THE ETHNOGRAPHIC TURN (REVISITED) #3 - PIETER GEENEN

Location: deBuren, Leopoldstraat 6, 1000 Brussel - Reservation : soundimageculture@gmail.com

'The Ethnographic Turn (Revisited)' explores the relationship between contemporary art and cultural diversity with a specific focus on practice-based-research. What does it imply to create art in an age of so-called ‘superdiversity’? How can art become a space for exploring the effects of difference in contemporary life?

Audiovisual artist Pieter Geenen explores the relationship between national identity and boundaries, history and memory. He will show his new work 'The Nation', followed by an aftertalk with Kris Rutten. In the second half of 2015 he will have a solo exhibition in Argos.

'THE NATION', Pieter Geenen, 2014 50',

(16:9, duotone colour, stereo, HD English/Russian/Armenian/Karabakh dialect spoken, English text)

The isolated people of Nagorno-Karabakh are living in a time vacuum since the cease fire of 1994. They live in a de facto independent country, but remain unrecognized as such by the international community. This area is still subject of an unresolved and long forgotten conflict which is the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Then what does national identity mean in a country that doesn't exist? And what's the role of the landscape in it? 'The Nation' fits in Geenen's research on (national) identity, migration and borders, in relation to the mental and physical land.