Tuesday, March 12, 2013

From Love, with Brussels

'From Love, With Brussels' ontwikkelt zich rond de toponymie van 'your-space' binnen het Van Abbemuseum, een museale ruimte die een platform wordt voor haar tijdelijke gasten en bezoekers.

Komplot fungeert als een mobiel team van curatoren. De groep infiltreert in de publieke ruimte en structuur, en initieert artistieke projecten die grensoverschrijdend werken. Als groep is Komplot steeds op zoek naar onstabiele omgevingen en fluctuerende contexten, naar steeds nieuw terrein en originele vormen van expressie. Hierbinnen is het de missie van Komplot om strategieën te ontwikkelen voor de productie en diffusie van de resultaten van events die ze organiseert.
Voor 'From Love, With Brussels' presenteert Komplot werken die diezelfde strategie van infiltratie en performance bezitten in hun manier van presentatie en perceptie.

Het statement van 'From Love, With Brussels' werkt als een tegengewicht voor het assertieve profiel van het voorstel van Freek Lomme, 'The Return Of The Dutch', dat door 'your-space 'gepresenteerd zal worden in de ruimte van Komplot in Brussel.
Deelnemende kunstenaars: Aline Bouvy, John Gillis, Kevin Van Braak, Bart Schonderbeek, Simona Denicolai & Ivo Provoost, Sofie Haesaerts, ICE AGE, Kosten Koper, Douglas Park, Grégoire Motte, Claudia Radulescu, Kurt Ryslavy, Christophe Terlinden, Michael Van den Abeele, Freek Wambacq + NG
Info:
Van 6 juni tot 3 augustus 2008
Opening donderdag 5 juni 2008 om 19u00
Bilderdijklaan 10, Eindhoven
http://bamart.be/nl/pages/detail/2106/


Invitation, From Love, with Brussels

Then came From Love, with Brussels, group exhibition, van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2008. Mostly Sonia Dermience and Emmanuel Lambion. We met up and spent time together beforehand in London to discuss this and other possibilities. At Nang Gallery, I introduced Sonia Dermience to John Russell (ex member of 1990’s collective, BANK –sometime collaborator with Fabienne Audeoud –and solo-artist). Strangely enough, Sonia Dermience and Komplot had worked with John Russell, but they’d never met –until there and then, through me. Another private view, at Maureen Paley’s Interim Art also sticks strongly in my mind. Sonia Dermience and Emmanuel Lambion stayed at the apartment of the expatriot German photo-artist of urban nocturnes and influential art-educator, Rut Blees Luxemburg (somebody I've aided and abetted during the course of their duties making work -and also written about as well).



Just before From Love, with Brussels, I was already in Belgium anyway, to work with filmmaker, Mark Ærial Waller. As well as us both contributing to and appearing in the same projects, shows, events and publications, I've acted in various films by Mark Ærial Waller ('Glow Boys', London, 1998; 'Nuclear Contract Worker Interview', London, 1999; 'White Stag', London, 2001; ‘Superpower / London Chapter’, London, 2004; 'The Flipside of Darkness', Warsaw, 2007). Images of me from his films and events infest Mark Ærial Waller's book, The Flipside of Darkness, CCA Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, where theres also my ‘Dream-Key Zodiac / Pandora’s Ark’, (English / Polish, translated by M. Jader –so also, ‘Sen-Klucz Zodiaka / Arka Pandory’), 2008. Objectif Exhibitions in Antwerp, presented Mark’s La Societe des Amis de Judex 2, an expanded-cinema multimedia spectacle (from Mark Ærial Waller's "Wayward Canon" event series).



We'd performed versions of La Societe des Amis de Judex 2 at London's Tate Modern and FACT in Liverpool. Vintage films of "Fantomas" (the surrealist's anti-hero villain) interview footage with 1 of the co-author creators of "Fantomas"; early technicolour “Batman” and “Joker” extracts; film by Mark Ærial Waller of a Turkish live-art troupe singing texts about "Fantomas"; recordings of Turkish street-musicians and public background-noise; dry-ice smoke; myself as "ecran-vivante" wearing white fencing-costume and ski-mask (or rather, 1 of Gideon Cube-Sherman's "Anti-Paint Protective Headgear", from his "Cube-White Seminal Formulæ" paint and "Test-Area", in my and Alfred Camp’s 4-person group show, The Gallery Has Been Completely Vandalised!, Alfred Camp Gallery / 97 - 99 Projects, London, 2000), whilst reciting my 'Dream-Key Zodiac / Pandora's Ark' text; Mark Ærial Waller in a fake-ancient helmet reciting Guillaume Apollinaire verses etc.



