Extensions … (of media, images and space)

During the last Threeplusone residency and exhibition that took place in Zennestraat 17 (Brussels) this late summer, I presented an installation mixing flickering light and painting projection with the help of Arduino , Processing and a small LDR.

The aim of the residency was to create new site-specific works, directly inspired from this old laboratory, and connected with the idea of “extension”, coming from certain questions that we wanted to raise, such as: How to extend a media with another?, How to extend an image into a space?, How to extend a space into a media?

Starting from that, I chose one of the rooms available in Zennestraat 17: the one completely painted in black during the last exhibition, except for a white frame. This room was especially made to welcome a projection… and suited to one of the works I wanted to achieve: a hybrid installation where outside light interfere with the inner lights of the image. A complete auto-sufficient system that the public could only look at and not interact with.

From this process, results an empirical dialog between  two flickering phenomenons, a tensed experience with a constantly appearing/disappearing image, touching nearly the state of film, but remaining always a still, questioning ourselves on the reality of the space, the image and the experience that we are living.

A video documentation of the installation will come soon but here you can already find some pictures…

Towards a generic vision

Towards a generic vision is the working title of the proposal I made for the joint project on the notion of territory within the Threeplusone collective.

Recently, I started questioning the structures embedding the non-places. By what kind of territory and architecture are they generated? Mostly found in world-wide metropolis, these environments can be characterized by:

• serialisation of the void, of non-identity, of the non-place
• incorporation of mass / emptying of individuality
• systematisation of rapidity / efficiency / profitability
• integration of all elements into a main flow
• globalisation of these systems
• elimination of asperities, particularities

The space becomes invisible, nonexistent, generic, in opposition to a virtuality which becomes more and more personalized, individualized.

My intention is to produce works (paintings, drawings, installation,..) where these notions would appear by pushing further the process of emptying; towards a systematisation, a generic approach of the generic space self.

sketch for generic

Anywhere reloaded :: video project

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