BELGIAN FOCUS (2003)

Shorts #1: Becoming   61’
on Sat, 18 Oct 2003 14:00

Le devenir animal d’Isabelle Bachmann by Stéphane Manzone 3’ 2002
‘Le devenir animal d’Isabelle Bachmann’ is part of the video series ‘Les devenirs animaux’, a homage to philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who stated that the body is not a structure, but a shape – or rather the material of that shape. Stéphane Manzone made a series of so-called ‘video drawings’, for which he framed bodies in split-screens, trying to give a visual representation through the countless lines engraved in the composure. This video shows the fragmented body of Isabelle Bachmann which, just before her labour, shows surprising signs of metamorphosis. Symmetrically spread out over nine ovular shapes, the overall image receives plastic characteristics, like a morphological puzzle of a fabulous animal-to-be.

Stéphane Manzone (1970) was born in Monaco and he lives in Brussels. After working as a script writer for film and TV, he has made short fiction films as well as experimental work, among them the series Les devenirs animaux.

Childhood Performance by Sabine Oosterlynck 59’’ 2003
Two long elastic bands are tightened around two chairs, a velcro rug is stuck to the ground. A girl in high heels is hopping up and down. There is also some tape attached to the bottoms of her shoes, turning a seemingly simple game into quite an undertaking. On the one hand, this video symbolises growing out of youthful innocence in spite of cramped attempts to hold on to rituals and on the other hand the urge to adulthood. This performance was recorded with a super8 film and digitally recorded; the editing accentuates the cumbersome and restless pace of a life in transition.

Sabine Oosterlynck (1974) moved from the world of fashion into the art world. In her projects – performances, videos, installations, photos, collages, and objects – she looks for depth apart from the purely aesthetic. Greek myths and the theme of being a woman constitute the starting point for her work. She has exhibited, among other places, in the CJK (Ghent), De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam) and during the Art Brussels art fair.

Flash Back by Claude Cattelain 1’30’’ 2003
In his work Claude Cattelain tries to grasp the essence in the volatile. His short and personal flashes of astonishment and fragility offer a striking image of a passage from one place to another, or a shift in frames of mind. Impulsive video sequences, not without a sense of humour, at times evoking an actual spatial escapism or on other occasions recording coincidental or purposeful emotional turning points. Flash Back was made from simple web cam images, on a weekly drive from Brussels to Valenciennes. An intangible barrage of light stimuli from the highway gives an impression of a flight. In Hélene Cattelain focuses his camera on his daughter, she wakes up with eyes full of innocence and amazement, to fall back to sleep soon afterwards. White Ball shows a passage of one state of mind to another through direct amazement. No time to think or to lament.

Claude Cattelain (1972) was born in Kinshasa and he works in Brussels and Valenciennes, where he founded l’Atelier, a school for painting and design. He writes children’s books and he experiments in various disciplines –painting, sculpture and video art – aiming at notions of instability, fragility and escapism.

The Glass Wall by Dora García 30’ 2003
Two girls are in permanent contact with each other through an electronic answering machine. Without any visual contact or prior knowledge they begin to sound out each other through questions and fantasy images. Slowly, without giving it further thought, their curiosity evolves into a meticulous role play. The camera keeps after one of the girls and it witnesses an unravelling game of manipulation and sexual tension. Tinges, the sensation of the unknown are tightened into an understanding bond; manipulator and victim grow closer to one another.

Dora Garcia (1965) was born in Spain and she lives in Brussels. Her work comprises sketches, photography, installations, performance, video, sound and net art. Her main attention goes out to the constantly evolving laws of human existence, with recurring themes like social conditioning and fruitful contradictions. She has found a place for herself in numerous collections and museums (like the Henry Art Foundation in Seattle, Macba in Barcelona, and Paul Andriesse in Amsterdam) and her video work has been shown, among other places, at the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, the Museo Nacional Reina Sofia (Madrid) and De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam).

Hélène by Claude Cattelain 36’’ 2003
In his work Claude Cattelain tries to grasp the essence in the volatile. His short and personal flashes of astonishment and fragility offer a striking image of a passage from one place to another, or a shift in frames of mind. Impulsive video sequences, not without a sense of humour, at times evoking an actual spatial escapism or on other occasions recording coincidental or purposeful emotional turning points. Flash Back was made from simple web cam images, on a weekly drive from Brussels to Valenciennes. An intangible barrage of light stimuli from the highway gives an impression of a flight. In Hélene Cattelain focuses his camera on his daughter, she wakes up with eyes full of innocence and amazement, to fall back to sleep soon afterwards. White Ball shows a passage of one state of mind to another through direct amazement. No time to think or to lament.

Wideawake by Orla Barry 25’ 2003
Language, in written as well as spoken form, constitutes the essence of Orla Barry’s work. She ties words into phrases, kneads sentences into paragraphs, ending up with a visual as well as verbal unity, an apparently non-structured stream-of-consciousness with an open and poetical structure. The monologue In Wideawake is performed by Caroline Donnely. A stressed-out young woman trips up and down on a platform in high heels. Clearly abandoned to her fate, she repeatedly begs for someone to book her a hotel for the night. But no one is there. The abyss of existential anxiety and mental and physical collapse is opening up In front of her. “I am acrobatic with words, but my actions cannot always follow my tongue”. Her continuous stream of words is a touching interior monologue in which consciousness and subconscious clamp into each other in a hellish downward spiral leading to total abandonment.

Orla Barry (1969) is from Irish descent, she studied at the academies of Dublin and Belfast and the Ateliers in Amsterdam and she lives in Brussels. Her work, spanning a wide variety of media, focuses on language in a poetical way, regularly drawing inspiration from Irish poetry and song traditions. She regularly works with other visual artists, among whom Els Dietvorst and the Portuguese Rui Chafes. Her work has been shown, among other places, at the Camden Arts Centre (London), Galerie Vasista (Montpellier), the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin) and Gallery Canvas (Porto).

White Ball by Claude Cattelain 8’’ 2003
In his work Claude Cattelain tries to grasp the essence in the volatile. His short and personal flashes of astonishment and fragility offer a striking image of a passage from one place to another, or a shift in frames of mind. Impulsive video sequences, not without a sense of humour, at times evoking an actual spatial escapism or on other occasions recording coincidental or purposeful emotional turning points. Flash Back was made from simple web cam images, on a weekly drive from Brussels to Valenciennes. An intangible barrage of light stimuli from the highway gives an impression of a flight. In Hélene Cattelain focuses his camera on his daughter, she wakes up with eyes full of innocence and amazement, to fall back to sleep soon afterwards. White Ball shows a passage of one state of mind to another through direct amazement. No time to think or to lament.

Temps d’hiver   70’
on Sat, 18 Oct 2003 15:30

Temps d’hiver by Marie André 70’ 2002
In the heart of winter, a filmmaker is at work. Her work encompasses her life, the place of her body in within the season, her past, cinema, her friends and colleagues from Brussels (Alexandra Dementieva, Boris Lehman...). These observations by André are visualised in a minimalist way, but also with intimacy and richness in emotions and detail. They accentuate the lyrical qualities of the static, the elegance of the natural. In this self-portrait, shot on 16mm, the film itself is considered as a perishable medium, to be preserved in a dark, cool place – in between the jam and fresh potatoes – so that, when the time is right, the celluloid can submerge as if it were a sparkling diamond.

Marie André (1951) studied dramatic arts and scenario writing and she used to lecture video art at the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels. Her video work, which incorporates various genres, like narrative fiction, portrait, documentary and performance, always starts from observation. Her subjects show a strong inclination towards the elegance of everyday gestures and intimate details, with a predominantly female approach. Her work has been shown on a worldwide scale, and it received awards at festivals in Locarno and San Sebastián.

Shorts #2: Telescoped   43’
on Sat, 18 Oct 2003 17:00

Pong 1972 by Sophie Whetnall 1’22’’ 2003
An immobile image of a tower, the starting-point for two cable lifts. At an accelerated pace the cabins can be seen coming and going, meanwhile aeroplanes keep passing by. Each movement is amplified by an electronic sound, seemingly causing the scene, which covers day and night, to take on the form and dynamics of the primitive computer game Pong (from 1972). Whetnall plays around with the idea of time and perception, supplying the images with a renewed, artificial context.

Sophie Whettnal (1973) lives and works in Brussels. Her work comprises photography, video and multimedia installations. She was a resident in the Hangar in Barcelona (2001-2002) and she has exhibited in The Video Art Foundation (Barcelona), Flagey (Brussels) Video Underground Zero (Toronto) and the Caermersklooster (Ghent).

Die Hälfte der Zeit by Doris Lasch & Ursula Ponn 3’21’’ 2002
This B/W sequence, a single shot, was filmed by an immobile camera. The image oversees a hill, on the foreground there is a telescope, surrounded by passers-by. Downstairs, at the bottom of the hill, we see a huge, empty field, with a go-cart racing track at the end. A boy is looking through the telescope, focussing on something far away. At the same time clouds cast a dark shadow onto the scene and for a couple of fleeting seconds the light changes. The small movements on the foreground and the activity in the distance melt together. During a three-minute time span the different outlooks overlap with each other and all kinds of parallels and associations pop up. A simple perception of time and reality shifts into a complex visual playground full of disproportions and conflicts.

Both Doris Lasch (1972) and Ursula Ponn (1965) were born in Germany and live in Brussels and Maastricht, alternatively. They both went to the Akademie der Bildende Kunst in München and work at the Jan Van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. Their joint film and video work questions the perception of daily occurrences and investigates the idea of space behind and between the image. It has been shown, among other places, in the Kunstraum München, the Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius) and the Schloss Solitude gallery (Stuttgart).

Azzazin #1 by Izabelle Nouzha 7’ 2002
A Super 8 film about the Last Man, who, persecuted by his memories of the outside world, goes on the lookout for female bodies on which to perform his rituals. In order to stay in control of his own world he feeds on his obsession with endless labour on lean meat. Azzazin#1 is a macabre, claustrophobic parable on the urge for control and construction in a purely hostile world. The electronic soundtrack by Muslimgauze adds an extra dimension to this visceral world of nightmares.

Isabelle Nouzha (1976) was born in Strasbourg, she lived in Germany for a while and for the moment she resides in Brussels, where she is studying at the Sint-Lukas institute. Her installations and videos, mostly shot in super8, show a fascination for horror and surrealist films, with themes like isolation and destruction. On occasion she works with video maker Jennifer Debauche. Her work has been shown, among other places, at the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, art-action (Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin) and Courtisane (Ghent).

Konzentration und Verschwendung by Doris Lasch & Ursula Ponn 15’14’’ 2002
This is a static image on the top of the hill. People are walking by, they hold still and talk, peer in the distance at the invisible, disappear from sight. Doris Lasch and Ursula Ponn start from everyday life –a place, a situation – and question our perceptions in the process of viewing. They create a tissue of expectations and reveal an idea of space which surpasses the superficial image: a vacuum which needs to be defined through the process of viewing itself. We become more and more involved, we find an appropriate distance and scrutinise the surroundings to discover the intermediate, open spaces. The view changes and perceptivity develops a wider, more considerate form of seeing.

Life on Mars by Izabelle Nouzha 10’ 2003
A grotesque universe of outrageous characters and sinister places, with references to all kinds of horror classics: “The moon holds control over every one, death is lurking in the woods, a doctor is carrying out his experiments, a girl is infected by hungry teeth…”

o.T. by Doris Lasch & Ursula Ponn 3’53’’ 2002
The image oversees a landscape, the camera slowly turns, guiding the gaze of the spectator. In the distance there is a city and a highway, in the foreground people are jogging and cycling by. As was the case in ‘Die Hälfte der Zeit’ and ‘Konzentration und Verschwendung’ Doris Lasch and Ursula Ponn trace for a certain mental disposition, a way of seeing. They consider perception to be personal as well as fragmentary and they try to question it by focussing onto the fragile moments and spaces on the edge of meaning.

