Travelling without Moving (TWM) is a series of essays documenting my mental and philosophical journey in 2020-2021.
The name came from an Arpeggiator Sound in Logic Pro that I was using in freewheeling a soundscape. It’s also a song by Jamiroquai from 1996
I felt the name fitted quite well with the troublesome year 2020 where – at least in Flanders – we already had two lockdowns and other less strict conditions throughout the year, basically discouraging contacts and travelling. But in my mind, I was still travelling, without physically moving.
The idea for TWM was triggered by an invitation from Jennifer Sertl who started StudioA3R, a weekly podcast dedicated to helping leaders navigate complexting by strengthening resilience, responsiveness and reflection.
Jennifer’s podcasts are organised around four questions:
Where have you been?
What have you learned?
Where are you going?
What’s required?
In other words, documenting the journey, the voyage one makes. One can answer those questions from different perspectives:
Location: where have you physically been? Flanders, Italy, etc.
Activity: what have you done? Tasks, Deliverables, Products, etc.
Mentally: what were your ups and downs, etc.
Philosophically: from Plato to Kant to Kierkegaard to Sloterdijk, etc.
But there is also a way to answer these questions looking at where your mind has been. What have I learned? Where is my mind going, what is required? What steppingstones did I step on? Is there any coherence in all this?
That’s the plan/ambition with these TWM essays: to share where I have been, what I learned, where I am going, and what is required. And hopefully also offer some inspiration to my readers, and – who knows? – find some co-travelers along the way.
Each essay will start from a keyword. Each keyword hides a story. Some stories are inspired by an event (something that happened), others by something I read or experienced. Sometimes it was a happenstance framing of the camera.
Traveling Without Moving (TMW) is also somewhat related to Studio Oxygen (SOX) and Pirate TV (PTV). Some essays will be published in sync with the launch of new episodes of SOX and PTV. And for booklovers: there will be plenty of references to interesting books 😉
Every essay will have a link back to this overview/intro post, so that you can navigate your own way back into the voyage.
Petervan memories from the 70ies – First artistic performances
It’s almost one year (!) since my previous Dec 2019 update. And what a year it was/still is! I basically stayed home for the whole period and had zero travel since Oct 2019.
I am publishing this on the day Belgium is entering its second Covid-19 lockdown. A forced pause-marathon starting on my 63th birthday on 1 Nov till at least mid-Dec 2020. But I am afraid the effort will have to run until deep into 2021 and I am preparing for it as an “interval of possibility”.
An interval of possibility is a temporal framing to see better what is and what can emerge. There is indeed still so much to read, to learn, to experiment, to play with. So many contexts to be architected. So many interesting people to (re)connect with (at least virtually). So much opportunity for spiritual, moral, and aesthetical advancement! Expect me to be quite generative in the coming weeks and months.
The Artschool Project
The Artschool academy year started again in Sep 2020, and I subscribed for a two-year curriculum labeled “specialization”.
“Professionalization” is probably a better title for what it is: a focus on getting the (art)work done, commitment, and ambition. We’ll learn to discover our own visual language starting from our personal frames and themes with the ambition to develop our own artistic maturity and identity. This is about personal reflection, self- and group-critique, evaluation, and research. About creative identity and creative disposition. And about how to create a portfolio, develop contacts with galleries, presenting your own work, setting up your own expo, etc.
From an artistic medium point of view, my main focus will remain painting on canvas, but I will keep experimenting with other (mainly digital) media.
I shared most of my recent work via my Facebook page, or on this blog under the heading “Sine Parole”. I also started selecting more straightforward subjects, such as vases, landscapes, cows, fruit, and everyday objects. In many cases the obvious and what is in front of you is interesting enough. Here is an example of some apples from our mini orchard:
I have something with cows (pun intended). I met many during my summer bike tours. It feels it is going to become yet another a thematic series, like the prison windows, or the birds, or the boxers.
Petervan Artworks @ 2020 – Cow Project – Digital Try-out
Petervan Artworks @ 2020 – Cow Project – Sketch of the Intervals of Possibility
One option is to create a cow-sign-language and typography, or maybe see how I can get them generated through in-the-cloud AI neural networks.
Via Mario Klingeman (@quasimodo) -AI generated shapes
Exhibitions
Last year, I visited some art exhibitions, including:
There is no Planet B – S.M.A.K., Ghent, Dec 2019
Inge Decuypere – Ronse, Feb 2020
Dali-Magritte – Museum Fine Arts, Brussels, Feb 2020
Love-Hate – ING Gallery, Brussels, Feb 2020
Keith Haring – BOZAR, Brussels, Feb 2020
Van Eyck – Museum Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Feb 2020
Stephan VanFleteren – FOMU, Antwerp, July 2020
Writing Beyong – Axel Vervoordt, Wijnegem, July 2020
Dechamps, Panamarenko and Co – Deweer Gallery, Zwevegem, Oct 2020
There were many more, but due to Covid-19, many musea were closed or had restrictions.
