Je lessen waren voor mij altijd genieten. Je spreekt in poëtische en filosofische woorden en zinnen. Ik heb ze allemaal opgeschreven en ooit publiceer ik een bloemlezing van ze. Chris en Inge hebben me aangeraden om ze te gebruiken als inspiraties voor mijn schilderwerk.
Hier zijn een paar voorbeelden van zinnen en statements die zo uit je mond vloeien:
Last year I had the pleasure of attending the Art and Culture classes at the Academy of Visual Arts in Ghent. The teacher is Fiorella Stinders, who conveys her enthusiasm for art to us in a very poetic way.
At the end of the academic year, we were given an assignment: applying what we had learned about looking at art. We were allowed to choose two works from an imposed list by Fiorella, and a third work that we had chosen ourselves, but that we had seen in real life (not in a catalog or photo).
I am happy to share my contribution in this post. First in Dutch, and then as a separate post in English (a translation by Google Translate, with only minor edits).
A separate blog post follows with a number of the poetic statements of Fiorella that have stayed with me. My coaches at the academy (Chris, Inge, Koen, Annick, many thanks btw!) have suggested that I use these quotes as inspiration for the next academic year.
Two selected works from the Fiorella list
Four Fairies – Michael Borremans
A painting – oil on canvas – in a fairly large format (110x150cm). Striking is the large diagonal table oil stain in which the figures seem to be sinking. The void left at the bottom was intentionally left open by the artist. The brown-grey background works as a support surface.
We look from the top down. The colors of the figures are rather neutral, in the sense of not being dominant. There is a surreal peace from the work. The painter uses Claire-obscure effects, especially the shadows against the wall in the background. The mirroring of the hands on the black surface is subtly suggested. It is also the reflection that evokes the black oil effect. The vertical drop of paint has been deliberately retained and accentuates the verticality of a table or of a bath in a stone or concrete base.
There is a depth in the work; the composition is more central horizontally, but vertical light above the center. A diagonal from bottom left to top right.
The work has a certain lightness in color but a certain darkness in the subject. The brush strokes are fast, rhythmic. Shadows and light spots are suggested in a “simple” way: look at the light spot on the black pull of the woman at the very back.
The work is clearly figurative, but not photo-realistic. Depth and light are indicated. When I zoom in on the photo in deep close-up, the self-confident brush strokes of the artist become clear: the light reflections in the hairstyles, the patterns on the green dress, the light-darkness of the left. An inspiration for my own evolution towards the next year painting at the academy.
In some figures I sometimes recognize the silhouette of the artist’s skull, wondering if he has tried to suggest a self-portrait of four schizophrenic transgender identities. The figures are busy with something – something with their hands – but it is not exactly clear what they are doing.
From the work alone I cannot determine whether the artist wants to communicate a message. For me, it evokes themes of devotion, dignity, humility, and also ignoring a dark reality peeking around the corner. It seems like a report or a snapshot of a surreal dream.
The role of the spectator is passively looking; there is no participation as in a performance for example. The viewer views the work from the front. There is no 3D aspect as with a spatial work.
Video animation of +/- 6:30 minutes. Used material: charcoal and pencil (I think) on paper. Further information searched on the artist’s website. http://sadik.nl/ali-boat
The video is part of a larger set of videos, sketches, drawings, etc. Inspiring in itself on how the theme of the boat/letter is worked out and internalized in almost infinite variations and can give rise to a total exhibition: nothing has to be thrown away!
The perception of the video is, of course, different from that of a 2D image, as this also includes the aspect of time and storytelling. Rhythm becomes important. Music is supportive and determines the atmosphere.
The atmosphere of the video is rather dark, sad, and melancholic. The “light” of the video is grey. A lot of things move and flow at the same time: the face, the background, the boat that transforms into a bird and back. The tears and the rain. With the eye as a permanent anchor in the composition.
The meaning of this video animation has to do with fleeing and immigrating. The paradox of escaping the misery, while at the same time detaching the identity of your youth and the oddity of the new destiny. The universal desire for happiness, peace and security. The desire and awareness of travel – such as being on the road – for a better future. The image as an expression of this desire where words fall short.
