This Too Shall Pass

Sam Debaecke (1996, Mechelen) is a filmmaker and photographer. His interest in the fallibility of the human memory mechanism ensures that he mainly works around the lasting dialogue between memory and reality, which influence each other in interaction. In Lumière Perdue, Sam Debaecke explores the interfaces between photography and our human way of remembering, where they meet each other in their errors and subjectivity. Based on a world of impressions experienced by fictional characters, he forces errors in the images and reappropriates them by rephotographing them over a long period of time. In this way, the original content is gradually lost and is again supplemented by a mix of circumstances, coincidence and appropriation. Eliminated or underexposed parts, which are virtually without information, are the perfect breeding ground for a new interpretation that is determined by a constantly changing present. This series, which he has been working on for two years, is a response to his own experiences with bad memory, and in the meantime formed the basis of his newfound reappraisal of that vulnerability. The works from Lumière Perdue are the result of an interaction of analogue and digital working methods. Most photos were originally taken in analog medium format and then printed smaller, painted, scratched, re-exposed, or recaptured in a collage-like manner.

Maika Garnica (1992, Dendermonde) lives and works in Antwerp. Central in Maika Garnica´s practice is the relationship between the environment, the spectator and the artist. She often applies prototypes to comprehend the complex relation between form and matter while instigating the position of the body as a vehicle for social connections. Through various contextual variations the nature of the work shifts spontaneously from sculptures, utilitarian objects to sound installations. In this work the balance of sounds during a performance is converted into a spatial installation. The same tension and fragility are generated for the viewer, making sounds almost visible. 

Bas van den Hout (1991, Drunen) lives and works in Brussels. In his work, he investigates personal memories and stories that can be understood through the collective unconscious. He’s interested in the objects that surround us and how, removed from their original context and function, they are able to generate a metaphorical or archetypal meaning. 

By developing a relationship with an object, exploring its appeal and the interaction between meanings and personal thoughts, he hopes to be able to reveal the aspects that interest him. In his approach he searches for the border where language seems to end and its exactness is questioned, as a bygone memory, something that has eluded you. His work speaks of a feeling, or a thought , that can no longer be traced back to its origin. A moment of recognition and alienation.

Lukas De Clerck (1994, Leuven) is a sound-artist and musician living in Brussels. He likes to work with recognizable, almost daily, sound production. Hereby creating an accessible playground for the listener to step in. By putting actions like gargling, sneezing and whistling in an artistic context, a bridge is made between the work and the public. It creates a tension between the extra-, and the ordinary. An underlaying theme in his work is breath or air. He’s part of Collectief Publiek Geluid, 2GIRLS- NAMEDSERGIO, Ï Î and plays Aulos, an ancient double pipe under the alias Bloedneus and the Snuitkever. In GarGaG the original act of gargling will be presented in 3 different gradations of echo. The first echo is almost a copy. A clear, still bright reflection. Then the reflection starts to simmer. Water bubbles up. The echo becomes diffuse, the image more and more abstract. While the sounds last, it solidifies. An everlasting echo that decays at the speed of  a crumbling rock. GarGars is a research project supported by Musica, Impulscentrum voor muziek & C-takt.

“The mouth is precisely what puts into question the separation of interior and exterior, as distinct and stable; as a primary conduit that brings into contact the material world with the depths of the body, the mouth continually unsettles the limits of embodiment.” — Brandon Labelle, Lexicon of the Mouth 

In the artistic practice of Margo Veeckman (1997, Ghent) textiles, found objects, sculpture, photographs and video come together. Through making, she seeks for a bodily knowledge that has been lost. She brings attention to what slips away, the invisible, the unheard, the seemingly worthless and questions that what has become fixed within normative and patriarchal thinking. Margo studied Textiles at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent and Curatorial Studies at KASK in Ghent. The video is narrated by a silent voice of which it is not clear if it originates from a thing or a person. The viewer gets hints that the voice is female. The narrator comes off as polite, calm and thoughtful. After a while the speaker seems to become more worried and nervous and seeks for confirmation that she is not getting. The voice talks about regulations of how things are supposed to be and how people are thought to behave and perceive. It repeats that you should not lose your attention, the ones that lost it never found it back. Are we humans? Or are we performers? Do we create memories based on our own sensory abilities or do we rely on other sources to tell us how we feel? All sorts of media continually wish to tell us how to relate to others, ourselves, ourbodies and to objects. At a moment where our senses get separated and treated in abyssal ways, feeling deeply becomes a joyful militancy. Margo creates an advocacy for rediscovering the very core of our experience and our bodies in order to redirect our way of perceiving. A soft friction to oppose the numbing comfort.

“We must rediscover the origin of the object at the very core of our experience; we must describe the emergence of being” and with it, a “certain energy in the pulsation of existence”. — Diana Coole