Videotape (on reel) Black & White PAL

A number of people form a human 'pile' or 'pyramid'.

Black & White PAL

Bigot writes the number one on a piece of paper laying on a table. With his hands, he moves round the edges of the piece. Then the artist sticks a needle through the paper. In ’Blad papier’ Bigot investigates the texture and physical qualities of paper. New pieces of paper are numbered, then thrown away. The video records a game of lines, numbers and measurements. Then the artist fills the table with papers, that have a cross drawn on them. His gestures are very repetitive. Afterwards he sticks those pieces to a brick wall. The pieces blend in and become an invisible index of the bricks underneath them.

Black & White PAL

A half naked man is walking slowly through a hallway, placing foot before foot, while counting out loud his steps until he reaches the camera. Then he turns around and goes back to the end of the hall, now taking bigger steps. He repeats his route through the corridor, counting the distances on the walls. He measures up the hallway floor with a long stick. This emphasis on space, distances and numbers is typical of Bigot’s work.

Videotape (on reel) Black & White PAL

Bigot walks along Regency Street in Brussels with his camera, until he arrives at the Palace of Justice. Then he decides to return and bring the façades of the houses under attention. Arriving back at his starting point, Royal Square, he moves around the square, filming it once on the inside and once on the outside.

Black & White PAL

All the events and actions in this video revolve around the number ten. They are all ’metaphors’ for that figure. A man is walking through the corridor of a historical building, numbering the pillars of the walls with a piece of chalk. A lady is counting to ten on her fingers. Likewise Bigot records images of ten windows, of ten jumps, and so on.

Black & White PAL

A half naked man is standing in a room. His body is slowly heading towards the window, but the man isn’t moving. He seems to be on a conveyer. Or is he under the influence of a tracking beam?

Videotape (on reel) Black & White PAL

Bigot’s writing the number "one" on different white walls and on a mirror, sticking various sizes of black tape next to them. The accent is placed on analytic knowledge of space and distance. Bigot records the walls from a distorted, vague distance and then zooms in on them.

Black&White PAL

Charlier is playing his guitar. The camera is focused on his hands. The artist keeps on repeating the same chords. All of a sudden he stops playing. A close-up of a record. Charlier is wearing a fake nose and mustache while he is listening to some music. Should we not to take music too seriously?

16mm Color PAL

Charlier recorded this video in collaboration with Claude Delfosse. In an office they interview an employee, who worked with Charlier for eight years at the STP. The man expresses his wish to be a musician. To do Charlier a favor, he performs together with his band and sings a song by Elvis Presley.

Super 8mm Color PAL

In a rural landscape a man is digging a canal between two sheets he’s put on the grass. He’s scooping the dirt on them. The camera records the surrounding landscape and the people that walk by once in a while. After he’s dug his canal, the man starts throwing away the sheets. Wearing a clown’s nose, the man seems to indicate that his hard labour is pointless, without any purpose at all.

U-Matic (LoBand) Black & White PAL

Hundred-and-forty white balls are floating in a hall. Attached to the ceiling with strings of different lengths, from low to high, they are hanging motionless in space. The camera records their presence from across the room, but also from above and from the side. Passing by slowly, the camera is suggesting movement. The balls interact with the patterns on the floor and the walls. The soundtrack consists of opera and trumpet music.

16mm Black & White PAL

This film is told through flashbacks, but without making it too obvious from the start. A man raped a girl, whom he knew from his group of friends, at night on a street corner. Images from this incident reappear throughout the film. Inside an empty room, except for a table and some chairs, people are drinking and talking. Among them there are the girl and the man. He seems nervous and angry. Image fragments are used to represent the inner thoughts of the main characters. The girl gets her secret revenge when the man drops dead after eating a poisoned pudding.

