There is nothing to report since my previous update of March 2018. I could have stopped here, but I didn’t and kept going. So, in case anybody would be interested, here we go.

This post is more a snapshot in time, of a period when nothing must or should. Where there are no more bosses, managers, and no deadlines. When time flows like the water of a slow river in its bedding. When there is time to be aware of the silence of the house when the family is still sleeping. When you start noticing the little sounds that break apparent silence. When there is time to notice the growth of the corn on the fields and the grass on the lawn.

"The bed a raft, the room the sea, and then I laughed some gloom in me." 
Life sized sculpture © Hans Op de Beeck 2018 @ Galleria Continua in Art Basel.

The corporate jacket became too small to thrive; I needed the sort of freedom that Venkatesh Rao recently described in his post:

“Freedom lies in the privilege of being able to solve a problem for aliveness, rather than money”

Although problem solving is not good enough. As Nora Batenson wrote:

“The problem with problem-solving is the idea that a solution is an endpoint.”

Problem solving is reactive; creating what you want is pro-active.

It feels like I am pivoting. When time flows well, I create interventions, interruptions and provocations that lead to higher states of alertness and aliveness. Formats can be artwork, installations, performances, immersive learning experiences, writings, soundscapes, recordings, documentaries, or just casual conversations.

I feel privileged to create what I want to create, and to be able to apply the A.F.E.A.R. principles at will.

Family

It’s almost a year now since we settled in our new house, including my little art studio. And it still feels it was the right thing to do.

On May 1, 2018 we celebrated our 25 years of marriage. We went out for dinner with our parents to thank them for giving us birth, care and opportunities. Thank you Mieke for your endless patience with this always-unpredictable guy, your care, and your encouragements when doubt creeps in.

Astrid is doing very well at school. And she is starting to show first signs of her puberty, especially developing her little character 😉

She made this nice little paper rabbit and greeting card for my father’s day:

The Artschool Project

The 2017-2018 Art Academy year has come to an end, and I already blogged about my latest work in The Story of 4 Paintings.

On March 31, 2018 I also participated for the first time in my life in a pre-selection of an art competition. The competition was called “De Curieuze Collectie” (The Strange Collection). My coaches had encouraged all students to participate. Only a few did.

Philippe Van Cauteren – Artistic Director S.M.A.K.

The jury was a quite eclectic mix, and included some people you normally don’t have access to like for example the Artistic Director of S.M.A.K. (Museum for modern art in Ghent). So I though why not, let’s give it a go.

This year’s theme of the collection was “Vox Populi – Populism in times of social media”. I presented some of my “Hot Dogs Tonight – Prison Window” work.

To make a long story short: I did not make it to the last 10 finalists. But it was a good experience to present in front of a select jury and a very diverse group of artists and locals. With hindsight, I feel that I tried to say too much, tried too hard not to be obvious: some level of vanity, which shows also in the background text I submitted to the jury (and a bit embarrassed now…)

“Hot Dogs Tonight” depicts a social media based panopticon, where the citizens are subject to continuous surveillance by governments, organisations and institutions. Attacked in their privacy, the citizen only sees the familiarity of her own cell. The convenience of the social media leads to an illusion of options, limited by the populist discourse of political demagogues. The Vox Populi becomes a Vox Populistus, a myopic view of reality, a fragmentation of time and identity. This lack of protection and security causes eventually a loss of personal leadership, courage and risk.

On June 12, 2018 I presented my Jan-June work for year-end evaluation at the academy: the latest work of The Story of 4 Paintings and some of my “Hot Dogs Tonight – Prison Window” work, especially the World Clock installation (physical version).

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – World Clock – 7 time zones 
Acryl on canvas 7x20x20cm

Petervan Artwork © 2018 – Prison Window project – Acryl on Canvas – 20x20cm

I am happy to report that I passed. Even better, two of my works(the Garden and the Blue Boat) were selected for the year end exposition of the academy on 23 & 24 June 2018 in Ghent.

Next year, I will probably do some sort of specialisation or crossover, as I very much enjoyed the combination of digital and canvas this year.

About Silence

Some years ago I was diagnosed with auditory hypersensitivity, which in laymen terms means I hear extremely well. I hear for example the blood streaming through my veins in my head. It’s a soft rustling, but not very disturbing, no worries. On the other hand, I can’t stand television sets playing too loud, or the sound of the highway in the distance, or the crowds in subway stations. But I do like a loud rock concert or performance. “Functional loudness” if you want. So let’s say I am hypersensitive to noise pollution.

It dawned to me only recently that I could actually do something with this sensitivity. I started recording silence. Or rather, I started recording the noise pollutions that are disturbing a wonderful silence. Like the sound from a small motorcycle in the distance, passing by, and Doppler effect disappearing on the other end. Same with planes, trains, bicycles, voices, the list goes on.

Like in painting, it feels that this is also about managing contrasts and the spectrum of contrasts: loud/soft conversations, light/dark, calm/wild,….

Some of these recordings include video, some not. I plan to use some of these “silence-scapes” in my upcoming performances and/or installations as well. It’s a bit weird. I may get myself a GoPro camera and some decent audio gear, although my iPhone 6s captures it quite well. For the video below, I was just holding my iPhone in my hand when driving. Simple.

Biking noise and silence. 
An 8-minute raw non-edited capture of a bike tour 
in the area of Aalst (Belgium), illustrating sound and silence
To be used in some upcoming performances. 

