Here are some pictures of recent works in progress (they still need to be finished after being mounted on board).
After exploring and revealing specific qualities of the non-place self (heterogeneity, reflective surfaces, geometricity) by hollowing out the space of its recognizable elements, I try now to go deeper in the merge of surfaces. I’d like to lead the image to a certain state of in-between, between something recognizable and something where all directions would have been erasing.
This week-end, Juan Duque and I opened the door of our new atelier in Ghent where we showed our work in progress and research materials on the topic of contemporary landscape. We presented both video works, Juan showed also drawings and an installation in the studio and I presented my photographic and painting works.
Here is a little text about Juan:
Architect and Urban Designer with studies in Media Art, Juan Duque works on the ‘visuality’ of the Landscape and the process of ‘decontextualization’, ‘alteration’ or migration of the images. Implementing different media, his work focuses on research on ‘extended’ landscapes resulting from digital or physical alterations and distortions.
http://www.betweencorners.blogspot.com
It was quite interesting to present different approaches of the contemporary landscape in general and I’m really curious to see how our collaboration will evolve. I’d like to experiment more things in my video work and to propose a collaborative screening on this topic.
Finally, even if I was missing some friendly faces, we could say that it was a success, lot of people and some good feedbacks. Long life to the OA!
ps: thanks to Hallveig G.K. Agustsdottir for the pictures!
My last project anywhere reloaded (still work in progress) will be presented in our brand new studio in Ghent!
Since September I share a new studio space at the Leopoldskazerne (thanks to Nucleo vzw) with Juan Duque, ex-transmedia collegue, architect and urban designer, researching on landscape and digital alteration of the image.
We will present mostly work in progress of our urban explorations (paintings, drawings, installation, video works).
So see you on Saturday 25th or Sunday 26th of Octobre, Lepoldskazerne, 2nd floor, Kattenberg 4, 9000 Gent!
Here are some pictures of the paintings presented in the entrance hall of Sint-Lukas, Brussels in June 08. For a detailed look on the paintings go to http://www.disconnectedmacha.be and click on “anywhere reloaded” to see the digital portfolio. There is also a printed portfolio available on request.
anywhere reloaded, pigment on paper, mounted on board, 148×111cm, 2007/08
Transmedia is now over and I’m proudly graduated, after some deserved rest and a move to a new city that brought me closer to simultaneous happiness and loneliness, I can now show some screenshots of the video I’ve presented for the TM jury.
This work is part of my research on non-places, places of transit, displacement in relation to Marc Augé’s perception analyzed in “Non-Places, an Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity”. My interest in these places is when you stop or erase the movements or the elements that connect them to us. Then, they start to float, they become suspended, dis-connected and turn into this prophetical evocation of spaces described by Augé.
In the video work I presented I’ve worked with superimposition of video layers with 1 frame delay. In the final result there is up to 10.000 video layers and the work as been presented as a triptych of 1′03” projected in loop. While each video shows subtle changes in light, colours and shadows of individual movements, the triptych bring them in an uniform composition, erasing all identity or particularity. A certain boredom comes out of the repetition of this 1min video, but is necessary to avoid narration. This double repetition leads to a certain temporal suspension.
Just click on the images to enlarge them.
stills of video triptych, 1′03”, 2008
This week-end was the opening of the “Parcours d’artistes” in Saint-Gilles where Jimena Kato Murakami and I have our studio. This “parcours” allows any artist with a studio in Saint-Gilles to present his work. So you can do an exhibition or just an open studio. As we don’t really have a lot of walls and not so much time we just hung as we could and made a work in progress “show”.
So, if you get bored on sunday afternoon, just pass by! We’ll have some chat!
Place to be: 32 rue du métalstraat – 1060 Brussels
Open Saturday and Sunday 17/18 + 24/25th of May from 2-7 p.m.
After having working on development of the installation with light texture (I will post some pictures soon), I’ve been back to photo and video work on nonplaces. First, I needed more material for my paintings and especially with a better connection between the images. Not only non-places but spaces that could be emptying of their utilitarian content and bring the image to a certain abstration level.
Afterwards, I’ve done video and photo experiments on this emptying of the urban space by superimposing time frame layers. By exemple, I’ve rendered 500 frames of video captures that I’ve superimposed with transparency. The result is a motionless glimpse of what happen with superimposed video layers. The quality of the video image is increased by this effect and all reflections, colors are stronger.
Illumination Rig by Graham Gussin, Glow Festival 2006, Newcastle (UK)
Graham Gussin’s work deals with human experience of the infinite, states of mind associated with the sublime. He provokes displacement of the viewer in a illusory, imaginary space that seems empty and quiet at first sight, but filled with this tension, desire that something might happen. He creates situations that examine our perception of the real and its relationship to imagined experience.
In this installation, he used lighting normally used for film productions. I’m interested in a similar approach to create a fictionalisation of urban space for Welcome to Anywhere. But i’d like to use a vibrant texture to project in order to blur the surface of the walls, floor,… and create a fictional door between physical and mental realities.
“We take …our everyday external reality very much for granted: the room that we sit in, the streets around us, the virtual space of billboards, and movies and TV … we take all this for granted. But in fact it is, literally speaking, an illusion generated by our central nervous system. It’s as much a virtual reality as the one the cyber people are working on …Within our minds all these different planes of spatial reality are intersecting.”
J.G. Ballard, KGB 7, KGB Media, 1995
Last week-end, iMAL presented Stream On You, an event around streaming art practices with audio/visual performances.
One of the most accomplished installation was performed by nocinema, presenting a live video screening and live audio performance. nocinema proposes web interludes drawing upon strings of live streaming webcams across the world and sound from a shared soundfiles database which is fed and updated by a team of sound artists/partners.
You have to know that the choosen webcams are showing mainly non-sens or empty places, like a field, a construction space, a deserted parc, a road, a forest,… The sound can be digital or captured from everyday life environments.
I was really interested by the lag created between what you know beeing live streamed and the a-temporal aspects of the images and sound. This notion of present time soon desappears while the work becomes timeless, suspended, contemplative.
The fact that the stream is slowed down amplifies also this perception of a distorted time, but this effect is mainly due to the kind of images. Even if you often have a date and time on the video capture, the non situation of the image in a specifical time-space (due to the absence of individuals or event) makes it a-temporal. You could say, that it’s some garden or field from the early 21st century, but the banality of the scene and it’s non-narrative aspect make the scenesuspended in the time.
The variation of resolution between the different video captures was also visually interesting and probably contributed to the non-situation of the scene in a certain time-space.
The overall impression is to have a contemplative experience of live streamed sound and images that break any relation with their fundamental constitution: the present.Here and now seem to be extended.
