
The night is not a black mass that blinds our sight. It’s not a substance, but an event, pure depth that surrounds and swallows us, infiltrating us through our senses. In the dark hours when we must sharpen our eyes and ears, when night comes to life, nothing seems what it is. This programme presents a series of performances, films and an installation which attempt to capture this event in all its obscurity, somewhere between light and darkness, visible and invisible, seeing the night and seeing in the night.
with Paul Clipson & William Fowler Collins, Pieter Geenen, Phantom Limb & Earth’s Hypnagogia, Disinformation, Deborah Stratman, Jeanne Liotta.
Video Vortex, Edition V
20 - 21 November 2009. Atomium, Brussels.
In the Context of Cimatics Festival 2009.
Two years after its first edition, Video Vortex returns to Brussels, this time hosted in one of the great icons of mid 20th century modern architecture: the Atomium. During these past two years, the conference series - which focuses on the status and potential of the moving image on the Internet - has visited Amsterdam, Ankara and Split, growing out into an organised network of organisations and individuals. Time for an interim report, perhaps. We asked some participants of the first Video Vortex editions and publication, as well as new ones, to reflect on recent developments in online video culture. Over the past years the place of the moving image on the Internet has become increasingly prominent. With a wide range of technologies and web applications within anyone’s reach, the potential of video as a personal means of expression has reached a totally new dimension. How is this potential being used? How do artists and other political and social actors react to the popularity of YouTube and other ‘user-generated-content’ websites? What does YouTube tell us about the state of contemporary visual culture? And how can the participation culture of video-sharing and vlogging reach some degree of autonomy and diversity, escaping the laws of the mass media and the strong grip of media conglomerates?
Participants: Andrew Clay, Stephen Crocker, Stefaan Decostere, Aleksandra Domanovic, Constant Dullaart, Johan Grimonprez, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Rudi Knoops, Rosa Menkman, Oliver Laric, Geert Lovink, Elizabeth Losh, Keith Sanborn, Brian Willems, Simon Yuill
Moderators: Sabine Niederer, Vera Tolman, Andreas Treske, Robrecht Vanderbeeken
Altered States
20 November 2009, Les Brigittines, Brussels
In the context of Video Vortex V, hosted by Cimatics Festival. Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and María Palacios Cruz, in cooperation with Courtisane.
With the digital invading every creative enterprise and form of expression, pencils have become pixels, dreams have turned into data. While cinema’s obsession with the “holy grail” of photorealism has generated a blizzard of visual extravaganzas aimed at a suspension of the distinction between representation and simulation, a generation of DIY bricoleurs use ubiquitious “tools of vizuality” (Kevin Kelly) to explore alternative viewings and readings of the familiar. Through processes of transference, translation and combination, they encode, reveal or impose layers of information and deceive expectations about visibility and availability. Poking the surfaces of various images, sounds and symbols, their renderings create poetic, playful and often melancholic environments that are both alien and familiar, questioning our relation to images and our imagination.
With works by Rebecca Baron & Doug Goodwin, Joseph Ernst, Bernard Gigounon, Stephen Gray, Dave Griffiths, Max Hattler, Jonathon Kirk, Oliver Laric, Dietmar Offenhuber, Nicolas Provost, David O’Reilly, Chirstinn Whyte & Jake Messenger, Michael Robinson, Stewart Smith.
(DE)CODING
Independent Film Show 2009. 3 - 7 November 2009, Napoli (IT)
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacios Cruz.
“It’s about the unities of similarities. It’s about sameness in confusion. It’s about logic in chance. It’s about structure and logic”.
(Jonas Mekas on Zorns Lemma)
(DE)CODING plays with cinema’s ability and potential to generate associations, may they be intentional or not. This programme brings together a series of films that explore the capacity of images and words to create meaning, even when attempts are made to release them from the constraint of narrative, or in other words from the constraint of “making sense”. Images and words can’t help making meaning “before our eyes”, for we will always try to look for their sense and purpose.
With works by Thom Andersen and Malcolm Brodwick, Morgan Fisher, Hollis Frampton, Robert Nelson, John Smith
Morgan Fisher Films
Independent Film Show 2009. 3 - 7 November 2009, Napoli (IT)
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacios Cruz.
The 16mm films of Morgan Fisher (US, 1942) – straightforward, elegant, playful – are particularly idiosyncratic; they are situated both outside the film industry and the central developments of avant-garde cinema. Too minimal and conceptual for Hollywood’s taste; too concerned with the specifics of industry procedures for the underground. (…) Fisher’s films are an exploration of the film apparatus and its physical material, as well as of moviemaking production methods : from film’s standard gauge (35mm) to the use of production stills, the narrative role of inserts and the invisible importance of the projectionist. Fisher plays with the concepts of film, cinema and filmmaking, creating a unique and intimate view of cinema and its physical representation. ” One thing my films tend to do is examine a property or quality of a film in a radical way,” he says. “Being radical is a modest form of being extreme. They each examine an axiom of cinema and say, ‘What if ?’”
We Are Time
Exhibition in the context of the programme “Accelerated Living”, part of IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2009, 14-18 October 2009, Utrecht, NL.
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacios Cruz
“All will be now. Dreams are too fast. You are the first. We are the last.
No sequence to follow. No fear of tomorrow. Kiss of neverness. Life of timelessness
We’ll break the speed of change. we’ll tame eternity.”
- The Pop group, ‘We Are Time’
The passing of time is something we feel intimately familiar with, and yet it continuously slips away from us. Centuries ago, St. Augustine already caught this tension in words: “What is Time? If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not.” The invention of clock time provided a partial solution: time was rationalised, adjusted to the rhythms of growing industrialisation. This transformation – symbolically completed with the introduction of standard time and the division of the world into time zones – resonated deeply in our social and cultural lives. The experience-based understanding of time was replaced by a rigid, linear and numerical logic which has gradually become embedded in our subconscious. The arrival of ICT and globalisation has pierced this unilateral and troublesome relationship. Ironically enough, the dawning of the computer age –the main source of today’s acceleration – has allowed for new perspectives on the role and potential of time. This exhibition takes that openness as a starting point and presents a series of works which each in their own way strive for a particular time awareness. Different dimensions of time, both social and natural, objective and subjective, are unfolded, deformed and combined, in search for new forms of perception and imagination of time.
With works by Julieta Aranda, Jonas Dahlberg, Vadim Fishkin, Glenn Kaino, Guy Sherwin, Thomson & Craighead, Guido van der Werve. Urban Screens: Mark Formanek & Datenstrudel, Thorsten Fleisch.
ACCELERATED LIVING // CONFERENCE
In the context of the programme “Accelerated Living”, part of IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2009, 14-18 October 2009, Utrecht, NL.
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacios Cruz
Contemporary science and technology have made possible a temporality which though still based upon clock time, has exploded into countless different time fractions and speeds beyond human comprehension. Today we seem to live in several time zones at the same time, propelled by a variety of internal and external time mechanisms and innumerable rhythms which continuously vibrate, resonate, connect, oscillate and disconnect. How to grasp the temporal complexity that surrounds and occupies us? What sort of ecologies of time and speed have we developed under the influence of new technologies and what is their impact on our body and senses? This conference brings together a number of international thinkers who offer new perspectives on our contemporary experience of time and speed.
With Mike Crang, Dirk de Bruyn, Charlie Gere, Steve Goodman, Glenn Kaino, Sybille Lammes, Carmen Leccardi, Stamatia Portanova, Jon Thomson & Alison Craighead, John Tomlinson.
ACCELERATED LIVING // PERFORMANCES
In the context of the programme “Accelerated Living”, part of IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2009, 14-18 October 2009, Utrecht, NL.
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacios Cruz
“Below the level of sounds and rhythms, music acts upon a primitive terrain, which is the physiological time of the listener. (…) Because of the internal organization of the musical work, the act of listening to it immobilizes passing time; it catches and enfolds it as one catches and enfolds a cloth flapping in the wind.”
