VASCULUM

In speaking about what's far, exotic and unknown lies what's close and familiar. vasculum turns to the central region of the province of Limburg in Flanders, Belgium. The artist's own native land. In the twentieth century it was known for its coal mining. Here it finds itself between appearing and disappearing, between the utopian and the dystopian, amidst efforts of preservation. Situated at a socio-economic turning point in history, this place is approached through adaptations of reports from Belgian botanical expeditions from Brussels and Liège traveling to the area between 1865 and 1913. Linked with present day's images framing and reframing the iconic coal mining slag heaps which dominate the region's landscape, this text forms a narrative thread speaking from the different characters that ever crossed this land in an attempt to appropriate it in many ways: explorers, imperialists, colonisers, scientists, artists, industrialists, immigrants, tourists. The applied methodologies of image making and storytelling facilitate a reinterpretation of history and reveal a new understanding of the present. Now, just like then, this landscape and its cultures still find themselves in a fragile position, as they are under threat again of exploitation, globalisation and reconversion.