Sans titre by Sophie Whetnall 2’27’’ 2003
This video is a static recording of a Japanese landscape. On the foreground there is a garden with shrubs, bushes and rocks. On the background an isolated house can be seen on the back of a hill. Heavy shrouds of haze wave by with regular intervals, clouding the background. Whetnall meticulously records, she does away with all context and lets the images speak for themselves. Emotions are rendered without confusion or pathos in these minimal illustrations of an existential experience.

Donkey Shot   45’
on Sat, 18 Oct 2003 18:15

Donkey Shot by Milena Bohnenberger & Stefan Bochet 45’ 2003
Donkey Shot was filmed with Super 8 on the way from Brussels to Marrakech. Freely inspired on Cervantes’ Don Quixote the story follows the adventures and mishaps of the infamous knight in a granular, playful and almost surreal style, through the eyes of his faithful donkey. On his quest for a mysterious prince Don Quixote works his way through numerous amorous conquests and heroic tugs-of-war. Overtaken by metamorphoses and disillusions, however, he ends up in an existential crisis. Unhoped-for, he manages to find himself on his inglorious journey back.

Tied   11’20’’
on Sat, 18 Oct 2003 19:15

Tied by Wim Catrysse 11’20" 2002
In the work of Wim Cartrysse a strong fascination with the human body and its relation to its space becomes apparent. In his past life as a theatre actor he discovered the possibilities and the power of physical performance as a direct gateway to the spectator’s world of experience. With his video installations he elaborates on this and by simple means he explores the limitations and extremes of body language. The same goes for Tied, in which a faceless man is desperately clinging to a narrow space, tied in a web of elastic bands. The walls are flexible and they force him into difficult positions. The camera registers this intensely physical battle from above, remaining a passive witness, however, just as the spectator, immersing with a feeling of disorientation and alienation.

Wim Catrysse (1973) studied Visual Arts at the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels, the HISK in Antwerp and the School of Art in Glasgow. His experimental video installations are concerned with ‘becoming’, as a term which leads to associations with active and reactive forces, ultimately determining the personal identity. The directness of his work can be perceived as the result of his fondness for the theatre and live performances. He has exhibited, among other places, at the Belgian Art Now (Athens), Le Lieu Unique (Nantes), Stedelijk Museum het Domein (Sittard) and argos (Brussels).

ETUDES AMERICAINES Chicago Cleaveland New York 2003 SPACES THESIS PART 1 film à effets spéciaux noir/blanc   90’

on Sat, 18 Oct 2003 20:00

Joëlle Tuerlinckx (1958) lives and works in Brussels. Filming is her way of perceiving a time interval between two points, a space which might contain different realities. She is as interested in the object itself as in the process which leads up to it. In her video work she scrutinizes for a concentration in time, which she attempts to grasp in the most direct way: off the cuff, from beginning to end. Her work has been shown, among other places, at Documenta XI, Manifesta 4, The Rennaissance Society (Chicago), and the SMAK (Ghent).

Shorts #3: Sightlines   52’
on Sat, 18 Oct 2003 22:00

Looking up by Bernard Gigounon 2’ 2003
Looking Up is, as Gigounon puts it himself, a trip through time and space between the astounding and reality. The short video starts with a sky at night, accompanied by the mesmerising sound of an army of crickets. We look up, as the image evolves very slowly it becomes clear to us that the thing we thought to have seen is not actually what it was, or is. A starry sky turns into a collection of tree tops. We find ourselves in the middle of a wood, where intricate sunbeams ray on through the enclosing leave rooftop. Gigounon’s ‘game’ in Looking Up misguides us in an astonishing way. Starry skies, the piercing rays of sunlight of a rising sun, nothing is what it seems, or is it? In spite of its short length, this video has a metaphysical feel to it.

Bernard Gigounon (1972) works and lives in Brussels. Through limited technological means and the use of seemingly trivial materials, he usually unveils poetic and subtle miniatures. His videos have been shown, among other places, during the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, the Videolab Festival (Turin), Impakt (Utrecht) and in the Galerie des Beaux-Arts (Marseille).

PASS-ING] by Peter Downsbrough 12’35" 2003
In a long travelling the camera tracks the fences around a factory building. At the end the camera slowly swerves out to a frontal image of the fencing. Downsbrough draws our attention to an inconspicuous, everyday image, which all too often escapes our attention, reconstructing it within his own visual language. The words ‘and’, ‘here’, ‘between’ and ‘as’ irregularly come into focus, changing places and orientation. They are terms without any connotation, as a part of a spatial investigation, of physical space and distance, but also of the meaning and structure of the words themselves. It is up to the individual spectator to solve this puzzle, in a way which only has meaning to him.

Peter Downsbrough (1940) was born in New York and there he studied architecture and visual arts. He lives and works in Brussels. His work – sculptures, drawings, photography, film and video- explores the urban space, in relation with time and language, through discrete interventions. His solo-projects have been shown, among other places at the Paleis van Schone Kunsten (Brussels), Le Consortium (Dijon), the Neues Museum Weserburg (Bremen) and l’Espace de l’art concret (Mouans-Sartoux).

Réunion by Lieve D’Hondt 4’30" 2003
This deviant city view was filmed in an elevator in Dallas, from a moving point-of-view–over a distance of 171 meters- which is static at the same time. The movement is upward as well as downward. From the elevator the surroundings can be seen, the Dallas skyline, with its enormous skyscrapers and highways. The outside is reflected in its turn into the mirror walls of the adjacent building. This reflection causes a distortion and a deflection of perception, accompanied by a sound distortion. The shift in perception is general in the work of Lieve D’Hondt: construction en de(con)struction, transposition and dislocation, presence and absence, fragmentation and integration, association and dissociation play an important role in her reflection on perception, a process which also stimulates physical as well as mental movement, also inducing participation.

Lieve D’Hondt (1963) lives and works in Ghent. She studied sculpture, audiovisual and visual arts and mixed media at the academy in Ghent and the College of Arts in Stockholm. Her video-installations and graphic work are based on the classic working processes in sculpture, drawing or architecture, transposed to the media and virtual surroundings, fading the borders between disciplines. Her recent projects are focussed on the occupation of space and the reinterpretation of its meaning and content. Her work has been shown, among other places at the Künstlerhaus (Dortmund), the Video Art Center (Tokyo), CCNOA (Brussels) and the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica (Barcelona).

FROM [TO] by Peter Downsbrough 14’30" 2003
The image slides past a motorway, past countless trucks, petrol stations and containers. Objects are isolated from their environment and articulated in a repetitive, almost architectural structure.

Untitled (tennis) by Valérie Mannaerts 4’10 2003
In Japanese 18th and 19th century erotic prints art the octopus has a strong bestial-erotic connotation. Jeroen van der Stock makes use of this image as the starting-point for a story on a bizarre ritual in the relationship between men and women. In this low-budget teaser a handicap, a fishing rod, lipstick and a cooked octopus take their meaningful places.

Valérie Mannaerts (1974) studied at the Ghent academy and she lives and works in Brussels. In her drawings, collages, photographs and video films she explores the body, its hidden angles and the indefinable spaces between skin and clothing. Her work has been shown, among other places, at the Galerie Drantmann (Brussels), the Marres centre for visual arts (Maastricht), Centre d’Art Santa Mónica (Barcelona) and the Venice Biennial.

THRU by Peter Downsbrough 9’32’’ 2003

Marée / Eb en vloed by Sylvie Janssens de Bisthoven 5’ 2003
Two persons are sitting opposite each other, drinking a cup of coffee in the kitchen. The camera switches between their viewpoints as they are taking a cup of coffee. The spectator is looking inside a tilting mug, in the background the other person can be seen performing the same drinking ritual. Every now and again the mug covers the entire screen; the gaze of the other appears and disappears. These respective actions cross with each other and after some time they are each moving to a rhythm of their own. Two different, separate objects conjugate as the result of coincidence and mutual influence. The shift in perception and movement, the idea of a ‘gap’ between things, persons and notions is a recurrent theme in the work of Sylvie Janssens de Bisthoven.

L’homme qui n’était pas Maigret   48’47"
on Sun, 19 Oct 2003 14:00

L’homme qui n’était pas Maigret by Manu Riche 48’47" 2002
L’homme qui n’était pas Maigret is as much a fake documentary as a genuine portrait of Simenon. In it Manu Riche is looking for a truth, the reality which is obscured by the construction of the myth called ‘Simenon’. Based on Lettres à mon Juge, this work is a game with realities. For instance, Riche recaptures the part where Simenon describes part of his own life. A doctor, who abandons his wife, has an encounter with his second one, however, under the exact same circumstances as his first wife. This transposition is translated by Riche into a construction for which he films an actual doctor, accompanied by a voice-over comment bending the whole story towards Simenon as a person.

Manu Riche (1964) lives and works in Brussels. He studied sociology at K.U.Leuven, moved on from there to the theatre (Théatre VARIA), to finally end up with the RTBF-programme Striptease, from where he developed into an independent documentary maker. Among his documentaries are Welcome to my world, Beaudouin and Black Star. Work by Manu Riche has been shown at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and INPUT.

Shorts #4: Dream on   48’
on Sun, 19 Oct 2003 15:15

Witness Screen by François Curlet 5’26" 2002
Witness Screen is Curlet’s contribution to the open-source project No Ghost, Just a Shell by Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno which was initiated in 1999, when they bought a Manga-character and all the rights that came with it from the catalogue of K-works. In doing so they rescued the character, which would not have lasted long in an animation because of its inconspicuous nature. The ‘empty box’ was named Ann Lee by her buyers, and at the same time she was made available to other artists to further complete her identity. Curlet rose to the occasion. To Curlet Ann Lee exists because of the screen. In this video Ann Lee, with her back to the audience, tells about herself, a diary as it were. Her position and the title of the work refer to the anonymous witness, as it is often brought in during television shows. Towards the end Ann Lee reveals her identity by turning towards the audience, in doing so she takes firm control over her own identity. The project by Huyghe and Parreno was ended in 2003 and the character was handed its own copyrights.

François Curlet (1967) lives and works in Paris and Brussels. Curlet mainly toys with fiction and signs. In 1996, for instance, he registered People Day® as a trademark for the recycling of everyday activities. He collaborated with the likes of Michel François, Stéphane Calais, Michael Dans, Frank Scurti. Curlet has been shown, among other places, at the Van Abbemuseum, Kunsthalle Zürich and the Centre Georges Pompidou.

La Disparition by Nicolas Dufranne 6’40" 2002
A couple is travelling to the South. One night in a hotel room the young woman vanishes. This is the beginning of a search, as more and more birds start circling over the landscape, casting a threatening shadow over the mystery. Until the horrible truth comes to light … With this video Nicolas Dufranne has expanded his particular style even further, with an oppressive and dark poetic result. He makes use of a combination of photography and animation and he proceeds onto the borderline between movement and immobility, with a special feeling for dynamics. His images of landscapes and characters crystallize into some kind of ‘tableaux vivants’, seemingly enveloped by a surreal visual world. The anonymous, silent figures evoke a constant atmosphere of desolation and alienation with their expressive faces, and because of this the story breathes the anxiety of a thriller. Dufranne avoids a linear development of the story, instead he prefers a fragmented makeup with all kinds of narrative diversions, forcing the spectator to look for the key to the riddle by himself.