- Claude Lévi-Strauss
With Thomas Köner, Guy Sherwin, Dirk de Bruyn + Joel Stern, Core of the Coalman, Bruce McClure, Mount Kimbie + James Blake, Cooly G, The Bug + Flowdan, Kode9, Thomas Brinkmann, Arnold Dreyblatt Ensemble, Oren Ambarchi + Robbie Avenaim, Charles Curtis, Carol Robinson & Bruno Martinez (performing Eliane Radigue’s Naldjorlak I, II, III), Leif Inge
ACCELERATED LIVING // SCREENINGS
In the context of the programme “Accelerated Living”, part of IMPAKT FESTIVAL 2009, 14-18 October 2009, Utrecht, NL.
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacios Cruz
It seems as if time is increasingly out of joint. We no longer experience time as a succession or an acceleration of events, but rather as something adrift in a fragmented world of information stimuli, out of the realm of chronology and linearity. What is the impact of this evolution on our perception patterns? How do the different internal, natural, social and technological rhythms relate to each other and influence our daily sensory perception? What is the role and potential of cinema, together with music, the art form most particularly devoted to the shaping force of time? These and other questions will be explored through a series of contemporary and historic film and video works addressing the relation between space, movement, technology and (our experience of) time.
With works by Gary Beydler, Bruce Conner, Ivan Ladislav Galeta, Chris Garrat, Dryden Goodwin, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Jean–François Guiton, Gerard Holthuis, Philip Hoffman, Peter Hutton, Ken Jacobs, Jim Jennings, Kurt Kren, Malcolm Le Grice, Mark Lewis, Jeanne Liotta, Rose Lowder, Gordon Matta-Clark, Pavel Medvedev, Marie Menken, Dietmar Offenhuber, Rafael Montañez Ortiz, Yo Ota, D.A. Pennebaker, Ilppo Pohjola, Michel Pavlou, Artavazd Pelechian, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, William Raban, Joost Rekveld, Nicolas Rey, Emily Richardson, Guy Sherwin, Morten Skallerud, Michael Snow, Stom Sogo, Scott Stark, Makino Takashi, Leslie Thornton, Andrei Ujica, Chris Welsby, Joyce Wieland, Fred Worden, Iván Zulueta
Imagine
CASZUIDAS Urban Screen Festival
4&5 September 2009, Zuidas, Amsterdam. Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacios Cruz, in cooperation with Courtisane
Compiled by Courtisane for the first edition of CASZUIDAS Urban Screen Festival, Imagine is a selection of works and artists previously shown by Courtisane. Digital reveries and riddles, the video works in this programme seek to actively engage the « mental » participation of urban spectators, to throw them back upon themselves, opening up the limits of their sight to the freedom of their imagination. They imagine a new sensory language in which meaning is played with, but never denied. Between abstraction and playful transformation, distilling, reinterpreting popular media culture, these works leave way for the countless images generated by each spectator. Parallel worlds for the imagination of the spectator to wander around.
With works by Rebecca Baron & Doug Goodwin, Mary Helena Clark, Joseph Ernst, Simon Faithfull, Stephen Gray, Dave Griffiths, Max Hattler, Martijn Hendriks, David O’Reilly, Nicolas Provost, Michael Robinson, Stewart Smith
ARTIST IN FOCUS: Guy Sherwin
Saturday 25 April 2009, 20:00, Cinema Sphinx
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2009 (Gent, 23 - 26 April 2009)
A key figure in British avant-garde cinema for already more than four decades, Guy Sherwin pushes the limits of cinema with his films, installation works and performances, in which he explores film’s fundamental properties : light and time. After studying painting at the Chelsea School of Art in the late 1960’s, Sherwin taught printing and processing at the London Film-Makers’ Co-op during the mid-70s, at the heyday of the British Structural Film Movement. He now teaches at Middlesex University and University of Wolverhampton, and collaborates on expanded cinema performances with his partner, Singaporean film and sound artist Lynn Loo. Concerned with seriality and live intervention, his work investigates questions such as the physical relationships between sound and image, the digital re-working of film, the mechanisms of projection, the methods of printing and the live interaction between performer and film. In the course of his screening / talk at Courtisane, Sherwin will discuss ideas about time-looping and feedback that have influenced his film practice and show a series of films that were abandoned in the making, then resumed after a time lapse.
SCULPTING THE LAND
An evening on… Landscapes
Friday 24 April 2009, Vooruit Domzaal, Gent.
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2009 (Gent, 23 - 26 April 2009)
“Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!”
– Henry David Thoreau
With James Benning, Luke Fowler & Lee Patterson, Guy Sherwin, Richard T. Walker, Emily Richardson, Chris Watson & Benedict Drew, Chris Welsby & William Raban
PAST IMPERFECT
An evening on… Memory
Thursday 23 April 2009, Vooruit Domzaal, Gent.
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2009 (Gent, 23 - 26 April 2009)
“One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.”
– Emily Dickinson
With Aki Onda, Gill Arnò, Associazione Home Movies - La camera ottica, Andrea Belfi, Stefano Pilia, Benjamin Francart & Xavier Garcia Bardon, Jasper Rigole, Alvin Lucier, Thomas Smetryns, Heleen Van Haegenborgh, Kristof Roseeuw & Michael Weilacher
Somewhere in Time
Explorations in Memory and History
Courtisane Festival 2009. Gent, 23 - 26 April 2009.
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and María Palacios Cruz, in cooperation with Courtisane.
“As we know, there are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, February 12, 2002.
These were Rumsfeld’s flamboyant words to refer to the unstable situation in Afghanistan following the American intervention in 2001, but they could also be used to situate the relationship between memory and history. One category is lacking : “the things we don’t know we know”, a past that is forgotten, oppressed, silenced, disavowed; a knowledge which has found shelter in the deepest regions of our personal or cultural conscience, hard to be accessed by language and memory. It is there that the polarity between history and memory is most sharply expressed; where fact and fiction, imagination and document, flow into each other; where different possibilities and temporalities coexist and the distinction between the true, the actual and the potential is blurred. It’s an idea of “History” in contradiction with traditional linear narratives, obsessively-driven by an idea of constant progress. Instead it evokes the crisis of the modern historical referent, more fragile and unstable than ever before. In this era of media saturation, in which spatial and temporal distances have been erased and a growing memory industry has made the most distant places and times available for instant replay, the call to rethink the relationships between past, present and future resonates louder and louder. The film and video artists in this programme search for the actual and virtual tensions and interactions between knowing and not knowing, between the public and the private, between history and memory, there where they meet : in the terrain of media.
With works by Rebecca Baron, James Benning, Black Audio Film Collective, Matthew Buckingham, Kevin Jerome Everson, Hollis Frampton, Philip Hoffman, Nora Martirosyan, Julia Meltzer & David Thorne, The Otolith Group, Walid Ra’ad & The Atlas Group, Rea Tajiri, Leslie Thornton, Vision Machine, Soon-Mi Yoo
Drawn to Life
21 March 2009. Presentation in the context of Animation Breakdown Study Day, Tate Modern, London.
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and María Palacios Cruz. Based on the program ‘Drawn to Life’, shown in Brussels on 25 & 27 November 2008
“animate … v.t…. [< L. animatus, pp. of animare, to make alive, fill with breath < anima, air, soul]. l. to give life to; bring to life. 2. to make gay, energetic, or spirited. 3. to inspire. 4. to give motion to; put into action: as, the breeze animated the leaves."
We all know: animation is a form of cinema. And yet, one could argue that all cinema is in fact animation, and furthermore that life itself – anima – can be understood as cinema. Our existence, inscribed in perception, imagination and memory, is constantly animated, deformed, edited. The question is whether and how we can ourselves give form to our own experiences. Certainly, the incessant flow of images in which our daily lives are submerged seems to leave little room for analysis and intervention. Its intention is that of synthesis, of a continuous illusion of life. The world is thus objectivized, but inevitably doubled, devoid of its soul, “deanimated”. The artists and filmmakers in this program attempt to revitalize perception, offering an alternative or counterweight to the ways in which technological interfaces determine our relation to the world. At the crossroads between cinematographic codes and genres, these films and videos seek to dismantle the common a priori assumptions on animation film and its limitations. Fragments of collective and individual memories are redrawn, with pencils and pixels, light, movement and (algo)rhythms, in search of new possible relations between world and representation, image and subject, dream and data, the aesthetical and the political. Animation as re-animation.
With works by Stephen Andrews, Kota Ezawa, Ken Jacobs, Jonathon Kirk, Dietmar Offenhuber, Bob Sabiston and Karl Tebbe.