16 mm Color PAL

This video documents the thinking behind and making of Office Baroque, an on-site work the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) created in 1977 in an empty house in the centre of Antwerp. For months, Cherica Convents and Roger Steylaerts followed the artist and others involved in the project, till its final completion. The makers remain deliberately in the background: the video is detached and merely documents. Supported by the menacing soundtrack (Syntheses, by André Stordeur), the documentary becomes almost abstract. The makers abstain from any comments whatsoever—they opt for soberness and detachment, creating space for their own subjects: the house, the artist, the curators and the labourers working on Office Baroque. Their editing is postmodern: throughout the entire documentary, we frequently see the final result, even when Matta-Clark is still engaged in the preparatory activities.

U-Matic (LoBand) Black & White PAL

Black & White PAL

A black-and-white video introduced by the brothers (looking like long-haired radicals) that revisits key people and places in Seraing’s workers demonstration for health insurance in 1960. In a truly Dardenne spirit, a montage foregrounds the manual labor involved in building the boat of Léon (a participant in the original demonstrations), people are introduced by their trades and locations, and the narration draws enough potent metaphors about truth-seeking and the flow of history from the boat’s journey that one wonders if it alone later inspired the name of their production company, Les Films du Fleuve.

Videotape (On Reel) Black&White PAL

"It’s delicious to devour those greasy substances that we have to absorb. We all know how wonderful it is to nourish oneself with culture, to drench oneself in knowledge and make a meal of it.

16mm Black & White PAL

Cargadores’ is the first in a series of ten films that come further out of Joëlle de La Casinière and Michel Bonnemaison’s seven-year stay on the American continent. The ‘cargadores’ referred to in the title are Cuzco’s street porters, human beings who carry on their back a huge bundle with all the sorrows of the world. Their load can be sometimes so big that they seem to disappear underneath it, becoming a part of the mass of objects they carry. Mountains of baskets, boxes or chairs are left wandering around the city on their own. Ferrand’s camera follows them through the streets of Cuzco, sometimes openly, sometimes furtively, but never distant. The film was made in 1971. The soundtrack by Jacques Lederlin was added by Joëlle de la Casinière in 2007.

16mm Color + Black&White PAL

This work is the cinematic adaptation of a chapter from the book ’Absolument nécessaire’ (a nomadic album of graphic poetry) according to the idea - already quite apparrent at the time - of the multimedia work, incorporating writing, image and sound. So it is the film of a book, its continuation into another medium: at Barranquilla, on the Caribbean side of Columbia, the film shows a dream experience of living theatre, an analogisation of ‘Part I’ of ‘Henry IV’ by William Shakespeare. Against an Elizabethan background with white columns, sumptuous and in ruins, the street characters feel as if they are walking around in a play; they play ‘live’ and the way they are filmed is very raw.

16mm Color PAL

Joëlle de la Casinière herself, barefoot against an abandoned and ravaged metropolitan background, promotes her book ’Absolument nécessaire’ (‘An Emergency Book’) during an interview/happening with a broadcast delay. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted”. In the end the books are covered in graffiti like subway carriages.

16mm Color PAL

A ’train movie’ in the Urubamba valley, where a young gringo seems to be having bad dreams. All the racket of the train and the sound of a local band punctuate the elliptical editing of a phoney narrative, which pretends to end in Cuzco.

D1 Color PAL

The Beaubourg neighbourhood in Paris is completely abandoned by its inhabitants. Has the plague struck? Perhaps we are quite simply in the month of August, when Parisians have all gone on holiday? A void. The camera peers at this void with a vigilant, caressing and obsessive movement, to the strains of a well-known refrain: "j’en ai marre, marabout, bout d’ficelle, selle de ch’val, ch’val de course, course à pied…"

