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…

For Expanded-Scapes (Leopoldskazerne, Ghent, 2009), I have shown recent works on generic spaces. Using maps and construction sites as underlying ground-works of the generic template, I create improbable spaces where imaginary/virtual flows (traffic, circulation, communication, economic exchanges) are the only inhabitants.

More pictures from Expanded-Scapes here!
More from Generic there!

mural painting in my studio, Leopoldskazerne, Ghent, 2009
(work in progress)

From this Monday 5th of January until 27th February 09, some paintings of the anywhere reloaded project are exhibited in Nucleo’s office in Ghent. You can visit it during working hours from Monday till Friday.

Nucleo develops affordable, good quality studios in the city of Ghent and its surroundings for artists active in various art disciplines. I could rent a temporary studio from them this year, located in the beautiful Leopold Caserne.

contact: info@nucleo.be

Adress: Nucleo vzw
Lange Violettestraat 237-239
9000 Ghent, Belgium

photos: Kristina Ianatchkova

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!

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

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.