For those interested, here is an overview of what happened in the last couple of months, some new insights, and some updated plans. I often hesitate to publish these snapshot-updates, because 1) they are snapshots only and don’t connect you with the day-by-day journey, 2) plans change over time, and 3) I always wonder who would be interested in this at all. Maybe it’s a way to give some counterweight to some form of imposter behavior.

The Artschool Project

Compared to the previous period, my production of paintings was relatively low. I continued my birds-project, and painted/sketched probably hundreds of birds, in small and big format. I internalized the shape of the bird in a way that it almost becomes a calligraphic artifact

Petervan Artwork © 2019 - Birds - Acryl on Canvas - about 40x60cm

Petervan Artwork © 2019 - Birds - Acryl on Canvas - 120x100cm

Petervan Artwork © 2019 - Birds - Marker on Post-It - 7,5x7,5cm

Next is to make a big work of 720 calligraphic birds, on a grid of 24×30 boxes of 5x5cm

And just came across this video

https://vimeo.com/349507946

With this great still of what else I could do with birds:

Other paintings and sketches include “Fox-on-the-Run”, “Doorway”, “Interior”, and “No Title”, all Acryl on Canvas – Format 50x50cm

The academy year ended in June, and for the 4^th year students, this meant showcasing your work to an external jury. I got some juicy comments but passed.

The last year, I also followed the course “Art and Culture” by Fiorella Stinders, whose enthusiasm is contagious. I will make a separate post on this, but suffice to say here that we had to apply what we learned about seeing and understanding art to 3 pieces of art: two selected by the teacher (I picked Ali’s Boat below), and one self-selected artwork that you had seen in real life.

Artschool will start again on Sep 2019, and I will start my 5^th year painting. This year, I will combine it with Digital Visual Arts. They call it a “cross-over”.

Time Capsules Project

The Time Capsules Project (see my previous update) is a bit on hold. We (my cousin and I) had some good interview with possible candidates. We got a very interesting intro to an art collector living in a castle in the Austrian Alps.

We have a draft proposal ready, but we first want to have at least a prototype of our Beyoncé project, before further engaging with this Austrian patron.

Delicacies

I decided to change the format of Delicacies somewhat. Instead of the weekly deluge, I see an irregular, unpredictable, incoherent, unfocused set of mind-sparks that got me thinking. I gather them as I go, and once every month (maybe every two, three months), I condense the harvest in maximum 5-10 Delicacies. Also a bit back to the joy of discovery and awe, away from the pressure to pump out a too bulky newsletter every week. Hope you find the same joy in reading as I did in discovering.

Check-out the new format here.

Blogs

Blog rhythm was slow. That’s an understatement. However, I queued up a huge list of reflections. I will try to post them in short blogs, 1-2 per month.

Mixes

More playing. This time playing around with DJ Pro for Mac. I finally discovered how to mix audio and video. With hindsight, I could as well have done this in iMovie or Adobe Premiere, without the luxury of tempo-synching.

Petervan Mix of Robyn and Lil' Louis

I am considering the idea of sharing on a regular basis some of my mixes. The working title for this project is “Petervan’s Rides”.

Visual Collisions

For a client project, I started collecting a number of “visual collisions”. Most of these are videos, a minority are pictures. These visual collisions are intended to de-frame an audience before introducing something new.

Currently, the list includes almost 200 video snippets. Here is an example snippet:

Books

I have been reading quite a lot. Some books on design such as “Design Unbound Volume 1 & 2”, and “Speculative Everything”.

I also liked a lot David Weinberger’s “Everyday Chaos”, James Bridle’s “New Dark Age”, Paul Mason’s “Clear Bright Future”, and the fantastic memoirs of Marina Abramovic “Walk Through Walls”.

The absolute #1 recommendation is Ian Cheng’s “Emissary’s Guide to Worlding”. The quote that drove me crazy was:

“A World is a future you can believe in: One that promises to survive its creator, and continue generating drama.”

You can find a link to all the books I am reading in my Goodreads.