16mm Color + Black & White PAL

20 kilometres off the Peruvian capital Lima, Villa El Salvador is no ordinary ‘barriada’. With its more than 300.000 inhabitants, it is a true example of self-management, autonomy and community. Born in the early 1970’s, after some 50.000 people invaded a piece of the coastal desert of sand, Villa El Salvador is today South America’s most remarkable and well organised squatter settlement. Building a well-functioning city from scratch in the middle of a desert, a city which can boast of its urban planning, is a social enterprise inexplicable without communal organisation and participation: practically all its population has been, in a way or another, involved with it. In 1974, Joëlle de La Casinière made a portrait of this ‘new city’, built out of nothing, in no time, in the middle of nowhere. Her soundtrack work is a true musical poem in radio language. In the same collage style - product and anticipation of the zapping era - that would characterise de La Casinière’s work during the 1980’s, ‘Rose de Lima’ plays with the clashes and new meanings that the juxtaposition of sound and images produces. De La Casinière repeatedly associates boleros, rancheras and other South American popular music genres with the devastating sight of desert roads and industrial cars; excerpts from a football match broadcasting with images of women coming out of a door, just as footballers ready to hit the field; dialogues from a radio serial with the still, quasi-photographic, portraits of Villa El Salvador’s population. She alternates popular cultural and political discourse, plays with the existing stereotypes on South America, and highlights this continent’s great contrasts. De La Casinière builds here, as in many other of her works, the sense of the narration though the film’s rich soundtrack. Nevertheless, her visual work must not be underestimated; it’s a complex layering of formats, textures and styles. Can true paradise exist within a corrupted society? A corrupted country and what’s more, a corrupted continent? Can education fight television and its pornography? How can citizenship participate in education, and education encourage citizenship? Those are the challenges Villa El Salvador finds itself confronted to at the moment of its creation. De La Casinière is an optimistic witness and the film closes down with the sound of Radio Libertad.

16mm Color

Sequence shot of a caged bear at the Barranquilla zoo in Colombia, while one of the Pisan Cantos is being quoted in Ezra Pound’s own voice.

Super 8 mm Black & White PAL

Although filmed and conceived during the same stay in Lima (1975) as ‘Rose de Lima’, ‘Suite’ is a completely different aesthetic proposal. A portrait of Lima’s street mechanics, the poorness and roughness of its black and white image, accentuated by Jacques Lederlin’s music – a soundtrack that was added in 2007 – almost carries a neo-realistic touch. De La Casinière offers us images of an industrial world, cruel and merciless, far away from the exotic and colourful stereotypes South America is usually associated with. These men appear almost as spectres, calling to drivers and waving about exhaust pipes, haunting the streets, standing by their tombs.

16mm Color

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opéra-ballet ’Les Indes Galantes’ serves as the unifying theme for this film by Joëlle de La Casinière and Michel Bonnemaison while the Ciné Central, shot from across the street and explored in every detail of its façade, provides its recurring visual motif. As in most of their works, de La Casinière and Bonnemaison juxtapose images and sounds from the most varied sources (radio, television, cinema, direct sound, opera recordings...) constructing thus the narration. Both their visual and sound work build up a complex and rich layering of formats, styles and textures. Shot during their journey across the American continent in the 1970’s, Tableaux des Indes Galantes is also a cry against the ravaging of the Amazon. As the authors point out themselves, the decors and characters are absolutely real, in the purest form of fly-on-the-wall documentary filmmaking.

Super 8mm Color PAL

During the month of April, Deleu recorded his own audio-visual journal. He marks the days by using a tear-off calendar. A stream of images portray the artist’s every day life, inside his home and on the streets. The glimmering of city lights at night, the luring advertisements and the headlines of newspapers are captured on film. ’Dagboek’ displays the importance of little, even trite things in the routine of life.

U-Matic(LoBand) Color PAL

Super 8mm Color PAL

The first ’situation’ shows a sticker on a car that says ’Koninklijke filmgroep van Antwerpen’ (Royal Film Group from Antwerp). The viewer is left to guess that the people recording images of streets, cars and each other are members of this film group, putting their art into practice. The second part of the film consists of a time-lapse account of different actions. The artist burns some self-portraits, counts money and transforms the image of the Belgian King Baudoin into a hippie-picture with the use of tobacco.

Super 8mm Color PAL

In the dunes of the Belgian seaside town of Koksijde a bunker from World War II is with great deal of sense for detail transformed into a giant inkpot. This early video work is a collaboration between the utopian architect Luc Deleu, painter Filip Francis and the group ‘de nieuwe coloristen’ (translated as ‘the new colorists’). The film is a time-lapse account of their performance, the register of recording rises as a result of inserting items including animation and images of a snow-covered Brussels during the editing.

