Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Just like at previous editions of Almost Cinema, you will be able to explore a video and installation trail throughout the Vooruit building. International media artists play with the cinematic medium with alienating, yet amazing videos and installations.

Ali Momeni
Smoke and hot air
Animal Warmth (#28)

Iranian artist Ali Momeni will show two works in the trail. Animal Warmth (#28) (This work was earlier communicated as Now is The Time or Light Bulbs) consists of about thirty light bulbs and searches for the animal warmth in light, sound, heat and rhythm. In his installation Smoke Ring Quartet smoke rings enter into a symphony with each other. The underlying message is more serious than you might think: each smoke ring represents each time that the U.S., the U.K. or Israel threatens war on his native Iran..

Ali Momeni is a researcher and an artist who moved to the U.S. when he was twelve. He’s currently employed as a researcher at the University of Minnesota. During Almost Cinema he’ll also perform the piece The Liminal Surface with David Bithell.

Smoke and Hot Air: Ali Momeni & Matt Brackett / Animal Warmth (#28): Ali Momeni & Robin Mandel.

Heike Langsdorf, Ula Sickle & Laurent Liefooghe
Viewmaster

Viewmaster by visual artist Laurent Liefoogher and choreographers Heike Langsdorf and Ula Sickle is a performance as well as an installation that shows a contemporary version of the renowned “Pepper’s ghost illusion”. In nineteenth century theatre, before the invention of cinema, this optic trick was often employed to make ghosts and spirits appear out of nowhere on the stage. This often thrilled and unnerved the public, to which the secrets of the trick were not unveiled. The essentially simple trick works as follows: the viewer and the performer are separated by a glass partition. Depending on the light, the glass is either transparent, mirroring or both at the same time.

In the installation trail you can try out these optical effects for yourself. In the evening the trio will give a performance in the installation during which they blend illusion and reality in a visual game. The audience will be misled more than once.

concept : Heike Langsdorf, Ula Sickle en Laurent Liefooghe / performance : Heike Langsdorf en Ula Sickle / scenografie : Laurent Liefooghe / lichttechniek : Hans Meijer / geluid : Peter Connely / co-productie en steun : Netwerk vzw, Kunst-Werk / f,r,o,g,s – OS, WorkSpace Brussels, Nadine, wp Zimmer, Vlaamse Gemeenschap.

Elisa pône
I’m looking for something to believe in

The work of young French artist Elisa Pône sends sparks flying, to say the least.
This is explained by the fact that she works with rather unusual ‘material’: fireworks! Her videos and performances are a flammable cocktail of light, smoke, smell and lots of noise. Furthermore, Pône doesn’t light her fireworks in the open air, but sets them off indoors! The grand, breathtaking and festive spectacle that we expect from fireworks is turned into something intimate, yet dangerous and explosive at the same time.
The video I’m looking for someone to believe in, for example, shows a white car at a lake in the middle of the woods. But the peaceful scene is abruptly disturbed…

image: Damien Oliveres / fireworks: JJ Boutemy / sound design: Gery Montet

Eric Thielemans & Laure Delamotte-Legrand
Rrauw – cathedral of ear

Cinema for the ear? Musician Eric Thielmans and artist Laure Delamotte-Legrand prove that it can be done. Rrauw is an ‘ear film’ about the many different kinds of silence: exciting silence, calm silence, loud silence, waiting silence…But silence wouldn’t be silence without the inevitable sound…

For Rrauw you enter a large installation by visual artist Laure Delamotte-Legrand. You take a place in a sort of cocoon with a subcutaneous texture as you are invited to experience the elements handed to you by Eric Thielemans: a core text about silence that kicked off his research on silence and sound, a scientific drawing of the inner ear and a picture of listening musicians.

On the 16th, 17th, and the 18th of October at 6 p.m. you can experience an ‘ear film’ in the installation, which evokes different images for every listener. Read more about this performance here.

Alexandra Dementieva
Alien Space

Dozens of balloons that light up like TV screens constitute the body of Alexandra Dementieva’s installation Alien Space. The two balloon walls bring to mind a futuristic lab or a living cell wall, with a texture that is at once cold, threatening and fragile. Images appear on the shiny surfaces of the balloons: news broadcasts from TV channels across the globe. The virtual wall confronts you with images of destruction, accidents, war, drama, love… As this flood of images washes over you, an emotional and physical reaction is inevitable, while your presence causes changes in the images and sound. An installation that generates curiosity, attraction and repulsion all at the same time.

Alien Space: Bart Vandeput (programming), Ludo Engels (sound), Marcus Bering (design) & Real Reality (3D-animation) / production: Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds, Nadine vzw, CCNOA center for contemporary non-objective art, Adem vzw / www.alexdementieva.org

Boris Debackere
Probe

A probe is an unmanned vehicle that travels through space and sends information to earth. According to Boris Debackere, a cinema screen is also a probe. He sees the big screen as a passageway for an audiovisual trip through time and space. His interactive installation Probe focuses on the relation between the viewer and the screen. The hypnotizing visuals and the thundering soundtrack suck you into the screen as you become immersed in the images. Experience the magic of the screen to the full and enjoy this installation with your eyes, ears and your entire body. Because it is your presence and your position from the screen that determine what you see and hear.

Together with his brother Brecht, Boris Debackere presented the audiovisual performance Rotor at Electrified, the summer event by Vooruit, the S.M.A.K. and 5 voor 12. Boris is not only an artist, but also a professor and a researcher at Transmedia and Sint-Lukas. As an artist, he likes to blend different media, such as images, sound and electronics.

sound & image design: Boris Debackere / software design: vvvv, Sebastian Gregor
 / sensor application: V2_
 / probe is an Auguste Orts Production and is produced with the support of the Flanders Audiovisual Fund

Ulf Langheinrich
OSC

Just like Boris Debackere, Ulf Langheinrich aims for a cinematic experience. His installation OSC bombards the eye with profuse flashes of light and stroboscopic effects. Intense light patterns and shapes overwhelm the eye. But even after leaving Langheinrich’s installation you will notice the influence of the light patterns: your perception becomes fuzzy by the mark they have temporarily made on your eyes.

On the opening of the trail, you can attend Langheinrich’s performance Drift.

Ulf Langheinrich is a big name in the media art world. He has exhibited his work in Vienna, Berlin, Seoul, New York and Tokio. His projects always try to make an impact on the senses of the visitor. He is one of the founders of Granular Synthesis, a collective of audiovisual artists that weld sound and image into one medium. They strive to play video like an instrument and to ‘compose’ images like a symphony.

Doris Kuwert
Swing
Bob up

Coat hangers can also be art. That’s what Doris Kuwert proves in Swing. Small magnets in a coat hanger create an electromagnetic field. The coat hangers attract, repel and click against each other. The sound is amplified and forms an alienating soundtrack that complements the haphazard coat hanger choreography. In Bob up, fans are making styrochips whirl through the air until electrostatic glue effects show up.