Nicolas Dufranne (1977) studied audiovisual arts at the La Cambre in Brussels. In his video work he has developed a style of his own, a combination of photographic and animated images, and evoking dark stories without any specification in time or space. His work has been shown, among other places, during the Internationale Kurzfilmtage in Oberhausen, the film shorts festival in Vila Da Conde and Art Brussels.

Nirrivik by Pierre-Jean Giloux 10’15’’ 2002
A liberal interpretation of a ‘seven night legend’, against the background of glacial landscapes in North-America, a world of Eskimos, penguins, whales, seals and polar bears. Giloux juggles around with elements from traditional stories and images of the technological development of that society. The video thrives on a disjunction between secular legend and a surrounding with a futuristic feel to it, in between the poles of mythology and contemporary reality.

Pierre-Jean Giloux (1965) was born in Mâcon (France) but he lives and works in Brussels. He studied visual arts at the Academies of Lyon, Cheltenham and Marseille-Luming. He combines elements from photography, video and 3D animations into visual, imaginative ballads. For the music and the 3D animation he calls on Lionel Marchetti (music) and Raphael Kuntz (3D), respectively. Their work has been shown, among other places, in the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle (Lyon), the Centre Pompidou (Paris) and the Centre d’art contemporain (Meymac).

In Leisure by Guillaume Graux & Frederik van Allemeersch 14’ 2003
Through a succession of overly romantic images of everyday relaxation rituals a link is made between recreation and spectacle. Where does tourism end and where does voyeurism begin? The sensation of watching, of looking at, conditioned and determined in the arenas of television and other communication technologies, is exposed in an aesthetics which atmospherically refers to the soap opera. A slow and telescopic image haze strides by on the tones of cloying muzak and ethereal electronic sound images. This video was composed as a first draught for the music by Tuk, Köhn and Ovil Bianca, on the occasion of the .wav festival (Bruges).

Guillaume Graux (1977) studied audiovisual arts at the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels and after that he made a number of videos and installations. Under the alias of Tuk he creates electronic music, which he sometimes comprises in his visual work. He is fascinated by the emotional warmth of apparent emptiness, as in Barthes’ notion of the ‘non-lieus’, a zero point in which emotion becomes transparent and intangible. His work has been shown, among other places, on festivals like Impakt (Utrecht), Viper (Basel) and Video Mundi (Chicago). For Leisure he collaborates with Frederik van Allemeersch (1977), a photography student from the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels.

Lebe wohl by Pierre-Jean Giloux 11’45’’ 2002
Lebe Wohl (The Parting Kiss) follows a little miner by the name of Guss, on his wanderings through Berlin, in a world between dream and reality; a bittersweet fairytale with a wink towards the Grimm brothers.

Pierre-Jean Giloux (1965) was born in Mâcon (France) but he lives and works in Brussels. He studied visual arts at the Academies of Lyon, Cheltenham and Marseille-Luming. He combines elements from photography, video and 3D animations into visual, imaginative ballads. For the music and the 3D animation he calls on Lionel Marchetti (music) and Raphael Kuntz (3D), respectively. Their work has been shown, among other places, in the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle (Lyon), the Centre Pompidou (Paris) and the Centre d’art contemporain (Meymac).

Joëlle de la Casinière - Croyez-vous que la télévision vous aime # 1 - Trois sermons sur les média   98’
on Sun, 19 Oct 2003 16:30

This reflexive, often satirical trilogy on the medium of television has the actor Enrique Ariman in the lead. It contains Le bruit de l’image, explaining the invention of television as the work of the Holy Spirit.

Television Man by Joëlle de la Casinière 38’ 1983
The actor Enrique Ariman, in a state of ecstasy at the foot of Mount Sinai, raises certain still burning issues, even if, these days, they are acquiring a quaint charm. He is filmed by oscillation, with a small shaking camera, and does not blink once in 40 minutes. "When it’s time for the TV news, read the I-Ching while you look at a video of goldfish, you will be informed about the world’s goings-on."

Joëlle de La Casinière (1944) is French by origin and a Belgian by adoption. She is educating herself in graphic poetry on various kinds of supports (canvas, paper, film, magnetic tape, optical disc,…etc…) and she leads the nomadic life that comes with it. This results in a body of work (books, paintings, films, videos) for her fans, who, over time, have been keeping close track of her.

Le bruit de l’image by Joëlle de la Casinière 40’ 1983
"Look! There’s noise on the image. Something is flapping its wings in your TV set. It’s the flight of an angel passing through it. The rustle of Gabriel’s wings." The archangel Gabriel, a message expert, since he dictated the Koran to Mahomet, explains the invention of television through the operation of the Holy Ghost. The actor Enrique Ariman is all ears. A clown’s head with crazed eyes in front of the tronic effects of palpitations. The light, improvised music of a Casio settles on the voice-over discourse.

Les moyens de s’entendre by Joëlle de la Casinière 20’ 1985
The actor Enrique Ariman in a dinner-jacket writhes on the telephone in a setting of electronic graphics with tangy colours. "Everyone talks on the telephone and no one ever talks about the telephone. Everyone talks about television and television talks for everyone. It’s through the telephone that television arrived, even if we’re told quite the opposite."

Simenon et "les gens d’en face"   60’
on Sun, 19 Oct 2003 18:45

Simenon et "les gens d’en face" by Jean-Claude Riga & Léon Michaux 60’ 2003
The Stalinist Ukraine, June 1933. Simenon makes a report and a photo series, called Peuples qui ont faim. On his trip through the region he is accompanied by a young guide, Sonia, appointed to be his escort by the security service. From the very first moment there is a conflict between her and the writer. She is later described as the heroin of his book Les gens d’en face. Jean-Claude Riga and Léon Michaux follow their trajectory together with their guide Olga, past countless newspaper articles, pictures and writings. The trail leads to the KGB archives, where the consultation of Simenon’s file revives the spirits of the old oppression. Between documentary and fiction, Simenon et “les gens d’en face” supplies us with an image of society on the edge of decay, through the eyes of Simenon and the filmmakers.

Jean-Claude Riga (1951) studied sociology at Liège University and scriptwriting at Columbia University in New York. Together with Jacques Louis Nyst and the brothers Dardenne he is considered to be one of the fathers of Belgian video. In his documentaries he combines subjective themes with a poetical aesthetics. His work has been awarded, among other places, at the Festival International du Film Indépendant de Bruxelles, the Montbéliard Festival and the Tokyo Video Festival.

Claudio Pazienza - Cooking the Real #1   127’
on Sun, 19 Oct 2003 20:00

These are some of Pazienza’s first works from the second half of the eighties and the early nineties, comprising, among others, Sottovoce, the amorous liaisons of a youthful widow and other women.

L’Arteriosclerosi del nonno by Claudio Pazienza 3’ 1985
A visual score shot in image by image format with a single Super 8 reel, the film is an evocation of the arteriosclerosis of the author’s grandfather, the decay of a loved one.

As a child Claudio Pazienza (1962) moved from Italy to Belgium, where his father could make a living as a miner. After his education in Brussels as an ethnologist, he lived and worked in Liège during the eighties, where he started a production house of his own in 1988, Qwazi qWazi film. Some of his main realisations are: Oggi é primavera (16 mm, 1988) and Sottovoce (35 mm, 1993). His films move back and forth between documentary and fiction. Pazienza is a regular guest on international festivals.

Oggi è primavera by Claudio Pazienza 4’ 1988
This short film was shot on 21 March 1988, the first day of spring, in a sequence shot. It is part of a series, entitled Un plan d’amour, and it shows the unflappability of a man who comes home to a hail of blows.

Un po’ di febbre by Claudio Pazienza 14’59" 1991
Three immobile women, on a three-street intersection, are waiting. Then other figures appear. Long and austere shots evoke the skirmishes between policemen and miners in Flemish Limburg, by the end of the eighties during the closing of the mines.

Sottovoce by Claudio Pazienza 105’ 1993
A young widow and other women – in a village in the Abruzzo region (Italy) – tell the story of their love affairs. The Baron of Corvo de Corvis, a legendary character resuscitated for the purpose of this film, rummages about the streets of the hamlet, accompanied by a talking raven. His mind is set on restoring the ‘Prima Nocta’ right, but he falls in love with Gigliola, the young widow.

Shorts #5: Show & Tell   61’
on Sun, 19 Oct 2003 22:30

Thank you for coming by Jacques Charlier & Daniel Remi 30’ 2000
’Thank you for coming’ is a compilation of humorist sketches, playfully balancing between kitsch and absurdism. Impulsively canned with the help of friends and neighbours, these low-budget videos show unassuming and endearing pastiches and spoofs on world of art and television, with a fondness of typically Belgian themes. Without a hint of cynicism nor sarcasm he makes naughty analyses of domestic popular culture, with its icons and folk morals. The sublime, the dramatic is related to more common, trivial use of imagery.

Jacques Charlier (1939) lives and works in Liège. He characterises himself mostly as a ‘wholesaler in Belgian humour of all categories’ and he picks his medium – drawings, sculptures, installations, texts, photography, and video- in function of the idea. His favourite themes are the socio-cultural and economic issues of (the) art (world). His work has been shown, among other places, in SMAK (Gent), IKOB (Eupen) and the Casino in Luxemburg.

Nos Restes by Julie Maréchal 10’40’’ 2003
Time does not evaporate, it fades away. It clenches to our groins and our memories, obstructing our movement and paralysing our feelings. There is an unnamed place where time can cease to exist, leaving the inhabitants petrified, speechless and stripped of all their individuality, an empire of lonely shades, a life in between dreams and reality. Nos Restes is a restrained essay on time growing still and the traces we leave behind.

Once upon a time by Emilio López-Menchero 21’ 2003
This parody on spaghetti westerns is situated in the Texas of Flanders, Courtrai. A mysterious, anonymous cowboy arrives in the slumbering town, looking for the inevitable duel. It does not take long for three competitors to enter into the game, each with the same purpose. Emilio López-Menchero embodies the lead character in the three analogous, cyclic stories, mostly offering an alibi for a tour around the city.

Looping by André Colinet 10’ 2003
This series of loops can be projected and adapted to various spaces, in multiple and variable combinations. Colinet points his camera at people and places from his immediate surroundings, processing these random pictures into absorbing miniatures, evoking the poetry of everyday. He plays around with framing, light and colour, rhythm and pulse, arranging them into fluid visual movements, each with their own sense of plasticity and musicality. Here the relation image-time-spectator is from a different category than the so-called ‘classic’ cinema. They are snippets of time and place, escaping from the grip of temporality, impressionist and musing contemplations on human beings and nature.

Shorts #6: Picture this   61’
on Mon, 20 Oct 2003 14:00

The Ideal City (Two boats) by Ronny Heiremans & Katleen Vermeir 15’ 2002
Since 2001 Kathleen Vermeir and Ronny Heiremans have been working on a series of Tableaux Vivants, inspired on paintings, photos or even older images. In the tradition of classical as well as contemporary art the universal aspects of different human attitudes and architectural models are revealed. The settings are filled in with all kinds of constructions, mostly coloured cloths suggesting nature images. The illusion is not almighty; it is hampered by coincidental events and natural movements. In The Ideal City, made during a stay in New York, a girl in a Renaissance pose is portrayed against the background of the Manhattan skyline. At each time she is placed in a different position within the image. During one specific moment a boat is passing by: an everyday image in and ideal city constitutes a beacon in an illusionary construction in time and space.