Stephan VanFleteren – FOMU, Antwerp, July 2020
My own exhibition
I ran my first solo (100% virtual) exhibition during summer. Some unexpected fans actually bought some of my works. Thank you: this is very encouraging. For those who don’t know: I also do commissioned work. If interested – in buying or commissions – please send me a private message.
We had a great summer in Flanders. Since the start of the first lockdown on 13 March 2020 we had good to excellent weather till mid-September 2020. Plenty of opportunity for being outdoors, with the occasional bike tour or walk.
Freelance
Covid-19 is not kind to freelancers, especially if you target what some people call the “event industry”. With the exception of a small gig in 2020, I basically got no work since October 2019. Contact me in private if you’d like to hire me for “interesting” work.
BANI
Already in 2018, Jamais Cascio coined the term BANI. See my post from Aug 2019 and Jamais’ update from April 2020. As mentioned before, I am working with some partners on a virtual multimedia workshop based on this framework, with a specific focus on possible responses. We have an amazing cast on-board, and it looks that we’ll be able to make some announcements soon.
Design Unbound
I am blown away and intrigued by the insights in Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World. This is about having agency in a world that is constantly shifting under you. It is so refreshing after all those business-, management-, leadership-, and self-help-books. It has become a healthy addiction: I am basically reading and re-reading and deeply internalizing everything that Ann Pendleton has written in the last couple of years.
We are building a team to design and deliver a corporate curriculum on this topic. Stay tuned on the “we” and the “curriculum”.
I got the chance to do a commission for a client on this concept and we – the client, the team, myself – learned a lot on what works and what not.
There are now two Pirate TV channels in the pipeline: one more business focused and one more “artsy”.
New toys
For Pirate TV, I wanted to become more fluent in video and sound creation. As there was nothing else to do due to Covid-19, I followed some online courses on Ableton Live, Final Cut Pro, and Logic Pro X.
These are such rich software environments. Also, their user interfaces make me think differently: thinking in layers, connections, patterns, and harmonies.
Studio Oxygen project
An idea that has been hanging around since 2018, actually.
People are exhausted. Tired of online meetings. Tired of being locked up in their houses. Tired of all the negative news. People crave for oxygen. People crave for small safe groups where they can share, critique, ideate, play.
With a small on-line collective, we plan to come together regularly online to have slow-paced conversations on a topic/seed that I plant. The seed can be the chapter of a book, an object, a poem, a job well done, or a failing forward.
With a no-frills focus on quality content, we hope these sparks of inspiration will give you “oxygen for the mind”.
Also don’t forget Robert Poynton’s “Do Pause”. Together with Josie Gibson we made 8 podcast episodes, one for each chapter in this book. The last episode is here.
Petervan Rides
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).
Petervan Rides on Spotify
So, what’s next?
I will officially retire from corporate life as from 1 Dec 2020. Not that I plan to stay idle, on the contrary. Within limits, I will stay available for interesting freelance work – I call it “paid play” – and plan to stay very focused on my artwork.
The plan for the coming months is to work/play on (random order):
“Interesting” freelance work
Artwork
Studio Oxygen
Traveling Without Moving
Pickup Time Capsules again
So, that’s it for this edition. If there is something worth reporting, next update is for Apr 2021.
Musical harvest October 2020 > most are new releases > shorter as usual as not so many interesting releases > more fun when played in shuffle mode > more surprise > enjoy
If you can’t get enough of these and want more than 5 articles, 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
This is episode-8 of the calm conversation with Josie Gibson from The Catalyst Network, inspired by Robert Poynton’s book “Pause – You are not a To-Do list“. The approach is simple: we both read a chapter of the book and highlight three sentences, and mark the words that resonate most. These sentences and words are the triggers for a very slow-paced conversation on whatever comes our way. No tricks, no gimmicks, just a gentle and calm wandering and meandering of minds. As this chapter is the “Afterwords” section of the book, this is also the last episode in the Robert Poynton series. Maybe other calm conversations follow. Who knows?
Here are Josie’s three sentences:
What I couldn’t anticipate were the unplanned pauses that would occur along the way
If anything, rather than delay things, the time-out accelerated them.
Too much pause and nothing gets done.
And here are my three sentences:
Rehearse ideas with different people
Carlo Rovelli’s book, The Order of Time
That long gestation period meant that once I started I was able to get going quickly
Petervan Studios 