Audiovisual Archives in the Age of Access
New Concepts & New Policies
5 February 2009, De Zebrastraat, Gent.
Workshop in the context of the BOM-Vl project.
The increasing use of digital moving image technologies, combined with their convergence with other media forms through different platforms and network technologies, poses great challenges to film and video archives worldwide. Archivists are not only dealing with the integration of rapidly developing technologies into their professional practice but also with a constituency of users whose expectations have been raised by the massive accessibility of audiovisual documents on DVD, Blu-Ray, P2P networks and video sharing sites such as YouTube. In this “age of access”, to use a expression coined by Jeremy Rifkin, a generation of users is trained in the belief that any and all primary materials should be a mere Google search away. But however versatile, cost-effective and easy-to-use these access tools are, there is still no known solution for long-term preservation of digital data that matches the performance – and experience - of film, and questions of longevity and (historical and technical) integrity are the subjects of tense debate. Digital culture has become the arena in which conflicting priorities in response to the demands of preservation and access have risen again, sharper than ever.
Wherever the answers to these complex philosophical, ethical and strategic issues may lie, there can be little doubt that “digital access” has become the keyword in the politics of the audiovisual archive. This has led to a reassesement of the archives’ role, practice and policy, as well as to an exploration of new business and financial models. For some, Public Private Partnerships may be a way forward. To quote Paolo Cherchi Usai: “We have come to the point where the identity and independence of moving image and recorded sound archives is confronted by the imperatives of the commercial world. In principle, everyone agrees that national collecting institutions should be independent from commercial imperatives. In practice, the commercial world is already within our gates, and it has been within our gates for quite some time. This is no longer a matter of whether or not we want to deal with it; it is a matter of how we can we deal with it without betraying our cultural mission”. How do cultural heritage institutions - and in extenso cultural policy - deal with these new paradigms? What are the opportunities and threats? Which sutainable partnerships and models of cooperation exist and how can they be set up? What is the role of national policy in this? What are the ramifications of this digitization for the public? What is the impact on archival institutions, and its continuing pursuit of its core mission and values?
Guests: Jeff Ubois (Intelligent Television, ubois.com, US), Emjay Rechsteiner (Dutch Filmmuseum, ‘Images for the Future’, NL), Thomas C. Christensen (Danish Film Institute, DK), George Ioannidis (GAMA, IN2, GR)
Without a Trace
Erasing Inscription, Inscripting Erasure
Thursday 29 January 2009, Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Gent (BE).
Program produced by Courtisane, in collaboration with Atelier Graphoui.
To erase, remove, rub out or conceal signs and images has never been as easy as it is in today’s era of digital hybridization. The immense possibilities in image processing, compositing and trimming have led to the development of a “Photoshop Reality”, a corrected reality which has penetrated unnoticed the heart of our visual culture. However, the act of erasing is never without trace: there always remains a residue, a print upon the surface, a ghost where once was an image. Whether we are speaking of bare scratching or of calculated digital layering, each erasure leaves a trace behind, each absence suggests a (missed) presence. This ambiguity is even stronger in the context of the moving image, which only exists itself thanks to a sort of progressive “erasure”, each image canceling the previous one. Elimination and inscription come together. The act of erasing, “of” and “in” the image, unavoidably leaves the trace of an event underway. It makes the new visible to itself as it redefines what is visible in the old. The film, video and media works in this programme use the idea and the gesture of removing as the basis for an exploration of the tension between presence and absence, appearing and disappearing.
With works by Martin Arnold, Tammuz Binshtock, Marcel Broodthaers, Natalie Frigo, Stephen Gray, Pierre Hébert, Martijn Hendriks, Jodi, Spike Jonze, Matt McCormick, Denis Savary, Naomi Uman
Drawn to Life
reanimating the animate
25 & 27 November 2008, Maison des Cultures Saint-Gilles, Brussels.
Film program in the context of ‘SE JETER À L’EAU’, an event organised by Atelier Graphoui.
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and María Palacios Cruz, in cooperation with Courtisane.
“animate … v.t…. [< L. animatus, pp. of animare, to make alive, fill with breath < anima, air, soul]. l. to give life to; bring to life. 2. to make gay, energetic, or spirited. 3. to inspire. 4. to give motion to; put into action: as, the breeze animated the leaves."
We all know: animation is a form of cinema. And yet, one could argue that all cinema is in fact animation, and furthermore that life itself – anima – can be understood as cinema. Our existence, inscribed in perception, imagination and memory, is constantly animated, deformed, edited. The question is whether and how we can ourselves give form to our own experiences. Certainly, the incessant flow of images in which our daily lives are submerged seems to leave little room for analysis and intervention. Its intention is that of synthesis, of a continuous illusion of life. The world is thus objectivized, but inevitably doubled, devoid of its soul, “deanimated”. The artists and filmmakers in this program attempt to revitalize perception, offering an alternative or counterweight to the ways in which technological interfaces determine our relation to the world. At the crossroads between cinematographic codes and genres, these films and videos seek to dismantle the common a priori assumptions on animation film and its limitations. Fragments of collective and individual memories are redrawn, with pencils and pixels, light, movement and (algo)rhythms, in search of new possible relations between world and representation, image and subject, dream and data, the aesthetical and the political. Animation as re-animation.
With works by Stephen Andrews, Robert Breer, Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács, Sky David, Dirk de Bruyn, Kota Ezawa, Paul Glabicki, Stuart Hilton, Jonathan Hodgson, Ken Jacobs, Cathy Joritz, Jonathon Kirk, LEV, Frank & Caroline Mouris, Dietmar Offenhuber, Jenny Perlin, Josh Raskin, Bob Sabiston, Carolee Schneemann and Karl Tebbe.
The Order of Things
12, 19, 26 september 2008, Muhka_Media, Antwerp.
Film program in the context of the exhibition with the same title at MuHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp (11th September 2008 > 4th January 2009). Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and María Palacios Cruz.
From September 11th until January 4th MuHKA presents The Order of Things, an exhibition about the uses of image archives and other manifestations of a classificatory or “encyclopaedic” impulse in contemporary art. Within this context, MuHKA_media will host six screening programs dealing with the recuperation and reconfiguration of “found” images in film and video. The makers of these works use bits and scraps from the media reality surrounding us as a basis for the construction of new meanings, in search of a poetry of movement, a syntax of fragmentation, bringing divergent elements together in a system of construction in which they belong: cinema. Based on a series of codes and axioms, cinema can be subject to multiple forms of ideological appropriation, both cinematographic and meta-cinematographic, as well as on a micro-level – each shot is itself a succession of frames. In these film and video works the meaning and the hierarchy of images become subordinated to a new logic, a subversive, narrative or totalizing order taken out of the ‘infinite cinema’, the world in/as images.
With works by Thom Andersen & Malcolm Brodwick, Alan Berliner, Abigail Child, Lenka Clayton, Bruce Conner, William Farley, Morgan Fisher, Hollis Frampton, Christoph Girardet, Arthur Lipsett, Frank & Caroline Mouris, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Simon Pummell, Chick Strand.
Towards Open and Dynamic Archives
10 June 2008, VUB Brussels
Workshop in the context of the BOM-Vl project.
The traditional functioning of audiovisual archives is being completely reshaped by today’s technological advancements. The expansion of fast broadband networks and the availability of software, hardware and recording equipment have broken down the barriers to the production and distribution of audiovisual content. Large quantities of multimedia materials are flowing on the Internet and into the archives every day, and all over the world ambitious projects are set up to digitalise heritage collections. Moreover, media start to look more collective and inclusive: the ubiquitous “Web 2.0″ discourse promises new levels of participatory culture in which all users are producers, sharing, appropriating and remixing content, overcoming the old regime of top-down broadcast media. Blogs, wikis, social networks and “user-generated-content” tools are presented as the new wave of voluntary alliances that users seek online. Even the traditional media are swept away into the hype: the BBC designated 2005 as the “Year of the Digital Citizen”, in 2006 Time magazine chose “You” as the as its esteemed Person of the Year.