U-Matic(LoBand) Color PAL

Being an artist-architect, Deleu has always been sensitive to the recycling of buildings and the use of ‘ready-mades’. In ‘Museum voor kapotte kunst’ (‘Museum for Broken Art’) he records the outside and inside of an abandoned, declined industrial building from various angles. The building is an object, a ready-made that the viewer can modify as he or she likes. New functions of the spaces can be envisioned. The soundtrack consists of the song ‘The Robots’ by Kraftwerk.

Super 8mm Color

In the short film ’Politie’ Deleu follows around different types of police men, while they are performing their tasks. From another car the artist films a police van driving around and supervising the streets. A police officer is handing out tickets, while another one is regulating the traffic. On a highway two police men are on the scene of an accident with a truck. The police force also uses different types of transportation, from bikes to horses.

Super 8mm Color + Black&White

’Show’ is an experimental documentary about an exhibition of young painters and an audio-visual show for the school ’Koninklijk Atheneum’. The video begins with recording, at double speed, of a meeting between Deleu and the other artists at the TOP Office. The artists drive round the school, still shooting images. On the playground an installation is being erected. Close-ups of the children and teachers of the art school alternate rapidly. A performance is given on the evening of the event. Afterwards the artists drive down to the coast, where they have drinks and film each other.

Super 8mm Color PAL

A wife comes home after running errands. While preparing herself a cup of coffee, she collects the dry laundry. In the background, the sound of trains passing by, the sound of a dog barking and the low sound of a washing machine.

Super 8mm Color PAL

Time is frozen in the images made for TV news broadcast and documentary, turning them into archive footage against the anonymous voices and sounds as they come out of an old radio.

Videotape (on reel) Black&White PAL

Videotape (on reel) Black&White PAL

U-Matic (LoBand), Black & White, NTSC

A fixed long viewpoint of a busy intersection is ultimately interrupted by a 180° travelling. A woman is sauntering along the street lines, almost bored. The passing of time is prominent. An everyday environment is rendered as a modernist architectonical environment; order and disorder are shown in observation, and dissected. Lines, surfaces and delineation are essential components in the conceptualization, representing a dialogue between the urbane space and the objects and characters situated in it.

U-Matic (LoBand), Black & White, PAL

A Place to Be is a dialectical exploration of two specific locations and urban conditions, one on the interior, the other on the exterior, while the soundtrack moves back and forth between ambient sounds and music (Satie’s piano music for instance). In a first segment a static image is shown of an intersection in a crowded city centre, the corner of Canal Street and Sixth Avenue in Lower Manhattan, New York. The traffic moves steadily according to an almost algorithmic pace. This exterior shot is contrasted with an equally distant and impersonal image of a couple in a living room, speechless and overcome by emptiness. Time passes. The man leaves the room and a while later he is found outside. The action is stripped down to the point at which it comes close to being simply a series of references to the conventional narrative arc. The characters have a merely figurative meaning within a broader context, which explores the notions of space and time.

U-Matic (LoBand), Black & White, NTSC

In his early work Downsbrough was already trying to generate syntax between place and meaning, language and space. ’The Other Side’ shows two aspects of the urbane surroundings: the anonymous commotion of the city centre and the intimate alienation within the flats. A street scene is followed by a long shot of a bickering man and woman, the camera keeps close after them. Their conversation is constantly drowned out by music (by the Talking Heads), meanwhile garbled words keep appearing on screen, without direct meaning (’As The’ - ’Other’- ’Here’- ’Beside’- ’There’ - ’And Place’..). The combination of text and image generates an associative game of semantics, movement and space, inciting reflective analysis and proposing various readings, inherent to the urban environment: this contradiction appears to be its essence.

U-Matic (LoBand) Black&White PAL

The artist tried to apply a painting's composition to the medium video (time and space). A piece of paper, the monitor screen, the TV screen are combined into a composition reminiscent of a painting.