Ronny Heiremans (1962) lives and works in Brussels. He studied Germanic Languages and Literature, but he processes his fascination for space, landscape and architecture in videos and installations. Part of his work is the result of collaborations with Katleen Vermeir. His work has been shown, among other places, in the Fordham gallery (London), the Netwerk gallery (Alost) and the Bottelarij (Brussels).

Les Filles en Orange by Yaël André 31’40’’ 2003
Les Filles en orange is, as Yael André puts it, a naïve didactical film, destined for simple souls. In an almost burlesque style she shows the adventures of a number of neighbourhood girls, dressed in orange, whiling away the time in their backyards and on the rooftops. They are leading quiet lives, careless and self-willed. Boys in blue appear, love affairs blossom, the boys leave and babies are born. Life takes its course on a high of joy in living. Yael André steers clear of traditional working methods in fiction cinema, she prefers freedom to professionalism: she surrounds herself with friends and lets her en their imagination run free. Directing, the script, the acting as well as the editing were spread out over several months and without any budget worth mentioning, fed by interaction and sporadic bursts of inspiration and ingenuity. This resulted in a separate film universe with eccentric characters and playful, sweet follies, drenched with a visual poetry reminiscent of the films by Jacques Tati and Jacques Demy. In al its limitations ‘Les Filles en Orange’ is a sparkling piece of ‘filmbrut’, a headstrong ode to the imagination and the pleasure it gives you.

InJonction III by Michel Jakar 15’ 2003
In February 2000 a couple of strange characters were swarming through the hallways and corridors of a heavily crowded railway station. Conspicuous yet familiar, unpredictable yet trivial, they all seemed to be rediscovering elementary movements, as if they had gone out of use in past times without anyone noticing. This video film is based on the installation ‘Jonction III’, in which Michel Jaker gave an audiovisual interpretation of a performance by twelve actors and dancers (part of the Compagnie Mossoux-Bonté) on the traffic junction of the Brussels’ railway stations Nord and Midi. The images were projected on three screens and recorded in their turn on four monitors, in a sound environment which allowed the spectator to push through to the heart of the journey.

Michel Jakar (1943) was born in Switzerland and he lives in Brussels, where he studied audiovisual arts at the INSAS. He worked as a scenario writer and director for film en television. His fiction and his documentary film and video work are hybrid interpretations of theatre, music, dance and literature. In 1993 he was awarded the Prize for Audiovisual Creation of the Belgian author’s union SACD for his whole body of work. His work has been awarded, among other places, at Le Grand Prix Vidéo Danse and he won first prize at the Festival Vidéo in Liège.

Joëlle de la Casinière - Croyez-vous que la télévision vous aime? # 2   89’
on Mon, 20 Oct 2003 16:00

Le chant du satellite by Joëlle de la Casinière 17’ 1983
This satirical work is based on the wording of regulations, the regulations and vocation of a European news/TV station, presented as a paragon of the predominant power of our day and age, the power of information. An operetta hostess sings the words of the regulations in the midst of the pages which are hysterically displayed ‘sync to music’--a piece of electronic music (played by the composer) inspired by European national anthems, it too with a dash of wit. The hijacked use of a Chyron character processor, a cumbersome professional machine of the day, which was used to title television, made this exacerbated musical teletext composition possible.

Joëlle de La Casinière (1944) is French by origin and a Belgian by adoption. She is educating herself in graphic poetry on various kinds of supports (canvas, paper, film, magnetic tape, optical disc,…etc…) and she leads the nomadic life that comes with it. This results in a body of work (books, paintings, films, videos) for her fans, who, over time, have been keeping close track of her.

Idéale audience by Joëlle de la Casinière 4 x 18’ 1989
Idéale Audience is a television ‘commedia dell’Arte’, written in TV. The composition of the work presents variations on three themes: the self-promotion of TV channels, the ideal audience filmed in a listening attitude, and ecstatic female announcers. All these stanzas are interspersed with McLuhanesque questions about the television medium, posed by cartoon characters. The assembly of these concretions of television rhetoric is arranged on a very carefully formulated soundtrack (spots in ‘cut-ups’ of TV sounds and original music, either vocal or instrumental). Graphics and texts for the picture, and jingles and harangues for the sound are the comments inspired by this mediatic and despotic frenzy to the ‘Ideal Audience’.

Claudio Pazienza - Cooking the Real #2   99’
on Mon, 20 Oct 2003 18:00

De Bouche à oreille by Claudio Pazienza 3 x 5’ 1995
The pilot De bouche à oreille is an anthropological urban essay. It describes an environment and an era through its collection of proverbs, songs, recitations, dreams, tags, gestures, sounds, etc. Each episode should allow a researcher from the year 3000 to see and understand what we are made of.

As a child Claudio Pazienza (1962) moved from Italy to Belgium, where his father could make a living as a miner. After his education in Brussels as an ethnologist, he lived and worked in Liège during the eighties, where he started a production house of his own in 1988, Qwazi qWazi film. Some of his main realisations are: Oggi é primavera (16 mm, 1988) and Sottovoce (35 mm, 1993). His films move back and forth between documentary and fiction. Pazienza is a regular guest on international festivals.

La Complainte du progrès by Claudio Pazienza 5’ 1997
A couple living in a basement is suddenly confronted with a disruption of its environment. The song by Boris Vian accentuates these progressive shifting through its ironic evocation of home objects. Created by the ALIS theatre company and the director, this film is part of a series of ‘chorégrafilms’, presented by Patrice Nezan, a producer for ARTE.

Panamarenko, portrait en son absence by Claudio Pazienza 27’ 1997
One of a number of possible pportraits of The sculptor from Antwerp withdrew from a film project about his person. From that moment on, how is it possible to make a portrait, if the main person concerned is not there? The author resorts to ostriches, to archives, special effects, to evoke the world of Panamarenko.

Esprit de bière by Claudio Pazienza 52’ 2000
Inside of you, beer gets transformed and it transforms you on its turn. It creates tiny utopian ideas, all night long. In a way, it also typifies the strange relations you’ve got with things, with the world around you: you drink it without really knowing what’s inside it and what it is. Esprit de bière is a kind of attempt on an archaeological liquid. It makes its own investigation around this golden drink, as a police officer would do around some trivial event. Beer is first analysed as a matter (real, chemical, physical,…). Then its own cycle will be carefully studied. The Cycles remind us that even beer can be a matter to think about. Contact: Komplot sprl

Zabriskie  
on Mon, 20 Oct 2003 20:00

Solo Basket Match by Emilio Lopez-Menchero 10’ 2000

López-Menchero Emilio (1960) lives and works in Brussels. He has a degree in architecture and he studied visual art at the La Cambre in Brussels. With his projects – video, audio, performances and installations – he takes a relativizing approach to questioning the identity of the ‘artist’ in society and he scrutinizes the myths that come with it. His work has been shown, among other places, at the Galeria Marta Cervera (Madrid), the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin) the Venice Biennial.

Once upon a time by Emilio Lopez-Menchero 21’ 2003
This parody on spaghetti westerns is situated in the Texas of Flanders, Courtrai. A mysterious, anonymous cowboy arrives in the slumbering town, looking for the inevitable duel. It does not take long for three competitors to enter into the game, each with the same purpose. Emilio López-Menchero embodies the lead character in the three analogous, cyclic stories, mostly offering an alibi for a tour around the city.

Choose me by Beatrijs Albers 2000
This virtual stroll through media and space starts from the panoramic image of a room in a library. Through a sequence of subjective choices the visitor creates a network of his own associations and shifts of meaning. The work looks into the relationship between what presents itself as reality and the temporary arrangement of that reality. In this process there is no pursuit of disambiguity, but the central focus is on travelling and exploration. Apart from her own images she makes use of the structures and aesthetics of mass media.

Beatrijs Albers (1959) is an interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in Brussels. She studied at the St. Lukas institute in Brussels and she lectures video art and new media at the Kunstacademie in Louvain. Her work questions the underlying structures of social reality from a creative tension between the public space and autobiographical reflection, between subjective values and social awareness. Her work has been shown, among other places, at Mix Media (Paris), Videobrazil (Brazil) and Personal Cinema (Athens).

Aquagymtaichiquanstepaerobicsbodyconditioning by Reggy Timmermans 4’17’’ 2003
The screen is divided into four equal parts, each of them showing a place where gymnastics exercises seem to be held, but in reality they are reconstructions of frozen images, filtered from formation videos in four different sports disciplines. A parallel text appears on screen, read by an electronic voice, outlining a seven-step programme, a symposium for a new politics of physical awareness education in a global context. This video questions the position and the control of the body within his social and commercial constructions. The notion of the body as a signifier of our identity, its social codification and the underlying norms and limitations are explored with side references to Andy Warhol and Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray.

Reggy Timmermans (1959) is a multidisciplinary artist who resides in Brussels. He studied architecture at the La Cambre, photography at the INRACI and plastic arts at the ERG institute. In his work he investigates the social construction and codification of reality and digs for the underlying structures and the indefinable rules and limitations proper to the specific context of his work. He originated the ‘centre of hybrid and experimental art project’. His videos have been shown, among other places, at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Surge Gallery (Tokyo) and Personal Cinema (Athens).

Construction by Beatrijs Albers & Reggy Timmermans 8’37" 2002
The work of Beatrijs Albers & Reggy Timmermans questions the underlying structures of social reality and the way in which reality is codified. It questions the mechanisms which lead to political or ideological control over space, of what is defined as the claiming and occupying of a territory. In ‘Construction’ the thinking process of a building project is confronted with urbane and rural travellings.

Shorts #7: Domestic   61’
on Mon, 20 Oct 2003 22:00

Video show V by Sophie Nys 6’30" 2003
This series of photos focuses on the common, the lifeless. Small discrepancies, tiny imperfections: damaged bark, a smashed window…

Sophie Nys (1974) lives and works in Brussels. She studied visual arts at the Sint-Lukas institute in Ghent and she obtained her postgraduate at the Jan van Eyck instituut in Maastricht.

Pays-Villes by Anne Smolar 9’ 2003
In Pays-Villes Anne Smolar questions and mocks the image of women within systems of representation, in particular the media. They would have us believe that safety and love, and all things nice and cosy can be found inside the home, whereas the outside world is best kept unexplored. Women function as cornerstones to the harmonious family life and, if they want to live in a safe world they should be tucked away in houses. Smolar juxtaposes scenes of relationships from the film Leave her to heaven (J. Stahl, 1946), filmed in beguiling Technicolor with blurry images of the ‘outside world’, as a meagre place, full of threats and insecurity. The commonplaces are thoroughly disrupted, however, domestic images and sounds develop a bitter aftertaste, and an atmosphere of unrest and confusion is slowly developed, ambiguously supported by the music of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf. Homes are no longer the safehavens that propaganda would have us take them for, but rather containers for the violence of domestication. ”The unity of the family calls for domesticated inhabitants; it demands the neutralisation of those powers which conspire to destroy it. Just as the state can sink away in revolution and terror at any time, the family runs the risk of being drawn into a domestic war. The woman can become a vandal.” (B. Edelman)

Anne Smolar (1967) studied at the Ecole de Recherche Graphique (ERG) in Brussels and she obtained her master of arts in experimental film from the San Francisco Art Institute. She makes video, film and installations with a predominantly feminist streak, mainly focussed on the representation of women in the media. Her work has been shown, among other places, at the Fine Arts Cinema & San Francisco Cinematheque, Pink Screens (Brussels) and the Musée Jurassien des Arts (Moutier, Switzerland).