These new socio-technological dynamics are generating many challenges, as well as opportunities for the use and exploitation of audiovisual archives, to the potential advantage of various user groups, in the cultural, educational and the broadcasting sectors, and for the general public. How do audiovisual heritage institutions and broadcasters deal with these new social and economical paradigms? How can sustainable online archives be generated, taking into account the relentless instability of digital technology and the Internet, and the stranglehold of the corporate regimes of monopoly that call themselves copyright and intellectual property? How to create meaning and value within the abundance of “free” content and build vital contexts for exploration, participation and education? What are the potentials and limitations of user-generated tagging and folksonomy systems to improve description and searchability? How to respond to changing forms of labour, knowledge and value, triggered in part by sociable web media? Which strategies can be used to address the challenge of legitimating content produced within an interactive and participatory media ecology? How can we embrace the potential of network culture and create truly open and dynamic archives where reception, interpretation and creation encounter one another?
Guests: Paul Gerhardt (Archives for Creativity, GB), Tobias Golodnoff (DR / Dansk Kulturarv, Denmark), Marius Arnesen (NRK Media, Norway), Geert Wissink (Kennisland / Images of the Future, Netherlands), Johan Oomen (Dutch Institute for Image and Sound / Images of the Future, Netherlands)
ARTIST IN FOCUS: Ben Rivers
21 Apr 2008, Sphinx, Gent.
Program produced by Courtisane as part of the Courtisane Festival 2008 (21-27 April 2008)
Ben Rivers’ films are drenched in a spooky spiritualism, like bits of dreams that find their way into your consciousness. Rivers documents his subjects carefully. Abandoned buildings illustrate their own decay, landscapes draw themselves, stories from the past come in a shade of mystery, a cocoon breaks gently and becomes a subtle poetic portrait of an Einzelgänger. He hand-processes film and prefers black and white film stock with a thick, tactile grain, that’s why his films bare resemblance to documentaries from decades ago.
Ghosting The Image
Courtisane Festival, Ghent, Belgium (21-27 April 2008) and WORM, Rotterdam, the Netherlands (8-9 May 2008)
Curated by Stoffel Debuysere and Maria Palacios Cruz
The recuperation and citation of images is a film practice as old as cinema itself, and one of the principal strategies within the traditions of avant-garde film and video. In so-called «found-footage films», bits and scraps from the media reality surrounding us are not only taken out of their context and accorded new meanings, but also serve as a basis for critical reflection and analysis. For recycled images call attention to themselves as ‘images’, as products of the cinema and broadcasting industry, as part of the endless stream of information, entertainment and persuasion that constitutes the media-saturated environment of modern life.
The film and video works featured in the programme Ghosting the Image disrupt the usual rhetoric of the media spectacle, characterized by stability and linearity, and turn it against itself. By destabilizing dominant narrative structures and exploring the limits of representation, these works reveal how time, perception and memory are organised. By dismantling the illusion, these films and videos unmask the ambiguity and vulnerability of images, revealing what is being systematically ignored, repressed or left out. As if for a moment the veil of our eyes was lifted, only to find a world of images staring back at us.
with works by Martin Arnold, Stan Brakhage, Abigail Child, Morgan Fisher, Nina Fonoroff, Brian Frye, Ken Jacobs, Cathy Joritz, Lewis Klahr, Peter Kubelka, Owen Land, Maurice Lemaître, Saul Levine, Arthur Lipsett, Matthias Müller, Pere Portabella, Luther Price, Vanessa Renwick, David Rimmer, Robert Ryang, Keith Sanborn, Kirk Tougas, Peter Tscherkassky, Naomi Uman
LOOKING BACK AT ANGER : A Retrospective Programme on Kenneth Anger’s Work
(In the presence of Kenneth Anger)
10 - 14 November 2007
FILMMUSEUM -MUSÉE DU CINÉMA (bis) Brussels
What a strange paradox, then, is the film medium, that magnificent and terrible instrument born of our time to tempt and torture our creative imagination. Without in any way lessening our enthusiasm for it as an art form, I don’t think we - the children of this era - are wrong to call it an imperfect medium . . . imperfect and terrifying. – Kenneth Anger
The influence of Kenneth Anger, legendary pioneer of independent filmmaking, reaches well beyond the avant-garde movement and into the work of filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, R.W. Fassbinder, Derek Jarman and Sergei Paradjanov. In his films, Anger subverts conventional filmmaking, by sampling, mixing, recycling, re-editing or restaging the tenants of mainstream cinema and culture. This rare programme, preceded by an international seminar on Anger’s oeuvre, includes Kenneth Anger’s recent video work, Elio Gelmini’s documentary portrait of the filmmaker, as well as works by Stan Brakhage and Marie Menken where Anger is present, either physically or as a source of inspiration, and the Hollywood classic featuring child-actor Anger A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Looking Back at Anger will also present for the first time in Belgium the newly restored prints of Fireworks, Rabbit’s Moon, Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos, preserved by the UCLA Film Archive.
+ Sat. 10.11.2007 International seminar on Kenneth Anger
With Edwin Carels (MuHKA_media), Robert Haller (Anthology Film Archives), Pip Chodorov (Re:Voir), Jean-Claude Lebensztejn, Anna Powell (Manchester Metropolitan University). Moderated by Muriel Andrin (ULB, Université Libre de Bruxelles)
(Curated by Laurent De Maertelaer and Maria Palacios Cruz)
A co-production between Argos, Koninklijk Filmarchief / Cinémathèque Royale and MuHKA_media, in collaboration with SCC (Service de Culture Cinématographique asbl) and the VDFC (Vlaamse Dienst voor Filmcultuur vzw)
CINEMA IN TRANSIT
LECTURE SERIES
Argos, Brussels (in the context of the OPEN ARCHIVE #1 event, October - November 2007)
What does ‘Cinema’ mean today? In the aftermath of its one hundredth birthday the cinema regime seems to be expanding further and further, split up over countless media and modalities, based on wide-ranging technologies and motives. Now that the analogue image is being quickly replaced by the digital one, beyond the materiality of video and film, more is being produced and distributed than ever before, but at the same time the way we watch, listen and experience cinema is being severely fragmented and individualized. Cinema no longer holds a specific place of its own; it is everywhere, intertwined with and integrated into other cultural forms. Within that context we today witness a significant renewal in the ways of approaching cinema and the audiovisual arts, not only in the work of a great number of artists, but also on an institutional level. The familiar opposition between the ‘black box’ and the ‘white cube’, between cinema culture and museum culture, can no longer be sustained, and the call for new models resounds more and more. What kind of shifts in meaning do these evolutions and contaminations entail in the way we look at and reflect on art and film? Do visual arts provide filmmakers with a free zone, where they can finally fulfil their most radical promises, or is it more like a transit zone, an intermediate stage in the re-thinking of the cinema project?
Fri 12.10.2007: Philippe-Alain Michaud
Fri 19.10.2007: Mark Nash
Fri 26.10.2007: Laura Mulvey
Fri 02.11.2007: Peter Weibel
Fri 09.11.2007: Jean-Christophe Royoux
WAYS OF HEARING
Concerts & Lecture
Argos, Brussels (in the context of the OPEN ARCHIVE #1 event, October - November 2007)
Over the past decades a new sound culture has developed. A rich culture of musicians, composers and listeners has emerged who apply themselves to the research of sound matter, recording and transmission, and particularly to the act and experience of listening itself. This culture gradually is superseding the predominance of the visual within art history and theory, is becoming more aware of its traditions, relevance and potential as a cultural signifier. The proliferation of ‘sound art’ as a legitimate field within contemporary art and the cultivation of such innovators as John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer to an almost mythical status are but the tip of the iceberg. Ultimately technological evolutions have set off a democratization of sound, liberated from both the rigidity of Western harmonic system and the popular music’s market -oriented thinking, throwing us back upon our own ears. These previously unknown forms of aural literacy, performance and memory have induced new affinities and alliances, beyond traditions and genres, beyond the distinction between original and copy, music and noise, amateur and professional, high and low culture. These practices are not bound by aesthetic or conceptual questions, but rather by a tendency to destabilize the norm and to challenge ruling ideas about sound and music, hearing and seeing, absence and presence. Ways of Hearing navigates, through numerous performances and lectures, through this whimsical landscape of sound.
