Imagine a dot. Is it an atom, the tiniest building block, or is it an entire world, expansive and immeasurable?

For the third edition of Rubbing Shoulders, the invited artist, Brecht De Cock, has prepared a screening that takes the simplest of shapes and allows them to dance, scale, and flesh out familiar and unfamiliar universes. Starting with the humble pixel, these five short films conjure up planes and textures, allowing for structures to emerge before diving back beneath the surface. By taking a magnifying glass to its bare bones of physical/digital matter, we are presented with the deconstruction of an image.

The screening sits loosely under the theme of experimental animation. It ranges from Len Lye's energetic film, made by scratching directly onto the film strip, to three films from Belgian media artist and organiser Anouk De Clercq to Brecht De Cock's graduation film, a delicate examination of grief and personal history.

The artist talk will take place between Brecht De Cock and Anouk De Clercq and addresses their overlapping practices in animation, digital technologies/forms and sound work.

Swan Song (2013, De Clercq)

Free Radicals (1958, Lye)

Building (2003, De Clercq)

Atlas (2016, De Clercq)

artifacts of you, artifacts of me (2022, De Cock)

with Brecht De Cock & Anouk De Clercq

Brecht De Cock (1999) is a Belgian artist and filmmaker whose work explores how images shape, unsettle, and expand cinematic imaginaries. Through process-based research and imaginative techniques of visual and sonic abstraction, it probes the shifting relationships between technology, the environment, and the moving image.

His graduation film, artifacts of you, artifacts of me., is part of the Rencontre International Paris/Berlin Video Library and has screened at festivals including Montréal’s Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and 25FPS International Experimental Film and Video Festival. In 2023, he received the FABRICA Award at the Ibrida Festival in Forlì, leading to an invitation to join the Fabrica Autumn–Winter 2024 residency.


Anouk De Clercq  explores the potential of audiovisual language to create possible worlds. Her recent work is based on the utopian idea of ‘radical empathy’.

Her work has been shown in Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, MAXXI, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, BOZAR, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Berlinale, Ars Electronica, among others.

Anouk De Clercq is affiliated to the School of Arts University College Ghent as a visiting professor. She is a founding member of Auguste Orts and initiator of Monokino. She also is the author of Where is Cinema, published by Archive Books.