Exhibitions

I visited some art exhibitions: The SMAK Anniversary in Ghent (still running till end Sep 2019, and Wim Delvoye in Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels (just closed end of July 2019)

Wim Delvoye - Embossed Maserati
Royal Museums of Fine Arts, Brussels

Korakrit Arunanondchai Letters to Chantri #1 - SMAK Ghent
2014 video and digital projection (colour, sound), mixed media

My own exhibition

Since I started academy some years ago, I produced something like 500 drawings, paintings, sketches, soundscapes, and video experiments. Many of you have asked whether I even thought of setting up an exhibition of my own work. Well, guess what? That’s exactly what is going to happen begin June 2020 (exact dates to be announced). The challenge will be to make a selection of what to showcase. I have secured a wonderful location somewhere deep into the Flemish Ardennes.

Outdoors

Great summer so far, with a couple of solid heat waves. Getting a nice tan, as maintaining the garden and biking keep me busy. I have about 150 meters of hedges (x2 both sides), so by the time you get to the end, you can start again ;-)? And biking tours are semi-regular small distances (20-40 km) at a very-very low speed.

Astrid ignoring Flying Arrow Warning in Tillegembos - Brugge

Tour De France - Belgian Surrealistic Chocolate Advertisement

The Tour de France 2019 was also close by. A romantic impression of the passage in East-Flanders.

Freelance

Begin 2019, I started doing some freelance gigs.

• I do some work for Futurist Gerd Leonhard. Mainly some research, blogging and podcasting. See also my announcement here. In June, we did a gig together in Bucharest, where I acted as Gerd’s assistant for interacting with the audience.

If you look carefully, you see me somewhere in the back. Good to see some friends there as well (shout out to Ioana and Innes!).

• Some event content curation: some clients ask me to help them with selecting speakers and content for their events
• I am also involved in a special project for a client, who asked me help creating a truly immersive leadership offsite, think of an Innotribe@Sibos 2016, but then created as a private high-touch retreat/offsite. The client allows me to go deep, to take the time needed to let structure and concepts emerge, like a piece of fruit needs time to mature into something well-developed and juicy. I am starting to label this sort of work “Artistic interventions, interruptions, and provocations”.

All the above helped me getting sharper on what I really want.

Reflections

Retirement is coming closer. If all goes well, I will retire on 1 May 2020. What will I do with all that free time? I wrote about “The Perfect Day” in my post “Freed from Desire”

But Ursula K Le Quin challenged me in her book “No Time to Spare”

“Life out of the rat race, but still in the comfort zone, can give the chance to be in the moment, and bring real peace of mind.”

It feels I already made the great switch in 2018 when I left corporate life and started doing the things I really love doing in and with my life, following what inspires me: art and reflection. You can already witness the shift in the articles I queued up for Delicacies. With that background, a good summary of what I do could be:

I create artistic interventions, interruptions, and provocations that lead to higher states of alertness and aliveness. Formats can be analog and digital artwork, installations, performances, writings, poems, soundscapes, recordings, and time capsules.

Petervan Studios

This strange mix of formats – or “containers” as Ian Cheng calls them in “Emissary’s…”  results in different practices or studios (plural). That’s why I am starting to brand my collective work as “Petervan Studios”. I switch from the easel to the audio mixing panel, to digital drawing panels, Adobe Premiere, iMovie, Ableton Live and Ableton Push. I now also installed an architect drawing table and chair (found them for FREE on a second hand website), additional lavalier microphones for better audio quality in videos, and some extra tripods for stable imagery.

Looking at the mess, it’s time I commission some studio renovation works: it will include some fresh paint, some better lightning, a huge whiteboard for brainstorming, a quality projection screen, and a shower.

Petervan Studios - The place starts looking very messy now

I also discovered an interesting piece of software called “Descript”, a tool for automated transcripts, and simultaneous editing of text, audio, and video: amazing.

So, what’s next?

The plan for Aug – Oct 2019 is to work on:

• Finalize and deliver the immersive Leadership Off-site
• Doing some more cool stuff with Gerd
• Paint, Paint, Paint
• Private community test V1 of “Time Capsules”
• Studio renovation
• Take some time off in November

So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Oct-Nov 2019.

Warmest,