Thu 04.10.2007: CONCERT Charles Curtis + Eliane Radigue / Lucio Capece + Mika Vainio
(Co-production with Q-O2)
The career of Charles Curtis (US, 1960) cannot be defined under a single header. During the 1980s he became known all over the world as a performer of traditional cello repertoire, but at the same time he opened up new horizons, amidst the downtown New York music scene, in the worlds of experimental rock and sound experiments. He collaborated closely with such rock combos as King Missile and Barbetomagus and composers like Michael Schumacher, Alvin Lucier and La Monte Young, who made him the leader of his Theatre of Eternal Music String Ensemble. In his recent work he explores a combination of dense tuning and pure tonality, resulting in transcendent sound patterns. In 2005 he collaborated with the influential French minimalist composer Eliane Radigue (FR, 1932) on her first non-electronic composition, Naldjorlak. In a threefold structure the hidden, complex sonority of the cello is fathomed, as a discrete sound stream balancing on the verge of perception.
in the presence of Eliane Radigue
The Argentinian Lucio Capece (AR, 1968), who currently resides in Berlin, plays soprano saxophone, bass clarinet and a no-input mixer, which he uses to manipulate feedback with. His work draws inspiration from the visual arts and cinema and always arises in an improvisational context, focusing mainly on the experience of time and perception. In his quest he often meets related sound searchers like Keith Rowe, Burkhard Beins, Yannis Kyriakides and Mattin. Recently he started a new project with Mika Vainio (FI, 1963), best known as one half of Pan Sonic. Both in this project and in his solo work, published under his own name or pseudonyms like Ø or Teknovil, influences from techno, industrial and minimalism converge in an analogous twilight zone, an organic sound universe submerged in anxious spheres and thrifty pulses.
Wed 17.10.2007: LECTURE David Toop: Ways of Hearing, Resisting the Visual
“Seeing comes before words. The child sees and recognizes before it can speak.” These are the first two sentences of John Berger’s Ways of Seeing. Berger defines sight as the primary human sense and introduces the idea that we find our place in the world through seeing. What this premise ignores is the fact that sound comes before seeing, and the child listens before it looks. In this lecture David Toop will investigate the position of sound in the realm of the senses, the relationship between hearing and seeing, between silence and not seeing. What did Marcel Duchamp mean when he proclaimed “one can look at seeing; one can’t hear hearing”? Are we living in a visual age, as the cliché goes, or rather in an aural world? What can words and images tell us about sonic absences and hauntings? What are the challenges sound artists, who work in the domain of visual arts, are confronted with?
As a musician, author and curator David Toop (UK, 1949) is particularly interested in the potential of sound as a musical element, free of harmonic and tonal systems; as a reflection of extra-musical systems from biology, geography, technology, cognitive processes, social relations, political models or body language. He traces and records how today - in the world of media and technology - sounds travel through time and space, meet and converge, develop and ‘live’. He documented his personal quest in several books (Rap Attack, Ocean of Sound, Exotica, and Haunted Weather), articles (The Wire, The Times and the Face, among others), exhibitions (e.g. Sonic Boom in the Hayward Gallery, London) and musical projects, often in collaboration with a wide range of artists, such as Brian Eno, John Zorn, Derek Bailey, Akio Suzuki, Steven Berkoff and Mitsutaka Ishii.
Thu 18.10.2007: CONCERT Asmus Tietchens + Thomas Köner, John Duncan, CM von Hausswolff (Co-production with Metaphon)
Since he experimented for the first time with tape recorders and synthesizers during the mid 1960s, Asmus Tietchens (DE, 1947) has left his mark on contemporary music, both in Germany and beyond. His influence is best felt on the industrial music movement, but he steers clear of any well-defined genre or philosophy. His countless releases, showing affinities with musique concrète, serialism, minimalism and krautrock, are above all intuitive and personal explorations of the studio as an instrument, of a specific musical notion, or collaboration. For a number of years now he has worked with fellow-countryman Thomas Köner (DE, 1965) on the project ‘Kontakt der Jünglinge’. Before Köner worked with filmmaker Jürgen Reble and with the duo Porter Ricks, causing a stir in the European techno landscape. Köner is particularly interested in the exploration of ’sound color’, an idea which he recently carried further into the visual as well. His audiovisual work has received awards at Transmediale, Ars Electronica and the International Film festival in Rotterdam, among others. ‘Kontakt der Jünglinge’ is the confrontation of two wayward idioms resulting in unexpected sound patterns.
For three decades John Duncan (US, 1953) has been exploring the psycho-physical limits of the individual, in sound, performances and installations. He sees his work as a kind of existential research, for himself and the audience. During the 1970s he caused a stir in Los Angeles with a series of radical physical performances, before he started to apply himself to the exploration of short wave radio and field recordings, in collaboration with such people as Paul McCarthy and Tom Recchion. After stays in Tokyo and Amsterdam, where he experimented with pirate stations, among other things, he moved to Italy, where he still resides. He has worked with Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Francisco López, Giuliana Stefani and members of Throbbing Gristle and Pan Sonic, and has participated in countless exhibitions and festivals worldwide.
The Swedish artist and curator Carl Michael von Hausswolff (SE, 1956) is particularly fascinated by twilight areas, both in the everyday environment and in the cultural domain. Since the end of the 1970s he has made sound studies, particularly with a tape recorder, but in recent sound and installation work he has focused mainly on the exploration of physical realities on the verge of human perception. He makes use of wide-ranging electronic media to explore and manipulate streams of information, energy fields, visual and acoustic phenomena. In the visual art world he has become known through his participation in exhibitions such as the 5th Istanbul Biennial, Documenta X, Kassel, and the 2nd Johannesburg Biennial (all 1997). In 2001 he was co-curator of the Nordic Pavilion on the Venice Biennale. Von Hausswolff is also the co- founder of the virtual nation ‘the Kingdom of Elgaland-Vargaland’.
Thu 25.10.2007: CONCERT Tetuzi Akiyama + Jozef van Wissem / Mattin + Junko + Michel Henritzi (Co-production with (K-RAA-K)3)
Guitarist, violinist and instrument builder Tetuzi Akiyama (JP, 1964) is one of the key figures in the Japanese improvisation scene. During the 1990s he worked closely with Taku Sugimoto, Keiji Haino, K.K. Null and Toshimaru Nakamura. Together they started the influential concert series ‘The Improvisation Meeting’ in Bar Aoyama. Akiyama’s music is rooted in American psychedelic rock, country and blues, styles which he systematically strips of their rock mythology, intuitively deconstructing and pushing them to the verge of abstraction. He plays the guitar with a primitive mind, looking for inherent sounds and possible playing areas, a method he also applies to other instruments and objects, such as record players and vacuum cleaners. Without a doubt Jozef van Wissem (NL, 1962) plays the least obvious instrument in the world of contemporary improvisation: the lute. And yet he skilfully manages to span a bridge between the 17th and 21st century, by radically reinterpreting the specific timbres, resonances and techniques of the instrument. In the process he stears clear of the traditional lineary progression and experiments with palindromes, mirror structures and cut up techniques.
The sound explorations of the Basque filmmaker, cultural theoretician and computer musician Mattin (SP, 1977) are based on resistance and dialectics, on the dynamics between extremely high and low volumes, but also between the digital and physical sounds of a computer. He sees the computer not merely as an abstraction, as a magical collector’s box of algorithms, but rather as an object which he examines on the basis of its sound potential. In that sense his style has a lot in common with electro-acoustic improvizers, such as Radu Malfatti and Eddie Prévost, with whom he has collaborated closely already. His love of extremes, particularly shaped as uncompromising noise, can be heard in his projects with Junko (JP, 1961), the voice of the infamous Japanese collective Hijokaidan, which has been causing a stir since the end of the 1970s with their anarchist, sound barrier challenging performances. Junko neither sings, nor recites but, just like Yoko Ono or Diamanda Galas, she explores the limits of the voice, the dark regions where nothing but mere despair, fear and salvation resounds. The third member of this trio, multi-instrumentalist and music commentator Michel Henritzi (FR, 1959), is looking for his own take on musical primitivism. He is one of the most active members of the French underground scene and over the past thirty years he was involved in countless bands, collaborations, fanzines and labels, including his own A Bruit Secret label. With Mattin he shares an anti-establishment attitude, which becomes apparent from polemical stances to the political dimensions of improvisational music.