Black&White

The first frame shows an empty interior. On the left there are a brightly lit surface and a mantel support on the floor; to the right stands a female figure clothed in shirt and jeans. The scale and perspective seem skewed, and it is not until she moves out of the visual field that we notice that the right half of the screen is a mirror reflecting the space behind the camera. She comes to take up similar pose directly in front of the camera almost filling the screen, or goes to stand in front of her image. In either case, as in Spiegel, we only see the whole, ‘idealized’ figure in the mirror; and again, the game of posing formally for the camera is abandoned to informality: sitting, smoking, waiting…

Black&White

We are in a room with parquetry flooring. The artist, clothed in shirt and jeans, is moving about on the floor with the restlessness of the insomniac, performing sequences from her repertoire of horizontal motions developed in previous work. But when 'she' rolls over, we realize Dujourie has substituted a male model for herself. Increased gender awareness? The title ‘enjambment,’ as a delay in the rhythmic progression of a love poem, can be directly connected to the form of the video itself: a succession of little ‘syncopes’, where time is slowed, drawn out.

Black&White PAL

The five videos of Hommage à … deal with the same theme as repetition-in-difference, as a continual tracing and retracing, of the figure fold and unfold in the visual field.

Hommage à ... I sets the scene. A stationary camera focuses on a divan bed in a minimally interior. The bed occupies the upper half of the screen, a length of floor, the lower. We see a woman, the artist herself, lying on a bed and then before a bed. She moves around on impulse at intervals in real time. She uses her legs, arms, bust, thighs and hips to trace lines on the sheets, giving way to a haptic sensation of space (idea of sculpture). Everything is centred on the concept of self-observation and an exploration of the body. The fragile transition from body to independent object, from the voluptuousness of the body to the elliptical line drawing, is one of the experiences carried out in the Hommage à … series.

Black&White

The five videos of Hommage à … deal with the same theme as repetition-in-difference, as a continual tracing and retracing, of the figure fold and unfold in the visual field.

In Hommage à ... II, the bed is more distant than Hommage à … I, but the scene remain almost identical: a stationary camera focuses on a divan bed in a minimally interior where a woman, the artist herself, lays on a bed and then before a bed. Everything is centred on the concept of self-observation and an exploration of the body.. The fragile transition from body to independent object, from the voluptuousness of the body to the elliptical line drawing, is one of the experiences carried out in the Hommage à … series.

Black&White

The five videos of Hommage à … deal with the same theme as repetition-in-difference, as a continual tracing and retracing, of the figure fold and unfold in the visual field.

In Hommage à … III, Dujourie develops a recurrent strategy of her work: drawing attention to the space beyond the visual field. The fragile transition from body to independent object, from the voluptuousness of the body to the elliptical line drawing, is one of the experiences carried out in the Hommage à … series.

Black&White

The five videos of Hommage à … deal with the same theme as repetition-in-difference, as a continual tracing and retracing, of the figure fold and unfold in the visual field. Everything is centred on the concept of self-observation and an exploration of the body. Dujourie develops a recurrent strategy of her work: drawing attention to the space beyond the visual field.

In Hommage à … IV, there is a high set horizon, the idea that the woman is closer to us and farther to the right makes it easier for the viewer to step into the image.

Black&White

The five videos of Hommage à … deal with the same theme as repetition-in-difference, as a continual tracing and retracing, of the figure fold and unfold in the visual field.

In Hommage à … V, there is a high set horizon, the idea that the woman is closer to us and farther to the right makes it easier for the viewer to step into the image. The fragile transition from body to independent object, from the voluptuousness of the body to the elliptical line drawing, is one of the experiences carried out in the Hommage à … series.

Black&White

Koraal (Coral, 1978) is constructed around the close-up image of fingers slowly peeling an orange, separating the segments of flesh and throwing the fruit’s sections, one by one, off-camera. This concrete action that doesn't represent anything but itself emits a heightened sensuality. The tactile construction and the close-up on the fingers’s dance make us think about an animated sculpture.