About time

My tempo has become so slow and peaceful that it starts to be incompatible and dysfunctional with the rat race of so called “normal” life of deadlines, busyness, and fragmentation of everything.

That’s what I wrote a while ago as some reflections on this theme.

Jan Fabre self-portrait - Part of series "Promises of a Face"

The first occasion where this dysfunction hit me was during a visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels, where my cousin is senior curator. He just had curated and opened an exposition confronting contemporary multidisciplinary artist Jan Fabre with the (mainly Flemish Primitives) classic artists (see also below). He gave me a quick-guided tour on the latest at the museum. I could not follow him (mentally). In one-hour time he gave me so much information, it seemed to me that I couldn’t process it all anymore, I needed more time to let it fully come in.

Around the same period, I was picking up again my Ableton skills ànd reading Venkatesh Rao’s “Tempo: Timing, Tactics and Strategy in narrative-driven decision making”, describing virtuoso how “tempo” is an always present but less outspoken aspect of our relationships between people, corporations, etc

In that book, he categorised some archetypes of tempo synchronisation. Some examples look very much like Gantt Charts.

Extract book "Tempo" by Venkatesh Rao

The tempo intervals made me associate immediately the visual metaphor of the “Venkatesh Gannt Charts” with the user interface of the music composition software Ableton Live (that I use to compose soundscape for my performances).

Especially the Ableton “session and arrangement view” visualizes in a very similar way the bars, tones, pitches, rhythms, tempos, velocities, automations, and quantizations of an arrangement or musical composition.

Ableton Live music software – arrangement view

One also hears intuitively when the score is right or not so right. When the beats are too digital and lack human variation. Life is more than bits and bites and rhythms in an arrangement…

Again, like in painting, it feels more and more that my work is about managing contrasts and the spectrum of contrasts: loud/soft conversations, light/dark, calm/wild,….

Exhibitions

Still trying to visit an art exhibition once/twice every month. During the last 3 months, I went to see:

• “Het Vlot” a multi-location exhibition in Oostende
• “Running Problems”, installations and paintings by Danish artist John Korner

John Korner – Running Problems

• “My Queens” by multi-disciplinary artist Jan Fabre, honoring the 8 important women in his life in a dialogue with the Flemish artistic tradition (curated by my cousin Joost Vander Auwera). I was very impressed by the monumental Carrara marble bas-reliefs with incredible detail

Detail of Carrara marble bas-relief by Jan Fabre

• “Hugo Claus – Con Amore”, celebrating the 10^th anniversary of Flanders’ most acclaimed author
• “Fernard Léger – Beauty is Everywhere”, about one of the best-known modern artists, and a passionate observer of a bustling century, and the Cambrian fragmentation of everything.

Upcoming performance

I am very excited to have been invited again to do a performance at the Finnovista Summit in Mexico-City on 12-13 Sep 2018. I was invited last year, but the event needed to be cancelled halfway due to the 7,4 magnitude earthquake on 19 Sep 2017. So the organisers were so kind to invite me again.

The theme of this year’s event is “Listen, Learn, Lead”. Manoeuvring through this theme, I will make a new performance, recuperating some material from last year, but also with new elements from my artwork series “Prison Window” and other metaphors capturing my reflections and insights of the last year. This time, and in addition of the multi-media approach, I plan to include props on stage, possibly a life camera feed, even some vestimentary attributes, and a lightning script for the light technician.

The venue is indeed fantastic: it is the main concert hall of the Centro Cultural Roberto Cantoral, a real theatre stage with all the audio/lightning whistles and bells one can dream of.

The working title of the performance is “Get out of the prison cell! – An artistic reflection on listening, learning, and leading”

Chickens and Pigs Project

A nickname for our garden and chicken farm.

The chickens are doing fine, thank you. Normally 2-3 fresh eggs everyday, but recently – because of the warm pre-summer here in Flanders – one of my hens is broody. I told you, I have nothing to report 😉

The garden is developing well. We now have different salads, tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, carrots, paprika, berries and raspberries. And the trees in the orchard start developing apples, pears, cherries, and prunes.

Petervan Vegetables © 2018 - Lettuce still free of snails – June 2018

 That was just in the garden. Small stuff compared to what my uncle Hubert and son David are doing. They are professional farmers cultivating several hectares of land and keeping a livestock of about 250 cows and sheep.

One of my long time bucket list items – driving a tractor through Flanders’ Fields – finally became true. It is an almost Zen-like experience to make nice straight lines in open fields, with just the sound of the tractor and the warm wind blowing through the open window of the machine.

Farmer Petervan on tractor of uncle Hubert, Aspelare, Belgium June 2018

I was impressed by the technology on board of these modern tractors. They have a joystick, auto speed control, airco, etc. and some of them even have GPS to make really straight lines, or to ensure no part of the land is sprayed twice, a matter of efficiency and cost control. Also the seats are awesome, better than in most cars.

I also learned a lot about nature: when cows keep their tail up, it means there’s thunderstorm underway, and when swallows fly low over the pasture, there is a good chance of rain coming. We also saw a lot of hares, and even a fox.

What’s next?

Besides the obvious year-end resolutions (renewed every quarter or so), the plan for July – Sep 2018 is to work on:

• V1 of “Casual Conversations” aka Studio Oxygen
• Make and publish some more Silence-recordings
• Create 1 painting every 2 weeks > 6 paintings in 3 months
• Write 1 blogpost per month
• Mexico Sep 2018: make and rehearse the new performance

Looks like I am running out of time 😉 So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Sep 2018.

Warmest,