INDETERMINATE CINEMA
Ken Jacobs & Tony Conrad
Co-production with BOZAR Cinema
Argos & Bozar, Brussels (in the context of the OPEN ARCHIVE #1 event, October - November 2007)
Cinema: illusion or reality? As spectators we are constantly torn between distance and proximity, between criticism and fascination; we are always aware of the spectacle, but at the same time we are eager to believe, to be caught unaware by the simulacrum. We thoroughly enjoy getting carried away in a linear flow of images and sounds, pushed forward by narrative conventions. At the same time, countless filmmakers investigate lines of fracture in the cinematic experience, the negative surroundings where cinematographic codes and conditions can be deconstructed, manipulated and rebuilt at wish. Cinema is being reinvented, liberated from the surface of the screen, the borders of the frame, cinematic time and space, the illusion of movement, beyond the borders of enchantment and meaning. The spectator is pushed out of his role as a passive image consumer, and is urged to define his/her own aesthetic experience. In their performances, films and videos Ken Jacobs and Tony Conrad, each in their own way, undermine the cinematic experience , in a quest for the interaction between stasis and movement, light and texture, time and duration. The result stands up to psychological interpretation, but also generates a purely sensory response, a hard confrontation with the essence of cinema.
Tony Conrad
The influence of violinist, composer, film and videomaker Tony Conrad (US, 1940) cannot be overestimated: he was one of the originators of the Minimalist music movement and a key figure in the experimental film scene in New York during the 1960s. He was co-founder of the ‘Theatre of Eternal Music’ collective (with John Cale, LaMonte Young and Angus MacLise), which developed a new musical language counter to any existing conventions of the time, and labeled as “dream music”. Music was thus set free from the stronghold of musical ‘high’ culture, by putting improvisation and participation above compositional authoritarianism, and by focusing on the aspect of listening itself through a new use of harmonic intervals. With his audiovisual Conrad also questions and undermines the laws of looking and listening. In his best-known film, The Flicker (1966), he searched for a visual equivalent of musical consonance, which resulted in a bombardment of stroboscopic flashes, producing optical color effects in their turn. After his collaboration with the Krautrock formation Faust during the 1970s Conrad chose to lecture full time at the media faculty of Buffalo University. Since his work was brought back to attention in the 1990s he is more active than ever in a wide range of areas.
Sa 13.10.2007 PERFORMANCE Forty-five Years on the Infinite Plain (Tony Conrad + guestmusicians) (venue: Bozar)
Created in New York in 1972, the performance Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain seems to be the ideal synthesis of Tony Conrad’s research: his structural approach to cinema unites with his minimal and open approach to music. Four projectors showing a hypnotic and flashing film loop are joined by musicians, producing continuous sound chords. The result is a suspended audiovisual environment, which is reflective and unravels very slowly; “very meditational and very terrific”, as Conrad put it himself. This event creates a great opportunity to live this historic performance, never presented in Belgium, in a revised form : Forty-five Years on the Infinite Plain.
As Conrad explains himself : “In revising “Ten” to “Forty-five”, I am addressing a broader chronological perspective, relocating to a different social allegory, and accessing the plural tools that encompass a more contemporary “minimalism.” The “subject” that is, the viewer—is still at the center of the work; but now the polyvalence of subjectivity is recognized in a figural usage of heterophony and antiphony. A solo cello challenges the lead instrument, and the audience area is divided in half. Musical figures invoke divisiveness, over the unitary ground of the drone. There are two distinct rhythms to follow, further dividing the subject’s attention. These elements of what would have been seen in 1972 as “confusion” instead, i n today’s heterotopia, reflect and invite access to a subjectivity that is more “true to life,” more centered on the plain where we stand.”
“A work that relates to time but exists independent of points in time refers to the obverse side of time, beyond the possibility of measuring it with markings: duration. Yet unmeasured duration, in principle, is a kingdom entirely at the command of the recipient and his or her subjectivity.” Diedrich Diedrichsen, Time and Dream: Tony Conrad’s Yellow Movies
Ten Years Alive on the Infinite Plain (1972), like some other works of the psychedelic era, commingles starkly formal abstraction with introspective romanticism. Its insistent conflation of quasi-religious spectacle with materialist minimalism follows a path marked out by Rothko, Cage, Andre, and many others. Today these elements have lost their radicalism; even the political conviction of that time, that such work could make contact, through its spiritual insistence, “with the political real behind the culture of commodity and spectacle” (as Diedrichsen puts it), seems problematic and thin.
Su 14.10.2007 A Sunday Afternoon with Tony Conrad
During the last film festival in Rotterdam, Tony Conrad electrocuted a film reel, which produced light flashes and sparks. He then developed the images in a bucket and screened them before a baffled and highly amused audience. Apart from lecturing at Buffalo University, New York, this filmmaker, video maker and musician is also a brilliant pedagogue with an inspiring sense of humour. This lecture is the perfect introduction to Tony Conrad’s work, a trajectory through over forty years of radical creation. During the course of the afternoon, Tony Conrad will present and discuss some of his films and videos, including :Straight and Narrow (10 min, 16mm, 1970), Articulation of Boolean Algebra for Film Opticals (10 min excerpt, 16mm, 1975), Cycles of 3s and 7s (12 min excerpt, video, 1977), In Line (7 min, video, 1986), Tony’s Oscular Pets (7 min, video, 2001), Grading Tips for Teachers (13 min, video, 2003), Conversation II (6 min, video, 2005), Beholden to Victory (variable duration, computer-based self-editing feature film installation, 1980-2007).
Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs (US, 1933) is a key figure in the post-war experimental film world. After his university studies he found himself in the vivid artistic climate of New York of the 50s and 60s, where he made a name for himself as a committed filmmaker and activist. Together with his wife Flo he founded the Millennium Film Workshop, and was responsible for one of the first university cinema training courses. Jacobs’ films and performances explore the subconscious of the cinematic experience, the regions where the construction of light, movement, speed and frame incite a purely sensorial shadowplay, beyond the borders of cinematographic time and space. In films such as Tom, Tom the Piper’s Son (1969-1971) he dissects and manipulates existing film material, deconstructs each sequence and gesture, applies himself to texture and space, and choreographs, like a self-appointed “cine-puppeteer”, a secondary discourse of forgotten and explored time. In his performances and recent video work he explores the phenomenon of “eternalisms”, paradoxical appearances in which objects and figures seem to be captured in a spasm of infinite, slowly moving rotations. This is cinema which reverses the curve of human perception, and which takes its force from the mysteries of our own looking and thinking.
Sa 20.10.2007 SCREENING Star Spangled To Death + Ken Jacobs in conversation with Mark Webber
Star Spangled To Death
1957-2003, col./b&w, English spoken, 393’
This Magnum Opus by Ken Jacobs was in the making for almost half a century. Initiated in 1957 as one of his “urban-guerilla-cinema” projects with avant-garde legend Jack Smith, this film developed into a 6-hour-plus social criticism of the U.S. which, in his words, was “stolen and dangerously sold-out”. Footage of his own is combined with fragments from documentaries, cartoons, musicals and educational films, as a reflection on such issues as race and religion, war addiction and the monopolisation of wealth. A splendid immersion in clownish euphoria and political despair.
Su 21.10.2007 PERFORMANCE Nervous Magic Lantern with a live soundtrack by Aki Onda (venue:Bozar)
The Nervous Magic Lantern unravels an unexpected film before our eyes, without actors, without a plot, without celluloid or video. Making use of pre-cinematographic techniques an illusory dreamworld is created, where the spectator is immersed in alienating, rotating landscapes suggesting the shape of volcanic glass, desolate craters or glacial gorges. The result is a hallucinatory three-dimensional watching experience, in which impossible phenomena and non-existing locations come to life in the projected dimension between the screen and the gaze of the spectator, like an innuendo of abstract shapes.
Musician, composer and visual artist Aki Onda (JP, 1967) is always on the lookout, camera and sound recorder at hand, ready to document his travels and encounters. He looks for meaning in the accumulation of those memories, when the specific experiences fade out and the architecture and essence of the memory reveals itself. His ongoing project Cassette Memories consists of a series of performances, or rituals, where he lets memories, recorded on soundtape, wander and collide with the sounds of the site-specific memory. Onda has previously worked with such artists as Alan Licht, Loren Connors, Michael Snow and Otomo Yoshihide. This is his first collaboration with Ken Jacobs.