The artist invites us to judge rather than condemn the alien “problem” from a more empathic point of view.
The artist makes a clear link to his own identity and immigration past.
The spectator is invited to participate and reflect emotionally.
Title: Dunlop Geomax 100/90)19 57M 720° 2X – Made in 2013
Based on the catalog, this work is apparently made from polished and patinated stainless steel, made from 3D prints. And then painted and chromed. When viewing the work in real life I did not know this, and I really thought that the artist had somehow twisted together existing wheels with rubber tires. The intended illusion was already successful.
I have viewed the work as part of the larger Delvoye exhibition, giving the work more context. I was enchanted and fascinated by the twisted crucifixes and truck cathedrals. On another side of the room, there were large truck tires carved out like lattice. The lighting of the whole was precise: the dark backgrounds and bases, and the laser-sharp lighting of the subjects themselves.
As in a claire-obscure painting, the artist plays with contrasting dark (matte) and light (shiny) chrome surfaces and shows he is a master in the intertwining of torsion and movement. This work – and the retrospective exhibition as a whole – provided a broader view of the work and the identity of the artist. Suddenly the provocateur of the tattooed pigs and the cloaca turns into an accomplished craftsman, artist, messenger, and questioner.
I suspect the artist is trying to make us doubt between real and unreal. It is probably not the intention of the artist, but he allows me to make the link with our online world where it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish real from unreal (example: fake news), or to sustain the illusion of control of personal freedom and choice in a world that is increasingly driven by artificial intelligence and algorithms. The human “androrhythms” – evoked by the artist – are a relief because they move away from the binary “if-then” computer logic.
This speculative and virtual connection with the world can be perfectly linked to a physical relationship and connection: a relationship bent and twisted time and space.
The spectator is invited to step around the work and to investigate and explore the interweaving of spokes and tires from both close and remote.
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.
And instead of cut-and-pasting from the Revue Newsletter, I just include a link to it. Interested readers can subscribe directly to the Revue Newsletter.
Petervan’s Delicacies are back! After a couple of months of relative rest, I have started again my weekly curation of content that resonated at a higher quality level. In this come-back edition, also some older posts of the last couple of months that for some reason stayed alive in my memory.
This is edition-118 of Delicacies on my blog post. As usual, max 5 articles that I found interesting and worth re-reading. Handpicked, no robots. Minimalism in curation. Enjoy!
If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, I have created an extended version of Petervan’s Delicacies in REVUE. If you want more than 5 links, you can subscribe here: https://www.getrevue.co/profile/petervan
There is a new 9 minute video profile about David Lynch. The text that goes with it is beautiful. I just made a transcript out of it. Enjoy.
Cinema is a language
It can say things
Big abstract things
And I love that about it
Some people are poets
And have a beautiful way of saying things with words
But cinema is its own language
And so you can express a feeling and a thought
That can’t be conveyed any other way
It’s a magical medium
For me it is so beautiful
To think about these pictures and sounds
Flowing together in time and in sequence
Making something
That can be done only through cinema
It’s so magical
I don’t know why
To go into a theater
And have the lights go down
It’s very quiet
And then the curtain starts to open
And you go into a world
Although the frames of a film are always the same
The same number in the same sequence and with the same sounds
Every screening is different
There is a circle
That goes from the audience to the film and back
Each person is looking and thinking
And feeling and coming up with their own sense of things
I like a story that holds abstractions
And that’s what cinema can do
I was a painter
I painted and went to art school
I had no interest in film
One day I was sitting in a big studio room
And I had a painting going
Which was of a garden at night
It had a lot of black with green plants
Emerging out of the darkness
All of a sudden these plants started to move
And I heard a wind
And I thought “Oh, how fantastic this is”
And I began to wonder
If film could be a way to make paintings move
An idea is a thought
It’s a thought that holds more
Than you think it does when you receive it
But in that first moment there is a spark
Desire for an idea is like bait
You bait your hook and then you wait
The desire is the bait
That pulls those fish in
Those ideas
Little fish swim on the surface
But the big ones swim down below
If you can expand the container you are fishing in
Your consciousness
You can catch bigger fish
When I started meditating