The Collector’s House by Peter De Cupere 12’30" 2000
The Collector’s House is the first part of a larger concept, spread out over several years, named The Collector’s Life. The videos depict the life of a contemporary art collector who tries to live with art as an implement. In this work scent is a central theme. Peter de Cupere reacts to the disappearance of odours in society and their misrecognition in contemporary art. His visual work is complemented by an olfactive dimension, in order to penetrate deeper into the uniqueness and the complexity of objects and spaces. Even though the so-called ‘sniff movies’ are usually represented in an environment where the nose of the visitor is being put to the test, the purely visual screening also insures subjective and personal odorous experiences. Thus the collector in the video takes a wine bath, he lets himself boil down on a mattress and he has breakfast at a table where 130 Hervé cheeses are drying. In an ironically poetic way questions are raised about the experience of contemporary art and it is shown that a scent-free society is an illusion.

Peter De Cupere (1970) lives and works in Antwerp and Berlin alternatively. He studied graphic and electronic design at the Phiko institute in Hasselt and the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels and visual arts at the HISK in Antwerp. De Cupere associates his world of objects, his video work, performances and installations with scents, as an extension of their meaning. Their have been possibilities to see and/ or smell his work, among other places, at the SMAK (Ghent), Le Lieu Unique (Nantes) and the Akademie der Künste (Berlin).

Person’na by Jennifer Debauche 16’ 2002
An intense, chilling tale on lust and eating rituals, filmed by Jennifer Debauche with a Super 8. She alternates vivid colours with B/W images and she makes use of stop-motion technique to create a frenetic, uncanny atmosphere, combined with a sound design which is just as eerie. Referring to the early surrealist films of Luis Buñuel she creates a visually associative fantasy, tingeing with sexual uproar. “Shaking blubber, quivering meat, a pantheon of shouting bodies.”

Jennifer Debauche (1978) lives and works in Brussels, where she is studying at the Sint-Lukas institute. In her work, predominantly filmed in grainy super8 format, she outlines an evocative, uncanny world with estranged characters and likewise rituals. Her videos were shown, among other places, at the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, art-action (Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin) and the Courtisane festival (Ghent).

Zelfportret by Frank Theys 3’16’’ 2002
A man keeps walking up and down from his computer to his window. He does not have a head. Blood is rhythmically gushing from the gaping wound, a hilarious and metaphoric self-portrait of the author. This video was shown on five screens spread out over the city of Courtrai (Belgium) for the Beeldenstorm exhibition and was used by Walter Verdin for his Title Safe project.

Frank Theys (1963) studied philosophy and fine arts and he lives in Brussels and Amsterdam. He works as a video artist, documentary, film and theatre maker. His work is characterised as a combination of melodrama and a scientific approach: a medical fascination on the one hand and a psychological interest in human world views on the other. His video work has been exhibited, among other places, at the Museum of the Moving Image (New York), Galerie Transit (Malines) and the Paleis (Antwerp) and he has been awarded, among other things, with the title of Cultural Ambassador of Flanders (as a managing director-in-residence with Victoria theatre).

Crotus Pilarus by Harald Thys 14’ 2003
This video is a cool and minimalist observation of a house, its various rooms, and the discussions between two men and a woman. The camera functions as a silent voyeur; it keeps its distance, carefully framing empty spaces, lifeless ornaments and human presence. Here man is but an element within its physical surroundings, a sign of life, a bundle of emotions. The spectator is looking in the soundless spaces, faces and actions for a story, a feeling of drama which surpasses the trivial. The images contain a kind of emptiness, without past nor future, yet simultaneously creating expectations. Moreover, the gaze of the camera is never innocent, it guides our perception and it stimulates our imagination.

Harald Thys (1966) lives and works in Brussels. He studied at the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels and the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht. With a twisted sense of humour he outlines situations and characters on the border of alienation in his visual work, his installations and videos, most of which he makes in collaboration with Jos De Gruyter. His work has been shown, among other places, in the EOF gallery (Paris), de Singel (Antwerp), the Middelheim Museum (Antwerp) and the Kunsthalle Basel.

Shorts #8: Dance Craze   56’
on Tue, 21 Oct 2003 14:00

Ghosts of a future lost by Ryan Le Garrec 6’ 2000
A purified combination of dance and film, an exploration into the essence of space and movement, these 16mm image of a dance duet –by Julie Laporte and Eléonore Valère from P.A.R.T.S- have been moulded into a repetitive and rhythmical structure. Dancers and camera are dwelling through an ancient, abandoned factory building, evading shades from the past and making way out of the oppressive grip of loneliness.

Ryan Le Garrec (1979) was born in London and he spends his time between Brussels, Paris and Stockholm. His work is situated between contemporary dance and movement, within the framework of short video clips. He has participated in pieces by P.A.R.T.S. and the Moose Dance Company and he has shown the accompanying video installations in the Kaaitheater (Brussels) and Danses Hus (Stockholm), among other places.

Idiot’s Brew by Antonin De Bemels 9’30" 2002
"pour some flour and a small amount of water in a bowl, add all the odd stuff that goes through your mind, and knead all this together with your hands, until you obtain a homogeneous mixture... you don’t necessarily have to eat or drink the result"

Antonin De Bemels (1975) combines different media and genres into an idiom of his very own. His work stands midway between film, video art, dance and electronic music. Together with American choreographer Bud Blumenthal he has made three ‘video choreographic’ films, in which he experimented with ‘scrubbing’, an image manipulation running parallel to the scratching of a DJ he also uses live when working as a VJ. His work has been on show on a worldwide scale, among other places at the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, Dallas Video Festival, World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), ULTIMA (Oslo) and Moving Pictures (Toronto) and it has come in to the prizes at the Audio-visual Creative Fair (Brussels), Springdance Cinema (Utrecht) and the Grand Prix International Video Danse (Paris).

Lens by Boris Van der Avoort 26’ 2002
Patiently compiled Super-8 images were edited according to the passionate pattern of ‘Music for 18 Musicians’ by Steve Reich. Starting from the image of an eye in close-up Lens presents a kaleidoscope and subjective representation of nature, the city and mankind. A woman is looking out of the window of a train, rails and electric poles keep flashing by, and landscapes appear and disappear in the horizon: those are the recurring scenes which constitute the leitmotiv of the film. Just like Steve Reich’s composition the images evolve into a hypnotic whole of warm pulses with a melancholy and nostalgic overtone, amplified by the lively chroma, the coarse grain and the authentic atmosphere inherent to the Super-8 format. Images are associated with a variation in timbres, sounds and rhythms, simultaneously energetic and musing, woven together into an interlacement of impressions.

V2 by Pascal Baes 15’ 2003
Pascal Baes experiments with the reflecting feedback of a video projector, in a meticulous interaction with a performance by his life companion Aï Suzuki. In post-processing the images were digitally edited, which results in an expressionist, abstract study of the human body. With the help of various effects Baes radically intervenes on the images, mutating shapes, penetrating textures and reconstructing his visual experiment into a psychedelic phantasm of the ‘corpus humanis’ and distorted sensuality. Demographical lines fuse together with shreds of human body and facial traits in a restless outburst of colour, lighting and movement, expanding in interaction with an electronic composition of sliding and lashing sounds into a claustrophobic experience.

Pascal Baes (1959), French by origin, lives and works in Brussels. After an education in biology, painting and photography he threw himself into cinema and video. He specialises in computer animation and the use of stop-action techniques, experimenting with the movement of image and body. Together with his partner Aï Suzuki he creates a visual world, looking for a balance between choreography and cinematography. His work has been shown, among other places, at the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Centre d’art Santa Mónica (Barcelona), the Dallas Video Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Internationales Hamburger KurzFilmFestival.

Benoît   82’
on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 14:00

Benoît by Jan Florizoone 82’ 2003
In Benoît volgt Florizoone de kunstenaar Benoit van Innis (1960). Florizoone maakt van deze documentaire schets van een persoon een spontaan geheel waarin hij de kunstenaar zelf laat spreken, antwoorden op ongedwongen vragen, en Benoît’s creatieproces op heel eenvoudige wijze vat. Benoît’s werk is vooral bekend om het uitstekend combineren van elementen als kleur en humor, zowel poëtisch als absurd en bedient zich hierbij van diverse media. Van Innis is schilder, tekenaar, illustrator en ontwierp ook muralen (o.a. in het metrostation Maelbeek – Brussel). Benoît realiseerde eveneens enkele advertenties voor het Moma, Absolut Vodka, Telefunken, … Zijn werk verschijnt geregeld in nationale en internationale pers (De Morgen, De Standaard, The New Yorker, Esquire, Le Monde, Paris Match, etc.). Benoît is het vijfde portret in een reeks waarin eerder Franky DC, Gorik Lindemans, Ever Meulen en Koen Theys aan bod kwamen.

Jan Florizone (1959) studied Art History at Ghent University; he was active as a curator and a journalist before he developed into a video maker. Florizone makes intimate, personal documentary portraits on artists. He follows the involved artists around with a relaxed approach and he has conversations with them. He already joined the argosfestival 2002 with Koen Theys.

Saya et Mira, rêves perdus   53’
on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 15:45

Saya et Mira, rêves perdus by Jasna Krajinovic 53’ 2002
During the aftermath of the war in Bosnia, Saya and Mira, like so many people, live in houses which do not belong to them. This documentary portrays the two women who find each other in spite of their differences in a sense of lacking and hope. Saya, an Orthodox elderly woman, found a roof over her head in the city of Brcko, after her own house had been destroyed. She lives under constant threat of expulsion. Mira, barely 17 and a Muslim, was chased from the city with her family and she now lives in the country. Both women dream of being able to return to their homes, some sunny day.

Jasna Krajinovic (1967) has Slovenian origins and she studied film direction at the Insas in Brussels. Saya et Mira, rêves perdus is, after a couple of study projects, her first full-feature documentary.

Slave Unit   42’
on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:00

Slave Unit by Cel Crabeels 42’ 2002
‘Slave unit’ is a notion which indicates the status of network equipment. In photography it denotes the power of flash installations; a distinction is always made between dominant and subjected. In the video by Cel Crabeels the idea is applied to a setting with two dancers, a director, the camera, video equipment, the stage and the audience. The work constitutes a cross-over between a dance performance, a photoscope and a video installation. A man and a woman photograph each other in turns, precisely when the camera’s ‘slave unit’ flashes. The photographer / hunter turns into a model / slave and vice versa. Simultaneously the image literally turns around as well, building on the principle of reversibility. On various levels the work comments the individual in his mediatized environment.

Cel Crabeels (1958) lives and works in Antwerp. In his videos and installations, which jump out because of their simplicity, he plays around with the idea of emptiness, as a space of meaning which opens up to a multitude of interpretations. His work has been on show, among other places, at the Museum D’Hondt-Daenens (Deurle), the Dirty Windows Gallery, (Berlin), The Waiting Room (Minneapolis), The Leeds Metropolitan Gallery and The Henry Moore Foundation (Leeds).

ETUDES AMERICAINES Chicago Cleaveland New York 2003 SPACES THESIS PART 2
on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 18:00

ETUDES AMERICAINES Chicago Cleaveland New York 2003 SPACES THESIS PART 2 by Joëlle Tuerlinckx 58’ 2003

Joëlle Tuerlinckx (1958) lives and works in Brussels. Filming is her way of perceiving a time interval between two points, a space which might contain different realities. She is as interested in the object itself as in the process which leads up to it. In her video work she scrutinizes for a concentration in time, which she attempts to grasp in the most direct way: off the cuff, from beginning to end. Her work has been shown, among other places, at Documenta XI, Manifesta 4, The Rennaissance Society (Chicago), and the SMAK (Ghent).