Black&White

It's the one work in which Dujourie doesn’t perform migratory passage on and off camera. Rather, she slouches on a stool in the corner of a room, legs spread, hands between them, leaning against a wall most of time as though fatigued or bored. It's the only time she appears in feminine fashion and much more make-up than usual. That could suggest that Dujourie might be role playing and critiquing gender conventions. If the woman seems to be 'cornered' by the gaze, an adjoining door offers 'escape' into another space off-screen.

Black&White

A woman stands up in front of a bay window, walks, turns her back to us, smokes a cigarette, lingers overlooking the view of trees ... She uses a reflection in the window to create a mnemonic trace. The figure weaves the embryo of a story, between surrender to ennui and waiting (for someone who does not arrive?), but the actual aim seems to capture the viewer's interest to the point where the window's mirroring effect can perform its function: here she's beyond the reach of the camera's gaze, but even there she's inaccessible yet present. Sonnet evokes sound, only to deny it. Its literary title sets the tone for a formal appraisal of the work. The expectation of regularity, of density and form that produces meaning is maintained to the extreme brevity of the work combined with its slow pace.

Black&White

A mirror and a fireplace are reflected. A naked woman enters the frame; stands up next to the fireplace ... We see her nude reflection in the mirror, standing off-camera, before she enters the camera's active zone. From our observation point, we see her walk forward, breaking the threshold of the camera's field of vision but still reflected in the mirror. In fact, there are two of her: one who stands in front of the camera (walking back and forth, disappearing and reappearing, standing around, doing nothing), the other who is reflected in the mirror. Shadows and movements. Suddenly, she abandons her position and comes so near to the camera that we see a blurred close-up of her breast. At one point, she positions herself so close to the mirror that her body blocks out its own mirror image. Mirroring, reflecting, another form of framing is indeed at stake.

Black&White

The first frame shows a corridor and a black light switch. A woman walks into the frame from the left, into the corridor, and then returns ... The stain on the wall, meaningless figure at first hand, gains meaning little by little. The space is constructed with a pronounced depth, with a foreground and a background, and with doors that lead to spaces beyond the frame. The small, black square which serves as the focuses of the image, captures and fixes the viewer's gaze all the more because no sound disturb him. The figure breaks our concentration on that black stain. She is the disturber of the peace of the classic composition.

Black&White PAL

Pierre Bonvoisin was born in Liege in 1892. Until his retirement, he was a car fitter. In 1960, after retirement, he began to carve human heads out of horse chestnuts, drawing his inspiration from Liège folklore, the Gospel, everyday life and ethnical types. His brother, Joseph Bonvoisin (1896-1960), a renowned engraver and professor at the Académie de Liège, encouraged him in this direction.

Black&White PAL

super 8 mm Color PAL

Three minutes of a close-up on a clock. Suddenly, and unexpectedly, a close-up on the white lines of a highway appears. Speed and minimalism melt together. The next image is that of a labourer, lugging a pile of cables. The movement of an escalator in a subway station follows and finally the flickering of a traffic light for pedestrians changes from red to green and back again. This work is a short, intelligent and vibrant study on montage.

super 8mm Color + Black&White

With his camera Francis sketches rough portraits of his friends, of flowers, of exhibitions, pieces of fabric and other objects. From a riding car he records glimpses of the city life.

super 8mm Color PAL

In Filmische snelschetsen 2, Filip Francis gives another account of his quickly edited film sketches. Shot in super-8, he juxtaposes short sequences of interiors view of his atelier and artworks to external views of several neighbourhood in Brussels.

super 8mm Color PAL

In the dunes of the Belgian seaside town of Koksijde a bunker from World War II is with great deal of sense for detail transformed into a giant inkpot. This early video work is a collaboration between the utopian architect Luc Deleu, painter Filip Francis and the group ‘de nieuwe coloristen’ (translated as ‘the new colorists’). The film is a time-lapse account of their performance, the register of recording rises as a result of inserting items including animation and images of a snow-covered Brussels during the editing.

super 8mm Color +Black&White PAL

At night, in the highways and city streets, road and car lights seem to live a life of their own. It is the enchantment of the movement and distortion of these lights that Francis records from his car. Neon lights of advertisements pop up on the screen. During the day it is the movement of cranes on a building site that captures Francis attention. The rainy, wet streets are recorded from the window of his car.

