The camera— that profoundly liberal invention— whispers:
I’m ready for anything. Give me chemicals, give me a little light, give me time and no shaking, and I will be done.
A pocket-sized Enlightenment, believing every world is reachable, every surface printable, every body open to possibility.
And now generative machines produce punctum— yes, Barthes’ punctum— the involuntary meaning that slips through the cracks of intention. Not planned by the author, nor by the algorithm, but arriving later, after you’ve slept on it, after the dopamine subsides. Fast food for intellectual minds, rewarding at first bite, quickly stale. You return in the morning and mutter: It was not that great after all.
Style appears. Style overload. Those who lack craft run toward it— high, abstract, fast— while you work the old way, learning the hand, the long path, refusing to choose sides.
Spend time with it— real duration— and you’ll see how expensive time has become. Only unproductive duration is free. Yet we abandoned that when we entered the cinema, trading mobility for the promise of instant return. No one waits for tomorrow in a theater. In a museum, though— time’s ticking clock can’t be heard. There we look forward to looking back.
And somewhere in this, the black box— practical, yes, but also a symptom of our incapacity to coexist. The dark room becomes a social problem, a refusal of interference, a denial of shared space.
Everything becomes a question of time, of how little we have left, of how duration is mined like ore.
Growing old treated as disease, dementia as enemy, while software dreams of pure disembodiment— young, innocent, clean.
And yet— beneath all this— you remind us: we are bifocal, split, never individuals. We are believers, especially visually.
The camera says: I’m ready for anything.
But the eye says: I am not a camera.
And the brain says: I choose no side.
And the forest says: Take your time.
And the weak image whispers from the periphery: Here is the non-event— stay long enough, and you may hear it breathe.
I first edited the full transcript from the presentation, and then OCR scanned text ‘The Time Spent” from the BIRDSONG book. Then I made a personal selection of the sentences that resonated with me. Then I gave that to ChatGPT and asked it to condense all this into a 1000-word poem, then 500 words, then 100 words. Then again, I made a personal selection of the best GPT snippets. And further edited them to my personal (un)taste.
Sometimes, the silence of the sacred and the touch of chance awaken something deep within.
This is what happened to me when I once again found myself confused by beauty, when visiting the Stefan Vanfleteren exhibition “Transcripts of a Sea” in the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent.
“In 2020, photographer Stephan Vanfleteren embarked on a challenging project that culminates in the exhibition Stephan Vanfleteren. Transcripts of a Sea at the MSK Ghent, during autumn and winter 2025. The exhibition is the conclusion of a long quest, not only into the depths of a body of water, but also into the essence of artistry – Vanfleteren’s answer to what complete artistic freedom can mean.”
You can find good-quality pictures on Stefan Vanfleteren’s website. That page also includes some paragraphs about Vanfleteren’s practice and his approach to this project. But the experience in the museum is way superior.
First, there is the silence. When you close the door between the entrance hall and the exhibition space, the noise of the city is cancelled, and it feels like you are entering a sacred space. The silence also slows you down. Your steps are more measured, respectful. Your breathing adapts.
Second, there are the artworks. Huge, super high-quality photographs of the North Sea. Most black and white. They radiate the same sacredness as the paintings of Gerhard Richter. They incentivize introspection. The artworks are positioned in conversation with actual sea paintings of famous painters. The difference between painting and photography blurs completely.
I begin to wonder, leaning in to scan some of the photographs up close. It feels as if I’m standing in the sea. It’s something I have done before, with paintings, sculptures, and bodies. This close-by scanning is a different eye-set that adds a new aspect to my artistic practice. Here is a “scan” of one of the paintings…
Third, there are the information panels—their texts are as beautiful and inspiring as the paintings themselves.
Here is an example of the panel poetry:
“The North Sea is not azure blue, but rather a medley of grey, green, and brown hues, shifting with the mood of the weather. Through those muted, muddied, and sullied reflections, the white foam crashes in the surf – boiling with fury or dripping with desire between land and water. Even the tallest wave eventually lands flat on its stomach. The surf as a postscript of a long journey.“
“At first, I sought to capture the sea as faithfully as possible. But gradually, I realized it could never be truly reproduced. It is precisely the art of letting go that has led to fascinating and challenging results. Chance, failure, and experiment became ever more important. embraced the unexpected quirks of my camera: motion blur, miscalculations in focus distance, and unforeseen colour casts.“
“The absolute freedom found in a confused autofocus, incorrect exposure, or unintended framing became a blessing. And I allowed the scratches, mist, droplets, and salt stains on the camera’s protective glass to remain, trusting in the unexpected. In fact, I chased my own delightful failure.“
I am reminded by this Gerhard Richter quote:
When I walk out, I am overwhelmed by the sheer effort and attention to detail it took the artist to land an exhibition like this. Just watch the logbooks at the end of the expo.
Picture by author
There is also a film screening of “The Tide Will Bring You Home” by Basile Rabaey, who followed Vanfleteren during his five-year sea expedition. But the small film Black Box was too crowded to make this a joyful experience. So, I skipped that, hoping the film will appear sooner or later on the Internet.
Basile Rabaey
A tapestry of slowness, silence, and chance. “Transcripts of a Sea” runs till 4 January 2026 at the MSK in Ghent.