(Curated with Maria Palacios Cruz and Xavier Garcia-Bardon)
MEDIA, MEMORY AND THE ARCHIVE
CONFERENCE
Sa 06.10.2007
Argos, Brussels (in the context of the OPEN ARCHIVE #1 event)
How will generations after us look back on artistic production of the 20th and 21st centuries? Media formats, operating systems, software and hardware, browsers and the internet as we know it today will have evolved beyond recognition, both in shape and in use. What strategies might be used to transpose technology-based works, variable, hybrid and ephemeral by nature, to an unknown and unpredictable future? How can intent, context and experience be recorded and permanently interpreted? The archiving process does not merely represent an attempt to preserve some notions, it also implicates that others will be forgotten. What is relevant for preservation? The technical structure of the archive determines the structure of the archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event. What is the impact of used models, technical structures and tools on the construction of cultural memory? How does information travel through time, now that the world is being (re)presented and organised more and more as a database, dynamic and networked? How will museums and other memory institutions cope with these new paradigms and what is the role media artists and we ourselves might have in the structuring of public memory?
JOSEPHINE BOSMA, JEAN-FRANCOIS BLANCHETTE, STEVE DIETZ, WOLFGANG ERNST, CHARLIE GERE, OLIVER GRAU, RICHARD RINEHART
Moderated by Marleen Wynants (CROSSTALKS, Vrije Universiteit Brussel - VUB)
Co-production with Packed
VIDEO VORTEX : RESPONSES TO YOUTUBE
CONFERENCE
Fri 05.10.2007
Argos, Brussels (in the context of the OPEN ARCHIVE #1 event)
Over the past years the moving image has claimed an increasingly prominent place on the internet. Thanks to a wide range of technologies and web applications it has become possible, not only to record and distribute video, but to edit and remix it on-line as well. With this world of possibilities within reach of a multitude of social actors, the potential of video as a personal means of expression has arrived at a totally new dimension. How is this potential being used? How do artists and activists react to the popularity of YouTube and other ‘user-generated-content’ websites? What is the impact of the availability of massive on-line images and sound databases on aesthetics and narrativity? How is Cinema, as an art form and experience, influenced by the development of widely spreading internet practices? What does YouTube tell us about the state of art in visual culture? And how does the participation culture of video-sharing and vlogging reach some degree of autonomy and diversity, escaping the laws of the mass media and the strong grip of media conglomerates?
This Video Vortex conference is the first in a series of international events, aimed at critical research and reflection surrounding the production and distribution of on-line video content, at the instigation of the Institute of Network Cultures (INC).
JOHAN GRIMONPREZ, PETER HORVATH, LEV MANOVICH, ANA KRONSCHNABL & TOMAS RAWLINGS, ADRIAN MILES, SIMON RUSCHMEYER, KEITH SANBORN, PETER WESTENBERG.
Introduced by Geert Lovink. Moderated by Sabine Niederer.
Co-production with Institute of Network Cultures
CONCERT
Sleeping Machine (Machinefabriek + Sleeping Dog) / Discodesafinado
Thu 24.05.07
Argos, Brussels
The long-playing debut of Machinefabriek, brought out last year by the one-man project of Rutger Zuydervelt, was very well received, among other things it ended up on The Wire’s year-end listings. Rightly so: with a great sense of tension Machinefabriek layers and weaves together melodious textures, grainy noise and found sounds into atmospherical compositions, keeping a balance between the pop deconstructions by Fennesz and the melancholical soundscapes of William Basinski. Just like them he explores the twilight zone between figuration and abstraction, where time seems to have come to a halt and the echoes of the memory resound. At Argos Machinefabriek will team up with Sleeping Dog, the homeproject of Chantal Acda, who also plays with the Belgian Band Chacda. Expect fairytales, noise, drones and David Lynch ambience.
The duo Joris Vermeiren and Senjan Jansen is responsible for the concert series Discodesafinado, which set the tone during the 1990s for the electronics trend currently sweeping the international club and art circuit. The same header also houses a label and a music project, rivalling their examples from the very start. With their work, scarcely distributed and performed, they snuggle up warmly to such ‘minimal-techno’ masters as Thomas Brinkmann or Vladislav Delay. With digital tools and analogous drum machines they explore a musical territory in which classic minimalism and microscopic sound patterns converge with elements from techno and house. The result is a pointillist pallet of micro sounds, both rhythmical and contemplative. Music for the head and legs.
LECTURE
Jon Ippolito: Art After Institutions
Thu 17.05.07
Argos, Brussels
Participatory media like Flickr and YouTube have given ordinary netizens a chance to shine as media creators, but this fact hasn’t gone over well with “serious” artists and their curatorial counterparts. Seemingly bereft of the social status, economic privilege, and institutional recognition of mainstream art stars, some new media artists wonder what role, if any, remains for them to play in the the Web 2.0 age of peer-filtered creativity. As Joline Blais and Jon Ippolito argue in the 2006 book At the Edge of Art, new media art’s dependence on institutions is indeed in crisis, but this is more of a loss for galleries and museums than for the artists themselves. For participatory media are on the verge of enabling creators to regain the power they once held before the era of commodity speculation and the art market: the ability to reconnect people in new forms of creative kinship, whereby artworks facilitate social transactions rather than financial ones. To accept this new role, however, artists, curators, and critics may have to renounce the pyramid scheme offered by the brick-and-mortar art world, replacing the monolithic canon of Great Artists with a dense network of creative participants.
The recipient of Tiffany, Lannan, and American Foundation awards, Jon Ippolito exhibited artwork with collaborative teammates Janet Cohen and Keith Frank at the Walker Art Center, ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and WNET’s ReelNewYork Web site. As Associate Curator of Media Arts at the Guggenheim Museum, he curated Virtual Reality: An Emerging Medium and, with John G. Hanhardt, The Worlds of Nam June Paik. Ippolito’s critical writing has appeared in periodicals ranging from Flash Art and the Art Journal to the Washington Post. At the Still Water lab co-founded with Joline Blais, Ippolito is at work on three projects–the Variable Media Network, the Open Art Network, and their 2006 book At the Edge of Art–that aim to expand the art world beyond its traditional confines.
In cooperation with the International Visitors Program for Media Arts organised by Digitaal Platform IAK/IBK and Flanders Image.
CONCERT
Toshimaru Nakamura + Nicholas Bussman
Marcus Schmickler + Hayden Chisholm
Thu 19.04.07
Argos, Brussels
Toshimaru Nakamura is part of the so-called Onkyo scene, a group of Japanese musicians who, as a reaction against the excess of image, sound and movement in ultramodern cities like Tokyo, have built up a minimalist sound world, typified by almost immobile purity and intense restraint. His work revolves around the “no-input mixing board” technique, creating electronic feedback by tying together the input and output of a mixing console. Berlin-based curator and musician Nicholas Bussman enjoyed training as a cellist, before he decided to explore the musical potential of electronics. Among other things he called into being Kapital Band 1, along with Martin Brandlmayr (Radian). Currently he prefers performing to recording and he explores unorthodox composition methods. Nakamura and Bussmann have been working together since 2004 as Alles3. The combination of their wide-ranging musical approaches brings about unexpected sound frictions.
The curriculum of Marcus Schmickler might be read as a survey of the influential Cologne music scene. His projects are as countless as they are varied: from krautrock-based psychedelica of Pol and the shoegazer pop of Pluramon, to the digital sound textures of Wabi Sabi and the orchestra (de)compositions of Param. The extensive list of collaborations includes such names as Kaffe Matthews, Peter Rehberg, Thomas Lehn, Thomas Brinkmann and John Tilbury. Schmickler always deals with the exploration of the outer limits of sound research and the integration of inert sound matter in new surroundings. One of the musicians he regularly works with is the saxophone player and composer from New Zealand Hayden Chisholm. Their common project Amazing Daze explores and broadens the sound spectrum of the bagpipes and the Sho (Japanese mouth organ), which results in multilayered, massive drones.