super 8mm Color+Black&White

The artist writes the equation space = time over and over again, on giant white canvases. He makes geometrical figures with them. He repeats this kind of gesture, by drawing the number nine infinite times.

super 8 mm Black&White

A series of different experiments at an artistic workshop, a tunnel in Antwerp and in a gallery, with simple oblong pieces of wood, placed one after the other in such a way that, when the first one is touched, a chain-reaction is set off with the pieces falling backwards.

super 8mm Black&White PAL

The artist is setting up wooden domino blocks in the Sint-Annatunnel in Antwerp. Then he records a close-up of the blocks tumbling. His experiments with the woodblocks continue in his studio. The succesful pieces he will use again in his exhibitions, which he also records.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

This work is the result of a collaboration between Filip Francis, Luc Deleu and Wout Vercammen. It is an early experiment with image in image, split screen, zoom in, fading, overlaps and other techniques that made the medium video—just out of the cradle in the 1970s—so exciting. The three artists took the camera and set out with great enthusiasm. The result is a merry, sometimes comical, but above all moving, touching video. Against the background of classical music and opera, we see the artists Luc Deleu and Wout Vercammen pulling silly faces. In the editing the faces have been subjected to a variety of techniques. A playful pioneering piece of video dating from the history of Belgian video art.

U-Matic(LoBand) Color PAL

Two men are sitting in a film studio. On the background the viewer hears the sound of opera music. Close-ups of the men’s faces reappear on the TV monitors at the bottom of the screen. The same concept is repeated, but now the men are standing up and moving their arms.

U-Matic(LoBand) Color PAL

The video shows us how in the art centre de Warande in Turnhout an exhibition is in the making with Lego constructions by Luc Deleu. In the background we hear music by Kraftwerk.

Videotape (On Reel) Black&White PAL (Bobine Sony V-60)

At every tide, the North Sea carries away quite a bit of sand from the beaches. This knowledge engaged a group of artists, activists and intellects to perform a poetic action on different locations at the Belgian coastline of the sea. Led by Alain Géronnez, the director of the video, some ten kindred spirits including Charles Dijck, Paul Vanné, Réginald Stokart, Gérard Thèves and the Groupe 50/04 repeated this action in Bredene (26/03/1973), De Haan (6/04/1974) and Middelkerke (18/04/1974).

Super 8mm Color PAL

Contrecarré’ is a video directed by groupe 50/40, whose members are Charles Dijck, Alain Géronnez, Réginald Stokart, Gerard Thèves and Paul Van Re. The artists experiment with space, sizes, a geometric pattern and with a lot of birds. The first square is made out of a measuring rod, lying on the grass. The second square is filled with bread. This second figure gets destroyed by a peacock and some pigeons that are pecking at the slices of bread and start throwing them around. This destructive act continues with square four, five and six, the only difference being the growing size of the squares and the shrinking size of the pieces of bread.

Color + Black&White PAL

The 100 Images are in One Second, made by Chris Goyvaerts and Continental Video with the participation of James Lee Byars, combines autobiographical material – Byars’ participation in exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Guggenheim in New York and Documenta V in Kassel, and performances of his own and by other artists, with numerous references to classical painting. Underpinned by the music of Satie, this nimbly edited work is a loose, humorous and sometimes arresting reflection on the position art occupies in life.

Black&White PAL

Black&White PAL

Video, apart from photography and holography, was but one of the media Lennep made use of during the 1970s, as he was adding on to his ‘museum of men’. His human models were derived from all layers of the populations, but they shared a common obsession for collecting things or, at the very, least an unusual passion. Lennep exhibited, respectively, a football supporter (Ezio Bucci, 1976), an orchid grower (Paul Van Bosstraeten, 1977), a collector of knickknacks and clothes (Alfred Laoureux, 1977), a woman farmer with a collection of manuscripts by personalities (Madame Paul Six, 1978), a nude model (Tania, 1978) and a Jesus Christ impersonator (Yves Somville, 1979). In this series of manifestations, each presented in an appropriate context, Man and traces of living took up a central position. Lennep intended, first of all, the narrative-visual creation of relationships between facts and data by joining signifying elements, and he also raised questions on the meaning of art, the relations between art and museum, and the meaning of creativity.