I was filled with anxieties and fears
I felt a sense of depression and anger
Anger and depression and sorrow
Are beautiful things in a story
But they are like poison
To the film maker or artist
You must have clarity to create
You have to be able to catch ideas
Life is filled with abstractions
And the only way me make heads or tails of it
Is through intuition
Intuition is seeing the solution
It’s emotion and intellect going together
Personally, I think intuition can be sharpened
And expanded through meditation
Diving into the self
There is an ocean of consciousness
Inside each of us
And it is an ocean of solutions
When you dive into that ocean
That consciousness
You enliven it
It grows
And the final outcome of this growth of consciousness
Is called enlightenment
Which is the full potential for us all
There are many many dark things
Flowing around in this world now
And most films reflect the world in which we live
In stories, in the worlds that we go into
There is suffering, confusion, darkness, tension, and anger
But the filmmaker does not have to be suffering
To show suffering
Negativity is like darkness
You turn on the light and darkness goes
We’re like light bulbs
If bliss starts growing inside you
It’s like a light
You enjoy that light inside
And if you ramp it up brighter and brighter
You enjoy more and more of it
And that light will extend farther and farther
Maybe enlightenment is far away
But it is said that
If you walk toward the light
With every step things get brighter
Every day for me gets better and better
And I believe that enlivening unity in the world
Will bring peace on earth
So I say “Peace to all of you”
UPDATE: most quotes in the video are taken directly from his book “Catching The Big Fish”. I started re-reading the book after having seen/listened to this video.
This is an essay (longer read) about maps. There is no big message, no purpose, no call for action, none of that. Just recording and documenting of some reflections about maps. I don’t know where it came from. Suddenly I had enough notes to try to make something coherent out of it. Hope you enjoy the trip.
Modern Biking App Map – Notice point #27 – Denderbelle Lock
The theme of maps maybe emerged from my biking tours. Or from my recent tendency to do recordings: soundscapes – of probably better “silence-scapes” – of broken silence in nature. A sort of witnessing and documenting what was at that moment.
Maybe it emerged in preparing my upcoming performance for Finnovista in September: one of the themes is “learning” and I found that quality of observing says more about learning than teaching. So I used maps as a metaphor.
Simon Wardley - example of situational awareness map
Position on a map is often about geographical location and relations. But there is also the position in time: what was, what is, what can be. And like there is position of location, there is also position in time.
The time element hit me when I was bicycling along the river “Dender” and made a pit stop at the lock of Denderbelle. It’s a relatively small lock, and you can still walk over the doors of the lock to the other side of the river.
There I found this map on a tourism panel:
Old map of the area Aalst-Dendermonde – before 1769
Before 1769, the Dender was a meandering river that was very difficult to manoeuvre for ships. It was Charles de Lorraine – at that time Duchy of Brabant, Austrian Netherlands – who gave the order to straighten the meanders and build two new locks. Today, the river feels more like a canal that goes almost straight from Aalst to Dendermonde. It has a very well maintained towpath along silent borders, which makes it a nice bike trip.
Close to the lock, there is still the old ferry house, now inhabited by an artist. There was a chain pulling the ferry from one side to the other. Even today you can still see the stairs on the shore where people boarded.
Map of Days by Grayson Perry – 2013 – Etching 111.8 × 149.9 cm
Video with the artist Grayson Perry
‘A self-portrait as a fortified town, the wall perhaps my skin. Each day I worked on it I finished by marking the point with the date to highlight the passage of time in the production of art to reflect the forming and reforming of one’s identity. The ‘self’ I think is not a single fixed thing but a lifelong shifting performance. My sense of self is a tiny man kicking a can down the road.’
Grayson Perry
The map is an awesome alternative way to document one’s life. Richard Martin arguments that the question “what is your map” probably gives better answers on who you are than asking “What do you do?” or asking for your linear CV or portfolio:
“In the Map, Perry presents his complex personality and plural identity in the form of a walled city. Streets, buildings and other locales represent personal traits and behaviours, indicating a self-exploration that embraces both the positive and the negative, that poses questions, as well as providing answers, binding together truth and fiction. At the centre of Perry’s map is a labyrinthine garden, in which a figure walks, off-centre, pursuing ‘a sense of self’. Each time I look at the Map, either in a gallery or online, I question how my own version would differ from Perry’s. What words would I choose? What images?”