LECTURE
Geert Lovink: New Media Arts at the Crossroads
Thu 05.04.07
Argos, Brussels
The emerging new media arts genre is in a crisis. Not that ‘new media’ are on its way out. What we’re talking here is a luxury problem: in what direction to grow futher? After an initial period in which time and again the question ‘what is new media?’ was raised, we have now moved to a second phase, in which large parts of the population have gotten familiar with multimedia, cell phones and the Internet. However, new media arts still operates in a self-referential ghetto, dominated by techno-fetishism. In the meanwhile, the world at large has moved from utopian promisses about virtual reality and cyberspace to a culture of massive use. Taking this ‘democratization’ of new technologies in mind, what are the implications of this shift for the ‘electronic arts’ branch? Should new media artists and their (few) institutions seek collaboration and interegration with the museum and gallery art? Should new media as a seperate category, with its own festivals and exhitions, be integrated into the broader ‘contemporary arts’? Or should we rather further institutionalize the new media discipline?
Geert Lovink (NL/AUS), media theorist and activist, Internet critic and author of Dark Fiber, Uncanny Networks and My First Recession. He worked on various media projects in Eastern Europe and India. He is a member of the Adilkno collective (Cracking the Movement, The Media Archive) and co-founder of Internet projects such as The Digital City, Nettime, Fibreculture and Incommunicado. He is founder and director of the Institute of Network Cultures, professor at Interactive Media (Hogeschool van Amsterdam) and associate professor at the Media & Culture department, University of Amsterdam. In 2005-2006 he was a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study. His blog: www.networkcultures.org/geert
CONCERT
Giuseppe Ielasi / Keith Rowe (solo + duo)
Thu 29.03.07
Argos, brussels
Giuseppe Ielasi is among the vanguard of a new generation of Italian sound pioneers, exploring the outer limits of the electro-acoustic domain in a wide variety of configurations, moving freely between improvisation and composition. As a guitar player Ielasi has been in the ascendant for a number of years in the international live improvisation scene, among others in collaboration with Taku Sugimoto, Dean Roberts, Brandon LaBelle and Thomas Ankersmit. In his solo compositions he typically seems to make use of the chiaroscuro-effect, looking for a balance between abstract tone experiment and melodious structures. As of late his attention goes out to location-specific performances, making use of microphones and a multispeaker system to explore the relation between sound and space.
Keith Rowe ranks as one of the main figures within the European electro acoustic improvisation movement. Already since the 1960s, when he set up the influential AMM ensemble with percussionist Eddie Prévost and saxophone player Lou Gare, he has explored the idea of “controlled accident”. Mainly inspired by the visual arts, Rowe has developed an idiom of his own over the last decades, based on diverse ‘prepared guitar’ techniques and the manipulation of short wave signals. He is a pioneer of the so-called ‘tableguitar’ concept, placing the guitar in a horizontal position, dissecting its sound potential as if it were a patient in surgery. In the twenty-first century Keith Rowe is more active than ever. He counts as the thriving force behind the electronic bigband MIMEO and he has worked with countless artists of various generations, including Christian Fennesz, Toshimaru Nakamura, Günter Müller and John Tilbury.
CONCERT
Philip Jeck / Pierre Bastien
Thu 08.03.07
Argos, Brussels
British turn-tablist Philip Jeck (1952) studied visual arts but has been experimenting with vinyl records as musical instruments since the eighties,inspired by both the hip-hop movement and Christian Marclay’s collages. Using old turntables and mainly obscure vinyls, he creates repetitive and evocative soundtracks, which haunt the individual and collective memories just as a halo of distortions and mutations. After a long stray as a composer for dance and theatre, he now focuses essentially on his experiments and installations with vinyl records, often collaborating with other artists such as Jah Wobble, Jacob Kirkegaard and Janek Schaefer.
Born in Paris, where he studied French literature, Pierre Bastien (1953) lives in Rotterdam. Since the late seventies, he has been a composer for several dance companies just as he patiently developed his dream project : “Mecanium”, a mechanical orchestra. Built out of mechanic elements and recycled engines, it reproduces the sounds of traditional instruments from all around the world; from African drums to the Indonesian gamelan, from the kora to the thump-piano.The resulting miniature symphonies, both futuristic as well as somewhat dada, are emphasized by melodies for wind and string instruments performed by Bastien himself.
LECTURE
Brian Holmes: The Absent Rival: Radical Art in a Political Vacuum
Thu 15.02.07
Argos, Brussels
The story begins with the archetypal scene of interventionist art: the moment when the Yes Men step out of the Internet and into a corporate conference, expecting to provoke violent outrage. Instead everybody smiles, shakes hands and asks for a business card. Can political satire make meaning ina vacuum, when elites don’t even recognize its critique? Extending the discussion to Italy - home of Luther Blisset and 0100101110101101.org, but also of Silvio Berlusconi - Brian Holmes looks at the destiny of the artist-provocateur without a rival. Capitalist democracy, as Bernard Stiegler claims, seems unable to rise above the fantastic technical mutation it has set into motion. To what extent has the activist generation really used new technology to invent new subjectivities? What would we do in the face of the enlightened industrial bourgeoisie that Stiegler dreams of?
Brian Holmes is an activist critic. Over the past ten years he has collaborated with a wide variety of social movements in Europe and the Americas. His writings can be found in a wide range of books, magazines and journals, and can also be accessed for free at www.u-tangente.org.
Manipulators: I’m not a Horse
VIDEOPROGRAM curated by Johan Grimonprez & Charlotte Léouzon
Thu 04.01.2007
Argos, Brussels
‘Manipulators’ is a TV genre in which the programme is improvised by the curators. With Podcasts,online TV, mobile phones, video Ipods, blogs and YouTube, the digital age allows an infinite number of images and sounds to travel the world in no time. It is the era of home made productions, which expresses the chaotic nature of the human condition today as well as the cynicism of power.This video compilation, which can be understood both as the joyful affirmation of a superb global disengagement and the catalyst of effervescent criticism, is best described as a platform for temporary disobedience.
Johan Grimonprez (1962) lives and works both in Ghent and New York, where he is a visiting professor at the School of Visual Arts. He is best-known for his video work DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y (1997). In this and other work he mainly investigates the use of massmedia as a political instrument and a considerable tool in the construction of realities, in our era of infotainment and mediasaturation. Charlotte Léouzon (1971) has written for Liberation, Jalouse, DS, Dépeche Mode and Beaux Arts. She is a talent scout, who collects experimental cinema, video art, commercials and music videos.
CONCERT
Oren Ambarchi / Ignatz
Thu 30.11.2006
Argos, Brussels
Oren Ambarchi (AU)
In the sound quest of the Australian guitar player and percussionist Oren Ambarchi (1969) a broad range of influences can be traced, from freejazz, noise and ethnic music to conventional song structures and minimalist composition. His solo work mainly focuses on the electro-acoustic transformation of the guitar, as a laboratory for tone research. The result is an abstract, fragile world of sound, in which the borders of time and space are constantly challenged. In the past Ambarchi has worked with a wide variety of musicians, such as Martin Ng (Australia), Christian Fennesz (Austria), Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Pimmon (Australia), John Zorn (USA), Voice Crack (Switzerland), Sachiko M (Japan), Keith Rowe (UK), Phill Niblock (USA), Günter Müller (Switzerland), Evan Parker (UK) and Toshimaru Nakamura (Japan). He has been recently spotted in the company of the much-discussed drone assembly sunn0))).
Ignatz (BE)
Grown up on a diet of lo-fi pop, ancient blues and the ‘Smithsonian Anthology Of Folk’, Bram Devens labels himself, not without irony, as a lo-fi fascist. Armed with nothing but a couple of seedy guitars, an archaic tape recorder and some effects, he creates disjointed sound scraps, mounted from a haze of improvised melodic figures and dark noise shadows. Both wayward and enchanting, intimate and alienating, romantic and poignant, his rich art-brut compositions explore the dark corners of the musical spectrum, where beauty arises out of intuition and confrontation.
ECRAN D’ART
Cinema Arenberg, 2006 - 2008
A monthly screning of artists’ film and/or video jointly organised by Argos and Cinema Arenberg, in colaboration with La Cambre Academy.
with works by James Benning, Pedro Costa, Douglas Gordon, Sharon Lockhart, Anthony McCall & Andrew Tyndall, …
And here are some flyers from the good ol’ days, when things seemed some much simpler and “curating” was just another annoying buzzword used by self-conscious neo-managers. Ah, nostalgia…
more stuff to come…