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Here is the latest update on Petervan Studios. The previous update already goes back to June 2021.
The family is good. Somehow, we managed not to get infected by the virus. We all got boostered and respected safety measures to the max. Most of my time, I spent home in my studio and only came out for some grocery shopping, some visits to art exhibitions, and delivering the taxi service to my daughter’s school and horse stables. Zero travel since October 2019, but I cannot say I miss it.
At this moment, it looks like we are getting out of the woods of the 5th Covid wave, and measures in Belgium are getting relaxed. Partying is allowed again as of 18 Feb 2022.
More importantly: my father is still alive and kicking, and he celebrated his 90th birthday in Sep 2022!
What else?
The Bricks Project
For those who remember, this is my “zen” project. Drawing bricks in silence. Many bricks. 8,255 Bricks at the time of writing this post:
Exhibitions
Since the last update, I visited the following art exhibitions:
Luc Deleu, De Singel, Antwerp, Aug 2021
Drawing Art, BOZAR, Brussels, Sep 2021
ING Laughing Art, ING Gallery, Brussels, Sep 2021
David Hockney, BOZAR, Brussels, Oct 2021
Masculinities, FOMU, Antwerp, Nov 2021
Re-Collect, FOMU, Antwerp, Nov 2021
Rinus Van de Velde, Tim Van Laer Gallery, Antwerp, Nov 2021
Train Modernity, KMSK, Brussels, Nov 2021
Fabrice Samyn, KMSK, Brussels, Nov 2021
Pop-Art, SMAK, Ghent, Feb 2022
Chaos, Alex Vervoordt, Wijnegem, Feb 2022
Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Zeno X, Antwerp, Feb 2022
David Claerbout – The Close, Brugge, Feb 2022
Luc Deleu inspired by Buckminster Fuller
Detail of painting by Rinus Van de Velde – 2021
Hippie Elias (Self portret) by Etienne Elias – 1970
Fabrice Samyn – Detail from Eve&Adam – 2018
Still from The Close – David Claerbout – 2022
Outdoors
Weather did not treat us well. My recollection is one of all shades of grey and lots of rain from August 2021 till Feb 2022. Only the beginning of Sep 2021 was decent. But I have some nice winter fog pictures from my strolls and bicycle rides:
Horses
Astrid made a lot of progress in horse-riding. She won the 2nd price at a local dressage competition, and she also enjoys jumping a lot.
Talking about Astrid, in Dec 2021 she celebrated her 16th birthday. Where has the time gone?
Traveling Without Moving project
Travelling without Moving (TWM) is a series of essays documenting my mental and philosophical journey in 2020-2022.
The main outline was published in November 2020, and in the meantime, several episodes have been released. Since the last Petervan Studios update, I published one more essay on “Studios”.
There are a couple more in the pipeline, but I have a hunch that these will morph into The Scaffold project (see later in this post).
Since July 2019, I publish every month a Spotify List with new releases combined with some oldies from the 60ies, 70ies, and beyond. Search for “Petervan Ride” and select “playlists”. Subjective selection of course, as driven only by my personal taste (or lack thereof).
Here is the latest Ride from Feb 2022, still being populated as we publish this post.
I suggest you play it in shuffle mode, it enhances the surprise experience.
My Art Practice
I did not produce much artwork. I was very focused on a work-project that required all my attention and focus. I shared most of my recent art work via my Facebook page, or on this blog under the heading “Sine Parole”. Some “highlights” if I can say that about my own work:
Professionalisation of Petervan Studios Art Practice
As from March 2022, I will focus on the professionalization of my art practice. I have hired a coach to help me with that. We are working with a digital archiving platform with an API that is steering the show & tell of my analogue and digital artworks. There will also be an integration with a shopping environment, and an online VR exhibition environment. There is also a brand-new website for Petervan Studios in the making. This new online environment will also become the home for a new project, working title “The Scaffold”, see below
Freelance Projects
I have been deeply involved and committed as architect and head of design of an 100% on-line learning expedition running from Sep 2021 till Feb 2022. We just landed the closing session. We still want to produce a “scrapbook” that documents the journey by end Feb 2022. The experience came in two chapters. The first chapter was a technology refresh on digital identity, infrastructure, VR, Robotics, Web3, and UX. The second chapter was about developing a practice of innovation for wicked problems, and how to design for emergence in complex adaptive systems.
I had the chance to collaborate with professional facilitation and innovation partners, and a collective of “guides” – some really smart people – that helped us shape and deliver the content.
The Scaffold
The learning expedition mentioned above had a great impact on me and the way I look at “events”. I believe I am onto something that may be the start of a new “genre” of learning studios. And I have started talking and pitching to potential partners and investors. Here is the high-level pitch:
The Scaffold is a 100% online learning studio for creating new knowledge based on the passion of the explorer.
The Scaffold can be seen as a form of Pop-Up school and/or an experimentation-based learning playground.
The Scaffold is planned as a three-year research cycle, with cohorts joining an online virtual playground for six-month intensive high-impact expeditions where together with the faculty they will create new knowledge in collaboration.
The curriculum of the expeditions is composed of several interventions, interruptions, and provocations anchored in the reality of a client’s project. The project serves as a vehicle to trigger new and imaginative thinking.
The Scaffold is a “scaffold” for something much bigger, something that could lead to a movement and foundation for better futures.
More about that later, probably in the second half of 2022. I hope to have a first client cohort signed-up by then.
So, in summary, what’s next?
The plan for the coming months is to work/play on:
Professionalizing my art practice
Pitch and realize my project “The Scaffold”
So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Sep 2022.
Last Ride of 2021. Not so many new releases this month. But still a good list. Try it out. Play in shuffle mode to improve the surprise experience. Enjoy and happy new year!
I did not realize it’s already three months since the previous edition of Delicacies. On this December 2021 solstice, here is some fresh harvest. Also some new or fine-tuned categories. As usual, an incoherent, irregular, unpredictable collection of interesting sparks. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Hope you like it. Happy holidays. Enjoy!
If you can’t get enough of these and want more, you can hang on to the firehose, the extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. Also in this edition with loads of videos. Subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan
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.
Petervan Studios 