Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

HANS OP DE BEECK – CELEBRATION

Hans Op de Beeck is one of the biggest names in contemporary art. Instead of limiting himself to video art, he also creates sculptures, installations, pictures, animated films, drawings, paintings and short stories. His creations reflect on the difficult and problematic relation with time and space. He shows the audience non-existing, but recognizable places, moments, and extras that seem to have been plucked from daily life.

His video work Celebration (world premiere at Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Italy, November 2008) is more like a painting than a film. Only subtle movements indicate that this is not a snapshot. Celebration shows us a strange display: we see a baroque dinner table set in the middle of the dry, barren desert, amidst rocks and cacti. Waiters and cooks are ready to welcome the guests. They stand still, with only the movement of the wind. The piece is a live painting, allowing the viewer to create his own story.

Hans Op de Beeck – ‘Celebration’ (2008)
full HD video transferred to Blu-Ray disc, colour, sound
4 minutes, 38 seconds
Courtesy Xavier Hufkens, Brussels
With the support of F.A.R. (Future Arts Research) @ ASU (Arizona)
With special thanks to and Swing, Merelbeke

FELIX HESS – IT’S IN THE AIR

It’s In The Air (1995) is interactive in a delightfully simple way: the movement of air produced by the visitors sends a wave through dozens of tiny flags that appear to be floating just above the ground. The work visualizes the otherwise unseen changes in air pressure, making it the tiniest of almost cinema experiences.

Felix Hess is a Dutch scientist and artist who tries to reawaken our senses. He does this by making us aware of invisible phenomena. Hess transforms sound into light, and has made a CD recording of differences in air pressure. He’s also known for his sound creatures, small devices that send out and receive sound signals without human interference, hereby reacting to each other and their environment (see the article in Dutch daily Trouw). Hess’s work could already be admired at exhibitions and performances in the Kröller Müller museum, Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, De Appel in Amsterdam, the New York Hall of Science, etc.

“Felix Hess redefines the relationship between art and technology in more than one way: he exposes and focuses on the sensitivity of technology towards its supposed reductionism, he consciously escapes the trend of standardization of technological design and is not tempted to make unscientific speculations that ignore the wonder of technically elaborate senses,” said the jury of a Dutch prize for art and technology (The Witteveen + Bos).

“All my work is interactive and very sensitive to what is going on in the direct environment. In fact, all my work is based on becoming aware of this sensitivity. Pictures and sound recordings cannot capture the essence of my work, they can’t even come close to it. Most of my work consists of groups of small interactive electronic machines that are presented in the form of installations. They are extremely sensitive to what goes on around them. My work is about communication and sensitivity, about the relationship between sound and space. My ‘machines’ allow sound and space to speak for themselves. The main theme of my work is listening”, Hess said in Dutch paper NRC Handelsblad (Dec 2002).

AERNOUDT JACOBS – PERMAFROST

Permafrost is a new work by Aernoudt Jacobs. He developed a machine in which water slowly freezes and then thaws again. This process takes about an hour and results in a visual display and an amazing auditory experience. The cracking and bursting of the slowly forming and melting ice crystals is slightly amplified with special sound apparatus.

Permafrost visualizes the often problematic relationship between nature and technology and is a symbol for ecological phenomena such as the (accelerated) melting of the polar ice caps. At the same time, Jacobs uses this installation to research processes that are not audible or visible at first sight. He makes the visitor reflect on the complexity and layers of a natural process, translates it into something that we can experience consciously.

Aernoudt Jacobs is one the many young Belgian artists at Almost Cinema. He is especially intrigued by sound and how it can be perceived and visualized. With the help of psychoacoustics, Jacobs investigates how perception can be influenced and how you can express sound physically, spatially and emotionally. Jacobs has previously worked extensively with field recordings (for Phantom Melodies at the 07 Courtisane festival in Vooruit, for example), where the memory or the context of a recording forms an interesting and complementary pattern for his work. Jacobs’s work has been exhibited in France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Mexico, New York, Norway, Spain, Brasil and the Netherlands.

With the support of Vlaamse Gemeenschap & Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie

BRAM VREVEN – RAYS

Bram Vreven is a young Belgian artist who has been living and working in the Netherlands for several years. After his first steps in jazz, he left music to make sound installations. Over the years, the visual aspect has become more prominent in his work. His installation Rays (2008-2009) is the perfect example of that: six black strips slowly revolve around their axis and hereby create a fascinating graphic/kinetic display. When they revolve, the strips seem to change from flat two-dimensional figures into shapes with a volume, and back again.

