Transitions

Next month I will be showing work at the Rotterdam Fotofestival.

I will be showing work from the ongoing project When will I be free?  

Although it is very different from what I usually do, this project means a lot me.

It is a collection of photographs and photograms made inside camera obcuras which I have built in refugee centres, woven together with drawings, short texts and personal imagery given to me by refugees. This in an attempt to create a narrative arch between them and us; between the past, and the hope for a new future.

I will post a few photographs soon.

Fuego

Earlier this year I traveled to Central America.

As I passed through Guatemala I just had to see the highly active volcàn Fuego! In order to see this phenomenon from a safe position, we had to climb the Acatenango volcano, which was located at the opposite side. It’s a full day of constantly hiking uphill to the Acatenango camp (almost 4000m). But it’s definitely worth the pain.

 

 

 

During my travels, my high quality digital camera broke down. Luckily I had my 35mm analogue camera with me. I wasn’t expecting much from the shots, as I shot it at night and without a proper light meter or tripod.

But the results are stunning!!

Lunar eclipse

Friday 29/7 was the longest blood moon in decades. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to fully observe the phenomenon.

During the last few minutes of the eclipse, we could see the moon popping out of the clouds.

Multiple exposures on 6×4,5 film during those last minutes of the eclips

De Bezetting

Last month I was invited to show work at a little art festival in my hometown.

On view were silver gelatin prints and and a video that I shot inside the Kawa Ijen crater in East Java. A place that shows both beauty and destruction within our natural world.

The location of the show couldn’t have been more spectacular. An old bank vault.

Silver gelatin prints attacked with sulfur & digital video projection

 

The School

A few weeks ago I made some work in collaboration with ‘The School’ in Hasselt. A post academic, multidisciplinary festival, residency and city experiment. https://www.theschoolhasselt.eu/

I made a little contribution to the project ‘Wildebos’. A little piece of nature just outside of Hasselt. A place to rest, be wild and escape the busy city life.

Last weekend was the kick off of the end show in Hasselt. The are a few prints of mine on view and a small publication.

 

Blue fire spilling down the mountain

A sneak peek of a new project I’m working on

Show – Research #3

Honored to be included in the Show/Research series of Sint-Lukas Brussels. A 2 day show and presentation by researchers linked to the Intermedia Research Unit of the campus, giving insight into their research practice.

Ice caving

Descending into the crevasses of the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland

Land of fire and ice

Last month I traveled to Iceland. A little island in the North of Europe, just beneath the polar circle. Thanks to a recent geomagnetic storm we had the privilege to see some stunning auroras!!

 

 

 

New Photodynamism

Recently my work was part of a project that reimagines Bragaglia’s Futurist Photodynamism manifesto from 1913. This project, led by the Photography Expanded research group of LUCA School of Arts in Brussel, resulted in the writing of a new manifesto outlining a roll for experimental photography within the contemporary landscape of visual communication.

This text and series of images has been printed as a collection of postcards, operating somewhere between a publication, exhibition and distribution system.

There are copies available for artists, museums, universities, libraries and other institutions.

Project Description:

“But we are no longer concerned with inner or outer reality or its volume as much as with the spirit of living reality … We want, in short, to record reality unrealistically.”

– Anton Giulio Bragaglia

100 years after it’s publication, Anton Giulio Bragaglia’s manifesto, Fotodinamismo futurista (1914), seems in many respects still relevant to the debate on motion and representation of movement in photographic images. If we can enlarge its scope to other photographic techniques (Slit photography, Stereo Photography, Alternative Processes, Photographic Abstraction, etc.), the photo dynamism manifesto also seems to contribute to an understanding of the possibilities of contemporary photography.

With this study we want to demonstrate that the original manifesto has more potential than what the Bragaglia brothers realized with long exposure times. Starting from our own results, and with the current photographic practice and knowledge in mind, we have written a new manifesto of of photodynamism anno 2016.

The thesis is a call for practitioners of experimental photography as an art form to expand the range of photographic semiotics by heeding the thoughts of Bragaglia, Flusser, Coburn and others. In addition to the written text a series of postcards operates as an alternative exhibition format. They include a selection of contemporary photographic works which exemplify the core premises of the manifesto.

New Photodynamism, 2016