It was strange to briefly show Mark Ærial Waller around at least some of Antwerpen, which I know well, because he'd never been before. While there, we met the mysterious French itinerant artist, NG, at A.I.R Antwerpen (a residency I was on in 2006 -and a place I often stayed in beforehand and after my time there) who was to be also be in From Love, with Brussels -as a past-the-umpteenth-hour watershed and lastminute.com addition.



I went to Brussels to join Sonia Dermience and friends. Amongst other things needing to be done, we had to amend the punky and "zine" chic From Love, with Brussels invite flyers for the van Abbemuseum show –with NG's name. Attempts to join some people at the Compilotheque canalside bar, restaurant and venue were thwarted by intended quarries preferring to watch football on T.V elsewhere. Apparently, myself (and maybe others?) ended up singing, whether accepting an offer or simply bulldozing ahead and just doing it, on stage, perhaps.

From Brussels, we travelled to Eindhoven. The interface between Komplot and us (the artists) and the van Abbemuseum was Freek Lomme, with the organizations, Onomatopee and Your-Space. Cafes, bars, apotheeks. The earliest discussions of what was to be the 'Marcel' flick (but thats saved up until later). 1st night in an ordinary residential suburb -with magic-realist dreamlike atmosphere -and lit neon-signage -even when nothing was open. Asking locals out late the way to the house we stayed in because the street or our part of it proved unfindable. After the From Love, with Brussels launch event and performances (filmed by NG -as her input), we and our entourage spent the night at Onomatopee h.q. 


 
Grégoire Motte, The necklace which stains
Opening Performance, From Love, with Brussels
group exhibition curated by Komplot
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2008
©, Copyright, Komplot, 2008
http://www.kmplt.be/project.php?id=16


From Love, With Brussels [juni, 2008]

opening June 5, 19:00 with peformances and more!
Come and meet up with the folks from Brussels, to link up for July and our 'Return of the Dutch'!
Specially conceived for the your-space platform, From Love, with Brussels, is a proposal by Komplot, which revolves around the very toponimy of this open institutional experiment : « your-space », a museal space that becomes the space of it’s temporary guests and visitors.
As a mobile curatorial platform, infiltrating the public space and / existing structures to foster artistic projects which trespass the usual disciplinary and borders, Komplot vzw likes to explore uncertain environments and fluctuating contexts, new territories and original integrated forms of expressions.

Komplot has always been keen in the development of a strategy of production and diffusion of residual pieces and traces for the events it organised. For From Love, With Brussels, the objective is therefore to presents art works, which convey implicitely and adopt the same infiltrational strategy, both in terms of display and reception.
The statement also acts as a balanced counterpart and response to The Return of the Dutch your space’s special project of residency in Brussels, which, departing from the rough space offered by Komplot, a garage space, will operate with direct ramifications in the public space.