Shorts #10: Passive Agressive   54’
on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 20:00

De Nazi by Jos De Gruyter 4’ 2003
Before the eye of the camera a Nazi attempts to justify his acts. The scene is a parody of the ‘anonymous’ interview: the voice is scrambled and the head is not shown on screen. The relativizing testimonial is given an unreal and absurd edge through subtle pace accelerations. The video contrasts the tone of the character, amoral in itself, with its disparate form, illustrating the degree to which the notion of endlösung, as it is carved into our collective memories, is an abstract one, and how thin the borderline is between obtuse reality and grotesque fiction, between sarcasm and irony.

Jos de Gruyter (1965) lives and works in Brussels and he studied at the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels and the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. In his visual work, his installations and his videos, mostly made in collaboration with Harald Thys, he uses a twisted sense of humour to give an outline of situations and characters on the verge of alienation. His work has been shown, among other places, at the galerie EOF (Paris), de Singel (Antwerp), the Middelheim Museum (Antwerp) and the Kunsthalle Basel.

Het Spinnewiel by Harald Thys & Jos De Gruyter 29’28" 2002
Harald Thys and Jos de Gruyter make videos in their own typical style. Man is hardly a pawn in a game of chess, a tragicomic puppet functioning in a system which surpasses him. The style is minimalist, the characters are determined by the structure and they are limited in space, language and movement. The makers draw their inspiration from different movements in the world of cinema and television: from meditative cinematography by Bresson to soap-aesthetics. This results in an alienating universe, as absurd and grotesque as it is enigmatic. In Het Spinnewiel (The Spindel) a woman exhorts her magical powers onto two young men. Because of the fixed camera viewpoint and the inert rhythm we seem to be dealing with small tableaux, hardly moved by the tiny gestures and the indolent dialogue of the characters (dubbed over and recorded by the makers themselves). De Gruyter and Thys put forward an exceptional and self-willed model of situations and characters, as tragic as they are absurd. This model raises questions on the norms and limitations of ‘normality’. Thys inspired himself on his working experiences in psychiatry and he switched the point-of-view: “it is their (un)human surroundings which the affected people qualify as ‘alienated’ and ‘abnormal’. It is an environment lacking in spirituality or love.”

Harald Thys (1966) lives and works in Brussels. He studied at the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels and the Jan van Eyck Akademie in Maastricht. With a twisted sense of humour he outlines situations and characters on the border of alienation in his visual work, his installations and videos, most of which he makes in collaboration with Jos De Gruyter. His work has been shown, among other places, in the EOF gallery (Paris), de Singel (Antwerp), the Middelheim Museum (Antwerp) and the Kunsthalle Basel.

Aquagymtaichiquanstepaerobicsbodyconditioning by Reggy Timmermans 4’17" 2003
The screen is divided into four equal parts, each of them showing a place where gymnastics exercises seem to be held, but in reality they are reconstructions of frozen images, filtered from formation videos in four different sports disciplines. A parallel text appears on screen, read by an electronic voice, outlining a seven-step programme, a symposium for a new politics of physical awareness education in a global context. This video questions the position and the control of the body within his social and commercial constructions. The notion of the body as a signifier of our identity, its social codification and the underlying norms and limitations are explored with side references to Andy Warhol and Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray.

Reggy Timmermans (1959) is a multidisciplinary artist who resides in Brussels. He studied architecture at the La Cambre, photography at the INRACI and plastic arts at the ERG institute. In his work he investigates the social construction and codification of reality and digs for the underlying structures and the indefinable rules and limitations proper to the specific context of his work. He originated the ‘centre of hybrid and experimental art project’. His videos have been shown, among other places, at the Centre Pompidou (Paris), Surge Gallery (Tokyo) and Personal Cinema (Athens).

Untamed Glory by Ruud Verlaert & Stepan Novak 16’30" 2003
A hotel night lobby is the stage for a mini dramas between three young army officers. The cyclic and repetitive structure of the sequence gradually develops the intrigues and relations, with a dramatic outcome. Verlaert and Novak play merry tricks on the norms and rules of the soap-format and they fit their characters with a swollen, hollow dialogue and a stoic, wooden attitude, in all their theatrical minimalism they are a parody of the narrative platitudes of tragedy and romance. The nonsensical and naive story is presented in an aloof way with an absurdism provoking alienation by the human, trivial -and recognisable- context. ‘Untamed Glory’ is part of the project ‘Mission of war’, a feature video which really consists of sequences.

Les Guerriers de la beauté   71’
on Wed, 22 Oct 2003 21:30

Les Guerriers de la beauté by Pierre Coulibeuf 71’ 2002
Dance and cinema meet up in a film in which Flemish choreographer/visual artist Jan Fabre recreates his own universe. Les guerriers de la beauté is similar to a labyrinth with different entrances, in which an unbelievable Ariadne guides the spectator through a strange world in a wedding-dress. A knight in a never-ending fight with an invisible enemy keeps loosing at each turn. From the mouth of a young woman ravishing insects appear, enigmatic witnesses, later reappearing in other forms. The wriggling creatures make out the leitmotiv of the film, subtly permeated by life, death and sex. Jan Fabre has a passion for swarming, bristling life and a scientific, almost monomaniacal fascination with insects. This ’re-creation’ was inspired on Fabre’s previous choreographies and theatre works, but especially written for director Pierre Coulibeuf. The result of this collaboration between dance and cinema is a surreal universe, full of ambiguity, parody and ritual. With a transversal movement Coulibeuf passes through the imaginary world of Fabre, the pretext disappears, is transformed into a self-willed simulacrum, a microcosm, as closed as it is distressing.

Pierre Coulibeuf (1949) lives and works in Paris. He obtained a doctorate in Modern Literature and he has edited artistic and literary works by, among others, Pierre Klossowski, Michel Butor, Jan Fabre and Michelangelo Pistoletto for the film medium. His fiction films explore a language on the borderline between various art disciplines, they criticise established forms and question the systems of representation of reality. His work has been shown on different international festivals and in the contemporary art scene, among others, the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Kunsthalle in Basel, the International Film Festival Vancouver, the Biennale de l’image en mouvement (Genève).

Shorts # 11: Elsewhere   48’
on Thu, 23 Oct 2003 14:00

Untitled by Jeroen Van Der Stock 58" 2002
In Japanese 18th and 19th century erotic prints art the octopus has a strong bestial-erotic connotation. Jeroen van der Stock makes use of this image as the starting-point for a story on a bizarre ritual in the relationship between men and women. In this low-budget teaser a handicap, a fishing rod, lipstick and a cooked octopus take their meaningful places.

Jeroen Van der Stock (1979) graduated from the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels and he is studying Japanese and Chinese. His low-budget videos are mostly compiled from images he shot during his journeys and they reflect his fascination for other cultures. His work has been shown, among other places, during the Junge Hunde Festival (Antwerp) and [Sonic]Square (Brussels).

Kaze by Anne Penders 3’ 2002
‘Kaze’ is the Japanese word for wind. The wind, as it sneaks without sound across vast fields, clutching to stalks and branches in passing, disappearing as quickly into thin air. This compilation of B/W pictures constitutes an intimate reflection on a travel, on travelling, the nomadic lifestyle Anne Penders chose for herself. The images can be seen as actual instances of reality, but at the same time they are abstract and without reference. They bear witness to a personal perception of an unnamed place, evoking the atmosphere of a timeless moment. Memories of the intangible, inviting us to lose ourselves in what surrounds us but is not shown, we lose ourselves in order to find ourselves.

Anne Penders (1968) obtained a Doctor’s degree in contemporary art history and she studied photography. Her literary and audiovisual work is predominantly influenced by her continuous travels. She has published some essays and novels and she has exhibited, among other places, in the Botanique (Brussels), the musée d’art moderne et contemporain (Liège) and the Provinciaal centrum voor Kunst en Cultuur (Ghent).

Bustutai by Gert Verhoeven 13’ 2003
In 2001 Gert Verhoeven presented ’The Blob’. This video is an account of the World Pumpkin Confederation Contest in the United States. The style is similar to a documentary, but it is extremely fragmented for lack of a storyline or any clarification. We keep being undergoing astonishing images of gigantic pumpkins, constantly being subject to curious tests and manoeuvres, meanwhile a voice-over makes dubious and rambling comments. With a strong degree of tongue-in-cheek and cynicism Verhoeven insinuates a parallel between the absurd rituals of this competition and the mechanisms in which all the objects in the socio-economical system - as well as the art world - are being treated and traded. The sequel, ’Bustutai’, tells the same story in the same ambiguous tone, but now it is situated at the Giant Pumpkin Contest in Japan, which adds an extra dimension. Referring to themes like globalisation and post-colonialism, question marks are being placed behind traditional worldviews and patterns of expectancy. Is this a typically Japanese, simplistic simulation or is there more to it than that?

Gert verhoeven (1954) studied at the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels, the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam and the PS1 studio in New York. In his work -drawings, sculptures, videos and installations- he investigates the way in which (artistic) objects are classified and how their value is determined, often with an ironic and surrealist overtone. His work has been shown, among other places, at the Xavier Hufkens gallery (Brussels), Museum D’hondt-Dhaenens (Deurle) and argos (Brussels)

OM by Anne Penders 7’ 2003
Collected traces of a journey through Tibet, these ‘found’ sounds and photographic images were compiled on the return, as a look back on an experience which is slowly digested through time. This impression slowly seeps through from memory, in a fickle stream of images of faces and sounds, music and voices, emotions and emptiness. Questions are being left open, even though the answers are sometimes insinuated. OM is an attempt to snare memories, slumbering, continually changing shape, waiting for a sign of recognition.

Le Refuge by Nedia Touijer 24’23" 2003
In the outskirts of the Tunisian capitol there is the graveyard of Jallez. Every day long silhouettes dwell about this immense place, looking for a job and some hope. The documentary is a serene reflection of a place where shadows rule, of small life in a place of death. In voice-over an anonymous man tells the story of his existence as a supplier of services on the graveyard, his shame and loneliness. “They say the dead have gone to heaven. The living are the ones who raise fear. The dead give me life.” Touijer observes and patiently records a poetical contemplation on the taboo of death and the fear of living.

Shorts #12: Siblings   44’
on Thu, 23 Oct 2003 15:15

Il s’agit by Antonin De Bemels 3’ 2003
In this videographical proposition De Bemels continues his exploration of the physical and the visual limitations of movement, dance and the human body. Central focus is on a static composite torso; it seems to blend in with the rhythmically invigorating limbs of dancer Ugo Dehaes, eyes closed, his head twisting like that of a puppet. In a cybernetic ‘Ballet mécanique’ of fluttering, wriggling arm gestures the organism seems to develop and multiply itself. ’Il s’agit’ offers an illusory and complex metaphor, relating the human body to machine-like patterns and shapes. There is no emotion, just movement and rhythm.

Antonin De Bemels (1975) combines different media and genres into an idiom of his very own. His work stands midway between film, video art, dance and electronic music. Together with American choreographer Bud Blumenthal he has made three ‘video choreographic’ films, in which he experimented with ‘scrubbing’, an image manipulation running parallel to the scratching of a DJ he also uses live when working as a VJ. His work has been on show on a worldwide scale, among other places at the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, Dallas Video Festival, World Wide Video Festival (Amsterdam), ULTIMA (Oslo) and Moving Pictures (Toronto) and it has come in to the prizes at the Audio-visual Creative Fair (Brussels), Springdance Cinema (Utrecht) and the Grand Prix International Video Danse (Paris).