I went to the premiere exhibition of David Claerbout’s The Woodcarver and the Forest at the Castle of Gaasbeek. I went by bike, for me, a two-hour ride each way, on a warm sunny day through the Pajottenland, the region southwest of Brussels where I spent the first 25 years of my life. Cycling up and down its rolling hills stirred deep emotions and memories of my youth. This is the land of Bruegel, of Geuze and Lambic beer, of Remco Evenepoel. It is also, unmistakably, my land.
Before arriving at the castle, visitors walk about 15 minutes from the entrance through a carefully tended, forest-like domain. The path itself already feels like part of the experience, drawing you gradually into a slower, quieter, almost meditative state.
A top-level garden modelled on castle gardens from the 18th and 19th centuries. A strong example of living cultural heritage. Take a stroll through this magnificent Garden of Eden, with the old-model fruit repository, the beehives, and a wonderful view of Gaasbeek Castle and the Pajottenland.
I lingered in the garden for some time, sitting on a bench and gazing at another bench across the way, the two connected by a loofgang—a leafy tunnel formed by pear trees. I simply sat in silence, doing nothing. Eventually, I walked through the shaded passage to the other side, before making my way to the castle. In hindsight, the video I captured carries an unintended sense of suspense.
Once inside the castle, visitors are guided along a signposted route. Along the way, I captured this video of sunlight filtering through stained glass, casting vibrant patterns onto the wooden, carpeted floor.
The Claerbout installation awaits at the very end, rising three stories high beneath the roof.
From the brochure:
This work is Claerbout’s latest creation and presents itself as an intimate portrait of a reclusive young man. Do you feel the meditative effect of the slow, repetitive movements and their sound?
Specific audiovisual stimuli – such as soft sounds or rhythmic movements – can evoke feelings of relaxation and inner calm. This phenomenon is known as ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) and forms the foundation of this work
The Woodcarver and the Forest is an open film, which is completed using generative artificial intelligence. As a spectator, our experience also remains open and unfinished, partly due to the long duration of the work.
This reveals the dual nature of the film: an interplay between pleasure and sorrow, beauty and destruction.
“I want people to keep watching for hours or at least to settle into that idea of extended time, knowing that they will never be able to see everything.”
Still from Claerbout’s video installation – picture by @petervan
I sat in there for more than one hour. It put me in some state of limbo about my own work and where I want to go next. Following Google’s Gemini AI, it means “to be in an uncertain, undecided, or forgotten state where nothing can progress or be resolved, similar to being caught between two stages or places.”
I am a big fan of David Claerbout. See previous entries on this blog here. The Woodcarver gave me the chance to revisit some of Claerbout’s earlier works and conversations, while also helping me reconnect with the artistic drive within myself.
Here is a more recent talk by David Claerbout
Some interesting quotes
Change your mind-set ànd your eye-set, from inquisitive to open-ended
The Brain does not choose sides; it does not know how to
And around minute 18, he gets into a very interesting schema of “former” AI technologies. He really got me when he says “the camera is a profoundly liberal invention” and later “around the 2000s, we start to think of visual culture as a assemblage, the coordinate system is back, and a coordinate system knows exactly where you are it has exact points in space it can find you back and instead of a liberal body in a world that could be anything anywhere it changes into a pinpointing in a space that so we we get a gathering of coordinates and we’re no longer free”
In closing, he shares reflections on recent readings that explore AI, vision, and the language of thought.
After watching the video, I visited the University of Ghent library—you can get a visitor’s pass as a non-student for €15 per year, granting access to all of the university’s libraries! There, I picked up the book The Time That Remains, a title that resonated with me on two levels: first, the concept of time, so ever-present in Claerbout’s work; and second, the realization that I am approaching my seventieth birthday, prompting me to reflect increasingly on the time I have left and how I want to spend it—especially in my artistic practice, if I can even call my tinkering that.
From the intro:
This publication marks the welcome collaboration between internationally acclaimed Belgian artist David Claerbout and two European institutions: Wiels, Brussels and Parasol unit, in London. The publication accompanies Claerbout’s exhibition opening at Parasol unit, on 30 May 2012; but it also provides a highly appreciated documentation for Wiels, which held a solo exhibition of Claerbout’s work, The Time that Remains, in 2011.
It’s from 2012, but the content is, well, timeless.
Some quotes/insights from that book.
“I think the recent proliferation of black boxes for film and video-art is not just a practical solution to a problem of sound and light interference, but also reflects an incapability to coexist. This can become apparent in large group exhibitions, where media installations appear strong when they are shown by themselves in a small or large dark space, but they easily collapse when shown in a social space where people move about and interact. The black box is a social phenomenon, for me it is a problem.” Ulrichs, David, ‘David Claerbout. Q/A, in: Modern Painters, May 2011, pp. 64-66
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“Time is invested into something that will prove to be valuable and productive. By consequence duration’ becomes increasingly expensive. But duration can only be free if it is unproductive.”
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“Cinema, YouTube and film-festivals demand the prolonged physical immobility of the viewer. Music, exhibitions or a walk in the park don’t.“
My sense of being in limbo stems from a hesitation: to move further into abstraction rather than figuration, toward longer forms rather than shorter ones, toward meditative sound and video landscapes rather than straightforward documentary. It also comes from my struggle to resist the banality of social media—where time is squandered on addictive, bite-sized fragments of content that ultimately feel useless.
I believe I know the answer, yet I dare not leap just yet.
Petervan Studios 