The same applies with the question “where do you come from?”. Should one say “a Chinese artist” or “an artist from China”? If you say “a Chinese artist” then you place the work of the artist in an ethnographic bubble, a cultural bubble. But when you talk about an artist coming from somewhere, you just connect the artist with a geographical starting point. I prefer the latter.
Map of Total Art by Qiu Zhijie – Ink on Paper – c. 5m length!
The work of Qiu Zhijie is fascinating. Check out this video interview with him and curator Davide Quadrio about the exposition ‘Qiu Zhijie: Journeys without Arrivals’ that was shown from 1 april – 24 september 2017 in the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven.
One year later, this video still resonates with me, so I made a full transcript of it, some extracts below:
Qiu Zhije is an artist, and he is producer, teacher, student, curator. He is a Master with capital “M” in Calligraphy. He is one of the most respected calligraphers in China.
As from 2010, I started drawing maps. If somebody asks me who I am, I answer I am a cartographer. Drawing maps is close to art, organizing exhibitions, teaching and researching. It is also writing. I feel it is a very multi-faceted way to show my talents as calligrapher.
For me, maps are a source of knowledge at arms’ length distance, knowledge you do not acquire on the field, but from the sky, like a bird’s eye perspective. Then you can move that knowledge on a flat surface, to understand the correlations between what belongs together. Things should not be understood individually, but in the context of their relation to each other. So maps have a lot of influence. Making maps is a way to re-establish the integrity of the world because they illustrate the correlations on how everything relates to each other.
Teaching has always been an important part of my life. By teaching I keep learning. I continue to actualize and renew myself. Although teaching takes a lot of time, it is never a loss of time. On the contrary, it allows me to learn. That’s why I define teachers as those who organize the process of learning”. I like to teach about things I don’t know much about. I like subjects that I am highly interested in, so we can dig deep to know more.
His work is extremely free of themes, but also so encyclopedic. And so easy to connect with the idea of museum as a collection of objects and things. At the same time, his work is also able to crush this idea of objects and really enter into a world of fantasy.
Maps are models. Maps mark the land, they are landmarks. They document the “land-scape”, as a sound-scape documents the sounds.
Phantom Islands – By Andrew Pekler – online experience, turn sound “on”
Andrew Pekler explains:
“The sweet spot for me is when a piece I have made can be simultaneously heard as both a field recording and as a completely composed, synthetic construct,”
Making maps is a sort of learning, a form of in-the-field-research and observation. Sharing with others what I am seeing, give context, some sense of coherence of position and direction/movement, and with some suggestions for maneuvering.
But in my case it is making pictures, writing and composing and creating a body of work from each trip. Field recordings, sound- and image-scapes like maps, at times creating a bizarre alienating, almost David Lynch kind of atmosphere, trying to resonate at another and additional level than the pure cognitive.
In that sense, I feel my current (art)work is getting closer to my real self, helps me to untether my soul, act as a witness, getting closer to alertness. With crispness, organic textures, precise rhythms,…
Natures Heartbeat – Online animation of earth’s heartbeat
In that sense, I am still doing the same as during my time as event curator. But the work is becoming more a documentary, a map, a set of interventions, interruptions and provocations that hopefully lead to higher states of alertness and aliveness.
Some kind of heartbeat that maps your open mind, heart, and will into a broader context.
PS: Mark Storm suggested I add the Buckminster Füller Dymaxion Map. He is right! How could I – as a true Bucky fan – have missed this one? 😉
I am looking for some advice for an upcoming performance. I would like to feed the live stream of an iPhone6/GoPro/Drone to my Mac that is connected to the professional PA system of a conference center. Ideally wireless, aka my iPhone/GoPro/Drone etc. should not be wired to my Mac or another PA system. All indoors.
The person holding/operating the iPhone/GoPro/Drone (most likely myself) would walk around on stage and/or in the audience around a number of props and the video images should be fed in real-time to the main conference screen, ideally overlapping an existing PowerPoint/Keynote presentation. Audio from the video feed is not important/relevant. The audio soundscape comes from different software on my Mac.
Petervan Studios 