De la par d’Arnaud by Jean-Philippe Convert 4’30" 2002
This video looks into the relationship between two brothers, one of whom is struck with a mental handicap. Jean-Phillippe based his idea on the Polaroid shots his brother Arnaud had taken on a holiday trip in Normandy, and he asked him to write a piece of text from those pictures. Together they have made an impressionist poem, dubbed by Arnaud and with final editing by Jean-Philippe. The relationship between text and image is based on the principle of exchange: the editing of two personal points-of-view, from snapshots and words, is revived as the rereading of the work of the other. ‘De la par d’Arnaud’ is the result of an intimate dialogue between the two brothers, each with their own relationship to the writing and creating process, one as and ‘adult’, the other as a child.

Jean-Philippe Convert (1972) studied philosophy. After a number of years in education he devoted himself to the writing of fiction stories and the making of video films.

My Brother’s Gardens by Hans Op De Beeck 37’ 2003
Hans Op de Beeck based his video work on his short story by the same name, My Brother’s Gardens (2001). In this narrative video work a group of young actors – narrators, as well as characters – move through simple backgrounds and scale models and a story is told about the complex relationship between three brothers: an identical twin and a third, autistic brother. The bigger idea behind the story is the lonesome quest of the creative individual which cannot be completed and the often very thin margins between the factual and the self-created world, between harsh reality and escapism. Part of the video consists of an animation of drawings, a paper world of imaginary gardens. At first they are a refuge to the main character, but ultimately he will lose himself in them.

Hans Op de Beeck (1969) studied at the Hogeschool Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels and the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, and he now operates from Brussels. As a multi-disciplinary artist he makes use of various media, like video, installations, sculptural work, photography, text, animation and sketches. He has exhibited, among other places, in Milan, Chicago and London, and this year he was the Belgian participant in the PS1 programme in New York.

Claudio Pazienza - Cooking the Real #4   53’
on Thu, 23 Oct 2003 16:00

L’Argent raconté aux enfants et à leurs parents by Claudio Pazienza 53’ 2002
‘L’argent raconté aux enfants et à leurs parents’ (Money told to children and their parents) scrutinizes the metallic gauntness of a room with modesty and humour and tells - by bits - the story of a working family incapable of combining needs and desires. From father to son. The son is worried (the son is the film’s author), as he too will be a father soon. It is therefore an insiders’ story, told to the monetarists, the philosophers, and a Central Bank governor. Told too, to a province utopian - Professor Giacinto Auriti – who is the author of a jubilatory project of popular property of currency, and who has invented an alternative currency, which has been in use for a few months in a medium-sized town in Central Italy (Guariagrele). From head to tails, money told to children and to their parents is an x-ray of the monetary economy concepts and various moods, with the secret aim of conjuring debts through the cathartic effects of speech or utopia. Morality: Debt is the cost of the social link.

As a child Claudio Pazienza (1962) moved from Italy to Belgium, where his father could make a living as a miner. After his education in Brussels as an ethnologist, he lived and worked in Liège during the eighties, where he started a production house of his own in 1988, Qwazi qWazi film. Some of his main realisations are: Oggi é primavera (16 mm, 1988) and Sottovoce (35 mm, 1993). His films move back and forth between documentary and fiction. Pazienza is a regular guest on international festivals.

Shorts #13: Abstracted   70’
on Thu, 23 Oct 2003 17:15

Scrubb Color II by Ann Veronica Janssens 5’ 2002
In her work Ann Veronica Janssens often takes a minimalist approach to primary forms, colour, light and space, playing around with notions of boundlessness and furtiveness. Distinct from conceptual art, which distanced itself from the aesthetical experience of the object, Ann Veronica Janssens provokes our senses. What remains is an impression, shaped by a subtle interplay between perception and imagination. In Scrubb Color II various oblong shapes in different colours fit into each other. The movements accelerate, the colours change. The image shimmers, it never halts, producing a disorienting hypnotic experience.

Les Constellations Terrestres (Aller) by Sébastien Reuzé 4’ 2002
A photographic compilation of aerial photos of illuminated cities in the dark of night, animated with video. A blurry tissue of photogenic particles and bluish nebulas extracts all possibility of identification and, accompanied by a contraption of fanciful sounds, it gives an ageless, intangible impression. The photos are the starting-point to an unknown destination; they are constructed like riddles, without revealing their origins. Sébastien Reuzé perceives the image as an object which takes part in reality and undergoes coincidence, he focuses on the minuscule, on the most elementary particles, which keep escaping from us, but helping us to plan out our daily existence as well. Images are manipulated, made fragile, appropriate for a poetic mystery of tracks and impressions.

Sébastien Reuzé (1970) was born in France; he lives and works in Brussels. He studied photography at the La Cambre in Brussels and video at the Universidad Politécnico in Valencia. Active as a draughtsman, he switches to photography and video from the beginning of the nineties. With them he looks to poetise the trivial and to show the importance of an individual world of imagination. His work has been shown, among other places, in Centre Vu (Québec), Espace Contretype (Brussels), La Criée centre d’art contemporain (Rennes) and the Garden History Museum (London).

Gyre by Christopher Musgrave 7’08’’ 2002
The audio-visual compositions of Christopher Musgrave explore the boundaries of what is comfortable within our notion of the perceptible. His work activates “a neuro-biological reception to generate physical and psychological reactions through multi-sensorial experiences”. Electricity is produced through oscillations shaped as waves, the result of sound and video-emissions of pitch, hue and rhythm. This induces a sensation, similar to vertigo. The distortion of regular perception and logical ways of thinking can sharpen the consciousness and provoke a feeling of ecstasy. The interaction of various media constitutes non-lingual, non-narrative information in abstract and obtrusive patterns of colour, sound and light stimuli. Gyre was improvised live at the Experimental Television Center (New York).

Christopher Musgrave (1969) grew up in the United States, but he resides in Antwerp and studies there at the HISK. Through audio-visual media, shaped as compositions and installations, he investigates the relationship between perception and consciousness. He made live improvisations during concerts by bands like Autechre and Phoenicia. His work has been shown, among other places, at the Folkwang Museum (Essen), Transcinema (San José and San Francisco), the European Media Art Festival (Osnabrück) and Exploding Cinema (Seattle).

Prélude N° 3 by Bernard Gigounon 2’40" 2003
A video based on Debussy’s Prélude N°3. Gigounon plays a graphical game with musical onomatopoeia, he lets them dance and interact within the limitations of the white screen. The minimal chords and melodies of Debussy are tied together by surreal observation more than by logic. Here they find a visual counterpart in a pallet of connected letters in constant movement, shifting colours and changing formats. In the same way as the composer paints an impressionist musical world with warm tones and sound images, Gigounon creates an idiom of his own from sterile, achromatic graphical elements. The letters do not merely derive their existence from the music, but their meaning as well.

Bernard Gigounon (1972) works and lives in Brussels. Through limited technological means and the use of seemingly trivial materials, he usually unveils poetic and subtle miniatures. His videos have been shown, among other places, during the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, the Videolab Festival (Turin), Impakt (Utrecht) and in the Galerie des Beaux-Arts (Marseille).

Portal by Anouk De Clercq 14’ 2003
’Portal’ unfolds an environment in which all bothering and troubling things slide off of you: a rhythmical, geographical landscape, a soothing place made from sloping shapes and whispering sounds. Anouk de Clercq depicts an “Interior landscape”, a mental space built of cool shades of grey and fathomless horizons, rotating, tilting and caressing. An exploration of the limits of the utopian and the inner nature, in a longing for a place of enlightenment: “here never alone”. As was the case in previous work like ‘Sonar’ and ‘petit palais’ she creates, along with Joris Cool, a sharp dynamism between abstract sounds and graphic images, both digitally generated. The minimalist, electronic soundtrack of Anton Aeki does not have a purely illustrational function, nor vice versa: It is as if images as well as sound arise from the same desolate emptiness. The video was made on the occasion of ‘Secret Gardens’, a concept of centre for the arts Limelight and cultural manifestation anno ’02, for which several artists had been assigned to design a secret garden at various locations in the city of Courtrai.

Anouk De Clercq (1971) studied film and video at the Sint-Lukas institute in Brussels and she worked as an assistant to media artists Leslie Thornton, Walter Verdin and Ana Torfs. In her video work she confronts various disciplines – text, music, architecture and graphics – and she regularly works together with other artists, with architect and audiovisual artist Joris Cool (1975) as a principle collaborator. Her videos have been shown, among other places, at the Boston Centre for the Arts, the Forum of Art (Emmerich), Centre Pompidou (Paris), the New York Film and Video Festival and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney).

Play forTime by Building Transmissions & Michelle Naismith 18’ 2002
Over the course of the 2002 summer months Building Transmissions and Michelle Naismith regularly exchanged raw sound and video material by mail and through the internet. Inspired by their respective working and thinking process, they continued their work individually; Michelle Naismith processed her images in Glasgow and Nantes, Building Transmissions edited their sound recordings in Antwerp. After a couple of months they saw the result of this multimedia cross-fertilization for the first time, together with an audience during a performance in the Antwerp Film museum. The dark and brooding atmosphere of the sound composition, which is a reference to the actual electronic music scene as well as the noise-underground, is here replenished with a minimalist stream of images, an enigmatic time structure filled with darkness, slowly evolving around a couple of continually recurring ‘found footage’ images.

Good Afternoon Gentlemen! by Nicolas Provost 3’24’’ 2002
A cold, abstract 3d animation set against the warm, confused and dying synthetic voice of HAL 9000 (A Space Odyssey) creates a nightmare sensation.

Nicolas Provost (1969) studied at the Sint-Lukas institute and the Gent Academie and after an exchange project he stayed in Norway for a couple of years. His audiovisual work is situated on the borderline between experiment and fiction and it is put together from an alluring mélange of cinematographic, narrative and musical references. His videos have been shown, among other places, at the Brooklyn Underground Festival (New York), the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, Viper (Basel) and the Stockholm International Filmfestival.

Marcel Duchamp. La machine célibataire by Hans de Wolf & Raphaël Kuntz 7’ 2002
La machine célibataire is een animatie gemaakt door de Franse kunstenaar Raphaël Kuntz, naar de inzichten van Hans de Wolf. Hij gebruikte dit werk in zijn doctoraatsverdediging om het functioneren van de ‘vrijgezellenmachine’ te verduidelijken. Die ‘vrijgezellenmachine’ maakt deel uit van Duchamp’s la Mariée mise à nu par ses Célibataires, même en is een metafoor voor de mannelijke sexuele drift. Een groot aantal sequensen die in de film voorkomen zijn in la Mariée… zelf niet terug te vinden. Ze zijn wel gebaseerd en terug te vinden in de notities die Duchamp maakte bij het tot stand komen van la Mariée mise à nu…, en die later gebundeld en gepubliceerd zouden worden. Küntz projecteert ze in de geduldig ontwikkelende en verkennende animatie op een achtergrond van millimeterpapier. Hans de Wolf wijst er ons op dat dit absoluut geen ‘film’ is in de traditionele zin van het woord. De verdienste van dit werk schuilt ongetwijfeld in de verrijking die het inhoudelijk biedt aan het onder de loupe genomen le Grand Verre.

Hans de Wolf (1961) studied Art History at the VUB (Brussels) and Columbia University (New York). He works and lives in Berlin, where he lectures Art History at the Kunsthochshule Berlin-Wiessensee. Hans de Wolf obtained his Doctor’s degree with a thesis on Marcel Duchamp’s la Mariée mise à nu par ses Célibataires, même, offering completely new insights in this work. Since then he has written and published a huge number of articles on this subject, in Europe as well as in the United States.

