Last week, I went to the Foto Museum (FOMU) in Antwerp to see the expo Masculanities – Liberation through Photography. This expo was already at The Barbican in London in the summer of 2020. I had some time left, and a slipped into the adjacent expo Re-Collect, an overview of a decade of acquisitions of FOMU.

Very similar to my first encounter with the work of Belgian fashion designer Dries Van Noten – see my post “Confused by Beauty” from 2015 – I was touched and moved by the video installation “KING” (2015-2016) by Belgian artist David Claerbout.

“David Claerbout (b. 1969) is a Belgian artist, whose work combines elements of still photography and moving images. Using photography, video, and digital-editing tools, Claerbout creates large-scale video installations that provoke questions of time, memory, and truth. Solo exhibitions include Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, and SFMoMA in San Francisco.”

From the FOMU site:

The viewer sees a digital 3D environment based on a private photograph of Elvis Presley. The photograph was taken in 1956, when Presley was on the cusp of world fame. This was a time when the photographer, Alfred Wertheimer, could still get close to the man—before the transition from ordinary human to icon, from normal life to an era of superstardom and spectacle. David Claerbout modelled Elvis’ body using hundreds of photographic fragments of his skin and facial features. He challenges the two-dimensional nature of the photograph by adding virtual time and space. Photography is both the launching pad and the subject of KING. Claerbout confronts the viewer with the transition from looking through a lens to looking by means of a scanner. This radical reversal of normal observation means that you seem to creep into the image. Claerbout uses the artistic, conceptual and technical perspectives to question our way of looking.

FOMU has a short 5 min artist video on their site, with Dutch and English subtitles.

That was enough to get me really interested, and I found another great 30 min interview video with David Claerbout at Louisiana Channel. He explains how the whole project was made: they even used a stand-in model and stitched together thousands of pictures of Elvis’ skin on the 3D scan of the model. Amazing!

Showing us around in his “studio” – actually many different rooms in an old Flemisch house in Antwerp – Claerbout is very articulate about his work and practice and I found this super inspiring, as I am preparing next year 2022 as my year to professionalize my own art practice.

He opens with:

“I am an artist, and I do not know exactly what it is what I am doing, it seems I am changing my ways all of the time, but I am a self-taught very hungry autodidact in the domain of the moving image animation film video and what we could call virtual image making.”

As we walk through his studio, we see his drawing-room, how he started building an archive of images, how his team is usually working on one project at the time, having all equipment inhouse, two recording studios, including a small server farm in the basement to render image/video in the most optimal way.

Throughout the whole interview, there transpires a mood of silence, integrity, dedication, focus, discipline, professionalism. His origins are in painting, and drawing, and lithography.

The interview/walkthrough is full of inspiring insights, provocations,

WHAT IS IT THAT I CAN CONTRIBUTE?

MY WORK DOES NOT HAVE ANYTHING SHOCKING

I WANT TO DEVELOP A LANGUAGE

SPEAKING/WORKING WITH PEOPLE THAT YOU ARE CONFIDENT WITH, THAT YOU CAN TRUST

WHAT IS IT THAT BINDS EVERYTHING TOGETHER?

CHRONOS – KAIROS – HETEROCHRONY – THE PLURALITY OF DURATION

PRIVILEGED MOMENTS

BEING NOT AT THE CENTER OF THE COMPOSITION

THE CAMERA AS A VAMPIRE

THE RELATION BETWEEN OUR THINKING AND OUR PERCEPTION

YOU DON’T WAIT FOR BUDGETS, YOU DON’T WAIT FOR PEOPLE, YOU JUST DO IT

THE DELICATE CENTER

HOW DO WE LIVE WITH VIRTUAL MATTER?

WE HUMAN BEINGS ARE PROGRAMMED TO TRUST

WE ARE NOT PROGRAMMED TO PUT OUR SENSES INTO QUESTION

WE FIRST WILL BE SPONTANEOUS BELIEVERS AND THEN WE WILL BE ANALYTICAL

I WRITE A LOT, I DON’T PUBLISH A LOT BECAUSE IT IS SO TIME-CONSUMING

LIFE IS NOT LONGER A TAPE THAT RUNS FROM BEGINNING TO END

THE TRINITY OF PAST-PRESENT-FUTURE IN THE VIRTUAL REALM

EVERYTHING IS BUILT OUT OF TWO

A BUILT-IN REDUNDANCY

LAZINESS AND ENERGY

SHARING DIRECTLY BY SITTING TOGETHER

WE PERFORM AND AT THE END OF THE EXHIBITION THE PERFORMANCE IS OVER

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THIS INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE VALUABLE SINGULAR ARTWORK SITUATED SOMEWHERE IN TIME NOT IN PARTICULAR MATTER

SOMEWHERE IN THE SMALL FOLDS OF TIME, THERE ARE ENCOUNTERS

WHAT IS THE LIMIT? WHERE IS IT?

THE PRIVILEGE OF THE ARTIST OF HAVING TIME TO WASTE

THE ARTIST DOES NOT HAVE TO BE EFFICIENT

IT IS QUITE LOUD WHEN THERE IS NO SOUND

It is clear that Claerbout is full of poetry. As Norman Foster used to say “I can write you a letter, but a poem?”

No wonder the “KING” and some others I discovered in the meantime are so well resonating with where I am now and where I would like to be the next years. I may post some other inspiring stories in the weeks and months ahead as part of my transition to and professionalization of my art practice.

Warmest,