According to Vreven himself, his installations are influenced by contemporary dance, music, nature, technology, science and their common characteristics rhythm, order, chaos and a flowing or non-flowing movement.”

JULIANA BORINSKI – LCD

Juliana Borinski (photographer, installation and video artist, Brazilian working in Germany and other countries), erases the borders between video, experimental cinema, photography and performance. In LCD (2008) she shows the solution of liquid crystals in real time, a process that takes between 20 minutes and a few hours. The result is an abstract film of moving and melting particles. Gradually, changing landscapes appear, similar to lava lamp patterns.

Borinski’s installation LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is an enlargement of the natural process of crystallization as well as an ode to chemical techniques that have allowed us to capture images (i.e. photography and film). Liquid Cristals are still widely used in computer and TV screens. But this installation takes us far from these technical applications, to silence and the original magic of old optical apparatus.

In her own words: “My expanded media installations often integrate basic new technology into historical media technics or physic experiments. Contrasting with the contemporary technological complexity and aesthetics, they propose very simple sensitive experiences, contemplation on abstract images, becoming again an interface between the spectator and the reality (and not between the spectator and the media).”

KURT D’HAESELEER & BÉRENGÈRE BODIN – JE CONNAIS DES GENS QUI SONT MORTS

The installation Je connais des gens qui sont morts presents a bizarre and unsettling display. Blow-up objects fill up with air, only to deflate moments later. In the process, plastic bodies coil in impossible positions, completely dependent on their ‘breathing apparatus’. Glass panes, scattered in the space, catch the reflection of video images that amplify the chilling atmosphere of the work.

Visual artist Kurt D’Haeseleer & performer Bérengère Bodin found inspiration for Je Connais… in the book Liquid Life by Polish-British sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Bauman). Just like the book that constituted the inspiration for it, the installation is a commentary on a society that is entirely focused on flexibility and change.

At regular times dancer Bérengère Bodin appears in the installation for a performance. She moves between the constantly changing landscapes of blow-up objects, using the manipulated objects and floating video images as ingredients for a bizarre mating dance.

Multimedia artist Kurt D’Haeseleer gained fame with his work for an array of theatre and dance projects, ranging from LOD, Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker and Peter Verhelst. His videos, installations and audiovisual performances could be seen at Artefact (Stuk, Leuven) KRAAK and Courtisane (Ghent) and at international festivals and exhibitions in Rotterdam, Tokyo, Montréal, Paris, Berlin, etc. He was also part of production company and artist collective De Filmfabriek for several years (other members included Peter Missotten) and is now setting up his own project.

JEAN-NOËL MONTAGNÉ – JE TE PARLERAI DANS UN REFLET DE LUMIÈRE

French media artist Jean-Noël Montagné draws inspiration from political dividing lines, like the border between the US and Mexico, Israel and Palestine, Europe and Africa (Ceuta & Mellila), North and South Korea, where walls, fences and barbed wire are aimed to keep out refugees.

Montagné projects video images of a beautiful horizon. But just like the people that are confronted with a separation wall and can’t see which landscape lies beyond it, the spectator never sees the full picture. Twelve mirrors suspended in the middle of the projection field reflect the images so that the projection is scattered throughout the space. On top of that, the mirrors can rotate and react to the presence of visitors. When you approach, the mirrors will turn away, so you never see your own reflection.

The installation gives you the impression of being confined by walls on every side. But the dynamic projection also presents a sharp contrast with the static situation of someone who is locked in or out by walls every day.

PABLO VALBUENA – EXTENSION SERIES

One of the most exciting visual experiments at the Almost Cinema exhibition is the work of Pablo Valbuena. This young Spanish architect and artist manipulates space and plays with perception. Using precise light projections he brings small architectural details to life. Abstract geometric forms like tubes, power sockets and corners are put in the spotlight, adding dimension and making them tangible. On top of that, his work adds a mobile virtual extension to the space which the visitor is in, hence the name Extension Series.

Valbuena often works on the relation between space, time and perception. One of his most remarkable projects was his light projection on Den Haag’s city hall (todaysart festival 2008). The work exhibited at Almost Cinema has been created especially for Vooruit. The work is a continuation of his ‘Augmented Sculpture’ project in Madrid (see pictures below).