This morning I had a mail from my friend Sara Nuytemans, just back from Indonesia where she worked on a collaborative project with Arya Pandjalu, an Indonesian artist. And it oddly make me thing about dis-connected…

They developed this project in Bali during the last 4 months and it has been showed at the SIKA Gallery (Bali).

Project description:
“The idea is based on a former work of Arya Pandjalu, a birdhouse in the streets of Yogyakarta. This birdhouse was a reaction on the fact that in Java they shoot all the birds out of the air, for food or just for fun. With the birdhouse Arya wanted to say something about this reckless behavior by giving the birds a house where they can feel at home and save.
For the project Birdhouses we are going to build 4 different birdhouses: a church-birdhouse, a mosque-birdhouse, a temple-birdhouse and a synagogue-birdhouse. They will be made in plate metal, like Arya’s former birdhouses. This material is chosen in this project because of its uniformity and austerity, so that only the form speaks. The birdhouse will be placed in the beautiful public gardens on Bali.
The concept cuts two aspects. The inhabitants of Bali have more respect for nature then the inhabitants of Java. This has a lot to do with the difference in religious persuasion. Java is mainly Muslim while Bali is mainly Hindu. In Bali every creature can be a reincarnation of a known deceased. The consequence is that there are more birds in Bali then on Java and the birds have more freedom.
Another aspect of this project is the freedom of religious persuasion. Can we say that real freedom obtained by putting our own belief (‘the truth’) into perspective?”

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Malcolm Le Grice, Horror Film 1, 1971

Bozar Cinema (Brussels) presented us this last week-end a full programming of Live Cinema performances. I was there saturday night to see Malcolm Le Grice films (one of our famous teacher at Transmedia) and we were so lucky that we could even attend at Malcolm speach in the dark, as there was no electricity anymore in the room… So we finally had a good Kriek at La Mort Subite and decided to report this to sunday afternoon.

Malcolm selected us a good variety of films and his famous performance: Horror Film. I was really surprised by the diversity of his work which is a continuous research on the film media in all its forms. He experimented many things from the classical film to the digital.

Actually any photo could represent his work because the moving texture of the film creates the most subtil part of it. I was really impressed by the modernity of certain pieces which will remain timeless as Joseph’s Newer Coat (1998-2001) and Matrix 73-06 (1973). His performance Horror film was really impressive too and remains a very strong piece even 30 years later.

After Malcolm, I went to William Raban’s screening which was really amazing. He creates a balance between projection and performance and plays with the projection medium too. The result is more minimalistic and use the borders and connections between the different screen and projection shapes.

These performances of Live Cinema belongs to a certain period of time but remains really strong from an esthetic point of view. The materiality of the film brings something that we can’t find anymore with the digital medium and suddenly I wish I could be born in the 50’s…

More picts on my flickr!

The website of the project dis-connected is online!

Pictures and videos of the performance: But what’s in there?, are available.

So hurry up and go to http://machaaa.be!

As we had some technical problems with the sound recording and that I didn’t have the opportunity to talk with all of you, it would be nice if you can leave a little comment on your experimentation of the dis-connection helmet. What you felt and thought.

That would help for the next performance, What’s next?

Looking forward to read you, you can also mail me!