Quod by Alexis Destoop 5’30" 2002
‘Quod’ is based on medical macro pictures of the eye. Through animation techniques the inner depth of the perceived “object” was accentuated. Then the animation was integrated into a 3D model, which was conceived as un unfolding surface. Contradictory principles are bundled together in a slowly transforming dynamic, a hypnotic dance of micro movements.

Alexis Destoop (1971) studied philosophy and he obtained his post-graduate in visual arts from the Le Fresnoy (Tourcoing). He worked with several theatre groups and he is part of the multidisciplinary collective Fyke. In his video installations a fascination for ‘the body in its finiteness’ becomes most apparent. His work has been shown, among other places, in Nadine (Brussels) and the Vooruit (Ghent).

Les Constellations Terrestres (Retour) by Sébastien Reuzé 4’ 2002
A photographic compilation of aerial photos of illuminated cities in the dark of night, animated with video. A blurry tissue of photogenic particles and bluish nebulas extracts all possibility of identification and, accompanied by a contraption of fanciful sounds, it gives an ageless, intangible impression. The photos are the starting-point to an unknown destination; they are constructed like riddles, without revealing their origins. Sébastien Reuzé perceives the image as an object which takes part in reality and undergoes coincidence, he focuses on the minuscule, on the most elementary particles, which keep escaping from us, but helping us to plan out our daily existence as well. Images are manipulated, made fragile, appropriate for a poetic mystery of tracks and impressions.

ETUDES AMERICAINES Chicago Cleaveland New York 2003 SPACES THESIS PART 4   100’
on Fri, 24 Oct 2003 14:00

ETUDES AMERICAINES Chicago Cleaveland New York 2003 SPACES THESIS PART 4 by Joëlle Tuerlinckx 100’ 2003

Joëlle Tuerlinckx (1958) lives and works in Brussels. Filming is her way of perceiving a time interval between two points, a space which might contain different realities. She is as interested in the object itself as in the process which leads up to it. In her video work she scrutinizes for a concentration in time, which she attempts to grasp in the most direct way: off the cuff, from beginning to end. Her work has been shown, among other places, at Documenta XI, Manifesta 4, The Rennaissance Society (Chicago), and the SMAK (Ghent).

Shorts # 14: Stereoscopic   60’08"
on Fri, 24 Oct 2003 16:00


Loop 5’ by Jo Huybrechts 5’ 2003
Image and music creator Walter Verdin requested a couple of colleagues, among them Jo Huybrechts, to make a short video for the creation of his work Title Safe. The artists worked independently, sticking to some rhythmical and technical rules of editing. The videos were shown in a sequence, as if they were stanzas in a long musical composition. Jo Huybrechts highlighted a single visual element from his contribution to show it in a loop. Because of a mirror effect it is as if two parallel hands try to grab one another, creating waving patterns, a kinetic flow of images against a background of rubbing sounds.

Jo Huybrechts (1958) studied at the Brussels film school RITS and he lives in Brussels. Through simple techniques he makes hybrid video and installation works, open results of transmutation, de- and recontextualisation. His work has been shown, among other places, at Courtisane (Ghent), the International Filmfestival Rotterdam, the MUHKA (Antwerp) and the Beursschouwburg in Brussels.

Papillon D’Amour by Nicolas Provost 3’30" 2003
Provost subjects a number of fragments from a film by Kurosawa to a mirror effect, thus creating ethereal figures, constantly remelting into each other and slipping away again. The “imploding butterfly” is metaphoric for the impossibility of love.

Non Unexpected Encounters by Alexandra Dementieva 8’57" 2003
The world is passing us by in a haze of seemingly casual encounters. What if these meetings could be foreseen, programmed and analysed at all times, without leaving absolutely anything to coincidence? This topic constitutes the starting-point for ‘Non Unexpected Encounters’. As if he were a conspirator the camera is sent on a quest for those fertile glances of recognition, arising from the virtual reality which surrounds us. Dementieva draws her inspiration from the dark, uncanny atmosphere of films by David Cronenberg and David Lynch, creating an unreal atmosphere of paranoia, amplified even further by the electronic score of Arnaud Jacobs (Missfit).

Alexandra Dementieva (1960) studied journalism and visual arts. In her interactive multimedia-installations and videos she makes use of elements from behavioural psychology and she builds onto the ideas of the subjective camera and sound and image interaction. Her work has been shown, among other places, at the Valkoinen Sali Festival (Helsinki), the Rencontres International Paris/Berlin and the Tretyakov Galerie (Moscow).

One Man Show by Pierre Bismuth 6’24" 2003
The underlying objective in Pierre Bismuth’s work never changes: the destabilisation of our established codes of perception and the urging of the spectator to approach cultural products with more of a critical attitude, even though their significance might seem self-evident at first sight. He manipulates various materials – among them magazines, newspapers, photos and films – in order to give unexpected turns to the everyday meaning of things, thus piercing through perceptual habits. In One Man Show a Buster Keaton film is presented in a deviant structural configuration, through the double use of split-screen and the mirror effect. The accessibility of the film functions as a kind of bait, gradually supplying the spectator with a different cinematographic perspective. Pierre Bismuth does not try to create new meanings, but rather to neutralise their initial content and question our understanding of culture.

Pierre Bismith (1963) was born in Paris and he divides his time between Brussels and London. In his work he investigates our perception of reality and our relationship to cultural products, through the manipulation of artistic objects. His work has been on show, among other places, at the Lisson Gallery (London), the Kunsthalle in Basel and the Centre d’art Contemporaine Bretigny.

C’est Comme être by Patricia & Marie-France Martin 8’30" 2000
In the work of twins Patricia and Marie-France Martin the idea of duality is a constant factor, inevitable and indivisible. C’est comme être is a multi-layered exploration of the space between ‘them’ and ‘the other’, the confusion between ‘the true’ and ‘the copy’, between reality and fiction. In concealing masks and reflective mirrors we are looking for our identity, and simultaneously for another person, but these remain images of our incompleteness, snippets of our being. This poetic and elegant fusion of video and choreography is accompanied by the music of Jean-Paul & Robin Rimbaud and Jean-Luc Fafchamps.

The artist from Brussels Isabelle Martin studied visual arts at the Ecole de Recherche Graphique and the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle, both in Brussels. Her recent body of work comprises video, text and audio works. Martin has exhibited and presented her work, among other places, at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Kasseler Dokumentarfilm und Videofest, the international women’s film festival Femme Total (Dortmund) and the documentary film festival Doc en courts (Lyon).

Nemawashi Cacachuette by Charley Case 23’ 2003
The work of Charley Case is often based on a binary notion. In this case it is constituted by a two-part form, modelled after a peanut. It is the biotope of pairs of organisms, uprooted bodies evolving around each other, cherishing each other ephemerally or ultimately melting into an intangible unity. Nemawashi is a Japanese botanical term, which points out the phase of uprooting and preparing for the transplant/rediscovery. ‘Nemawashi Cacahuette’ follows the poetical transformations of isolation to symbiosis.

Charley Case (1969) studied graphic design at the Brussels’ La Cambre and he has made illustrations and designs for various international newspapers and projects. After collaborations with different activist groups he began to work independently for the Sangam collective. He picks his medium – photography, film, painting, graphics and performance – in function of his objective. Most of his themes are marked by social awareness and rooted in conflict, between images and meanings, within contexts and among people. His work was shown, amongst others at The Fifart Festival International du film sur l’art (Lausanne), the Dallas Video Festival and the MACBA museum (Barcelona).

Hallu by Michel François 13’ 2002
Michel François is fascinated by the small signs of life, the trivial movements and touches which are bestowed with every appearance of magic at the right time. Beauty is to be found in everyday life, where emotion and astonishment are waiting. In his work François tries to induce these experiences and to grasp the mobility and the elusiveness of perception. In ‘Hallu’ two hands fold all kinds of origami models, thanks to a mirrored split screen they double out in perfect symmetry. The combination of human dynamism, algorithmic thinking and simple computer technology leads to an elegant en gracious game of illusions, a piece of magic.

Michel François (1956) lives and works in Brussels. He combines industrial and natural objects, photography and installations. In his work he conceives his personal perception on reality, he analyses everyday images and actions, tracing for the unexpected, the beauty and the familiar. “L’art, de toute façon, c’est la vie que l’on sculpte“ , François says. His work has been shown, among other places, in the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the gallery Carlier-Gebauer (Berlijn), the Venice Biennial, the Kunsthalle Bern and the Haus der Kunst (München).

Shorts # 16: Jeune Peinture   51’
on Sat, 25 Oct 2003 14:00

_imovie_[one]: The agony of silence by Els Opsomer 12’ 2003
Els Opsomer made this video with the amateur software ‘iLife’. It is a video letter to her friends, an introspective account of a short visit to the Palestine. Pictures which were taken there are widely and deeply explored and edited, with the content of the letter as subtitles. Musing and hesitating, she asks herself questions about the preservation of human integrity in an area where violence is experienced in daily doses, where human dignity is being affected day in, day out on different levels and throughout different generations. “Brutal memory erasing sweetness – Only fragmented thoughts submerge day and night”, she finds, in an attempt to grasp personal integrity and sensibility in the complex rag of reality. The atmosphere of melancholy is drawn out further by the accompanying, minimalist soundtrack of Stefaan Quix.

Els Opsomer (1968) lives and works in Brussels. She is a visual artist and a graphic designer and for a couple of years she was an artist-in-residence with the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. In collaboration with people like Johan Grimonprez, Herman Asselberghs and Ronny Vissers she realized a couple of multimedia installations. She draws from her constantly growing archive of urban images, puts together a commentary on and reinterpretations of global reality and at the same time she questions the contrast with the safekeeping of personal integrity in this reality. Her installations, photos and videos have been on show, among other places, at the Werkleitz Biënnale, the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (Santiago de Compostela) and the Biennial on Media and Architecture (Graz).

Trente et une nuits: mes rencontres palestiniennes by Laurent Van Lancker 28’ 2003
« I had not anticipated this movie ». Laurent Van Lancker went to Palestine and for 31 evenings he recorded his artistic and emotional encounters on video. The 31 impulsive snapshots constitute an impressionist mosaic of human stories full of great dreams and small drama. The director gives his own intimate, personal meaning to that one, almost intangible word... Palestine.

Laurent Van Lancker (1969) studied art direction at the Institut des arts de diffusion (IAD) in Brussels and Oriental and African studies at London University. His body of work mostly contains impressionist documentaries on identity and ethnicity. His films have been shown on many different international festivals and they have been awarded with, among others, the Basil Wright Film Prize of the RAI International Festival of Ethnographic Film and the Youth Award of the Cinéma d’Asie Festival in Vesoul.

Après La Pluie by Alberta Sessa 11’15" 2003
Après la Pluie combines the visual and auditive notes she made during a trip through Shanghai and Peking. It is an account of waking up in another world, in between dreams and sensations, the physical and visual shock. The Super 8 images catch the penetrating colours and stimuli and an awakening love for a civilisation full of possibilities and contradictions. As it turns out these are but the first traces of an intimate quest for the poetry of a population, with its many memories and gestures. Aprés la pluie is the third film by Alberta Sessa and the second in collaboration with video and audio artist Antonin De Bemels.

After her studies as a translator-interpreter and law student Alberta Sessa (1967) started working with distributors of experimental films and documentaries (AJC! And CBA) and the Film Museum in Brussels. She has made a series of collages from newspaper clippings and several small video works.

Dit evenement is onderdeel van argosfestival 2003