Together, the two projects operate as comments of the process of cultural exchanges and cross-seminations between our two neighboring countries and whose histories have long been intertwined.
In a way, beyond their general and specific grasps, the works integrated From Love, With Brussels, also act as metaphors of specific cultural clichés. Extensive, seminal and integrated Flemish immigration in the Low Countries of the XVI-XVIIth centuries vs. the Dutch more structured and political occupation of Belgium at the beginning of XIXth century.
The following artists are invited to create new works or present adaptation of existing works produced by Komplot for the occasion. They have been chosen for their infiltrating and perturbating qualities :
Rossella Biscotti / Kevin Van Braak
The artists will present their project 'The good life' for the first time in the public space, in the Netherlands. At this stage it consists of a van transformed into a semi-mobile architectural structure whose progressive shapes form an evolutive response to it’s organic use and to the changing aesthetic requisites of the context where it is displayed. Eventually the expansion of this semi-mobile sculptural installation will lead to the construction of a house in Salento a Southern region of Puglia.
High and low culture meet in the work of Aline Bouvy (L) / John Gillis (B). In their paintings, installations, performances or videos, they develop an eclectic “Gesamtkunstwerk” approach where post-punk or contemporary pop music references confront with elements reminiscent of a more established cultural tradition.
Simona Denicolai (I) & Ivo Provoost (B) will diffuse the sound piece ‘Nobody’ that was created for the project Vollevox, in the national fine arts museum in Brussels, in 2004. The sound piece is a recording of an “impromptu” performative concert of cell phone rings. It is to be used as a “jingle” tone for public announcements in the museum, and at the opening and closure times. Denicolai Provoost have also infiltrated the communication of the show by designing the invitation and integrating in it a “mental image” to be spread in the public space. The sentence will also be sung by the curators during the opening of the show.
Sofie Haesaerts (B) develops a sculptural and installational practice often fragmented and integrated in the architecture. For With Love, from Brussels, she will present a slide show of sculptural infiltration she will have integrated in the collections of the Museum. Photographed and transferred into slides these ephemeral images will act as the testimony of evolving and evanescent sculptural gestures.

The pin My boss is Flemish by Kosten Koper (UK) will be worn and distributed by Komplot’s artists and curators on the evening of the vernissage, then sold in the bookshop. This work is a sardonic joke about the Belgian situation by a foreigner living in Brussels. During the opening, Kosten Kooper will also, in collaboration with Douglas Park (UK), organize a live radio broadcast, accessible with headphone set in your-sapce for the  duration of the exhibition.
Grégoire Motte (F) works on the interstices, in the spaces exisiting between or around the artworks in an exhibition, often with elements taken out or subverted from the original context. For with Brussels, from Love, he will use the peripherical spaces of some lavatories to realize a pictorial seductive installation.
Claudia Radulescu (Ro) will show a sculptural neon installation named Incitation à la Vie privée. Seductive, straightforward and semantically ambiguous, it consists of the artist’s first name with her Belgian cell phone number. It is to be displayed in the museum in an area of external visibility, in relationship with the public space.
The book Europäer by Kurt Ryslavy (A) is a self-referential text by the artist, translated into 36 languages spoken in Europe. The artist tells the story of his wine trading, the main ground and topic of his artistic occupation and production. The borders between the two deliberately fluctuate, when he shows documents as paintings or integrates invoices and lists in his work. The edition is to be displayed in the restaurant of the museum and will be for sale in the book shop of the museum.
Christophe Terlinden (B)
'En connaissance de Cause'. This installation conceived by the artist for the eponymous exhibition in le Bonheur, brussels, consisted of a sculptural mountain, made of crumpled paper and of large drawings representing mountains. A « public space » sculpture, to be placed on the street in front of the gallery-shop would act as an « edition » supplier : a candy distributor filled with crumpled drawings in plastic eggs, available for one euro. When unfolded, the sheets displayed further drawings of mountains, all different: With their wrinkled surface, mimicking the rocky surface of the mountains, and playing with shade and light effects, the drawings were conferred with a material texture. Ìt is this candy distributor that will be shown in the Van Abbe, but filled with a new series of drawings.
Michael Van den Abeele (B)
‘Asbak’ is a series of decorative ashtrays that the artist recuperated to place them on plinths in cement; One of them will be shown in your-space, along with a video animation and a drawing. Three video animations are also presented on a monitor in the Museum’s cafetaria.
Freek Wambacq (B) created ‘Stadium IV’ for Komplot’s Garage in Brussels as the first three modular elements of a “in progress” stone sculpture, aiming at reproducing, in a fragmented evolutive fashion, the whole line of starting blocks of the original stadium of Olympia in Greece. A new modular element has been especially conceived for With Brussels, From Love. Freek’s ambition is to create a new modular element and, when possible, to leave them behind integrated in the public space. A list of traditional sauces accompanying French “frites” in Belgium will act as mental colour palette, and is to be distributed in stacks of photocopies in different locations of the Museum
http://www.vanabbemuseum.nl/en/network-and-debate/your-space/your-space-archive/

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