Digital8 Black&White PAL

A short conceptual work by this Belgian pioneering video artist about corporality and memory. The artist is in a room that resembles the lavatory of a school of gym. He takes off his suit and a female voice-over starts to sum up some of his physical problems and ailments: scars on the knee, a curvature of the spine due to scoliosis, angiomas. Bit by bit, the physical problems are being related to the biography of the subject—Lennep himself. “Notre corps, c'est presque notre histoire,” the voice-over informs us.

Black&White PAL

Video, apart from photography and holography, was but one of the media Lennep made use of during the 1970s, as he was adding on to his ‘museum of men’. His human models were derived from all layers of the populations, but they shared a common obsession for collecting things or, at the very, least an unusual passion. Lennep exhibited, respectively, a football supporter (Ezio Bucci, 1976), an orchid grower (Paul Van Bosstraeten, 1977), a collector of knickknacks and clothes (Alfred Laoureux, 1977), a woman farmer with a collection of manuscripts by personalities (Madame Paul Six, 1978), a nude model (Tania, 1978) and a Jesus Christ impersonator (Yves Somville, 1979). In this series of manifestations, each presented in an appropriate context, Man and traces of living took up a central position. Lennep intended, first of all, the narrative-visual creation of relationships between facts and data by joining signifying elements, and he also raised questions on the meaning of art, the relations between art and museum, and the meaning of creativity.

U-Matic(LoBand) Color PAL

Video, apart from photography and holography, was but one of the media Lennep made use of during the 1970s, as he was adding on to his ‘museum of men’. His human models were derived from all layers of the populations, but they shared a common obsession for collecting things or, at the very, least an unusual passion. Lennep exhibited, respectively, a football supporter (Ezio Bucci, 1976), an orchid grower (Paul Van Bosstraeten, 1977), a collector of knickknacks and clothes (Alfred Laoureux, 1977), a woman farmer with a collection of manuscripts by personalities (Madame Paul Six, 1978), a nude model (Tania, 1978) and a Jesus Christ impersonator (Yves Somville, 1979). In this series of manifestations, each presented in an appropriate context, Man and traces of living took up a central position. Lennep intended, first of all, the narrative-visual creation of relationships between facts and data by joining signifying elements, and he also raised questions on the meaning of art, the relations between art and museum, and the meaning of creativity.

Black&White PAL

Pierre Bonvoisin was born in Liege in 1892. Until his retirement, he was a car fitter. In 1960, after retirement, he began to carve human heads out of horse chestnuts, drawing his inspiration from Liège folklore, the Gospel, everyday life and ethnical types. His brother, Joseph Bonvoisin (1896-1960), a renowned engraver and professor at the Académie de Liège, encouraged him in this direction.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

Color+Black&White PAL

Color+Black&White PAL

Color PAL

Digital8 Black&White PAL

Digital8 Black&White PAL

A short formal study on triangular images, shot in the woods and featuring the artist as a performer. The work is conceptual: the camera 'scans' the surroundings showing triangles formed by the legs of the artist, the branches of a tree, a stone, etcetera.

Digital8 Black&White PAL

A mixture between a camera study and a performance wherein the artist communicates with the camera in sign language using flags to communicate his message.

Digital8 Black&White PAL

A registration of a conceptual performance wherein the artist tries to shoot a bullseye, hanged up in a tree.

Digital8 Black&White PAL

We see the artist sitting in a garden watching a birdcage. Inside there is no bird however, but only a wing of a black bird. With this registration the artist brings homage to the surrealist painter René Magritte.

Digital8 Black&White PAL

A door-handle is filmed with a steady camera. Within a few seconds, it becomes clear that the image is a trompe-l'oeuil in the surrealist Belgian tradition.

Digital8 Black&White PAL

An early experiment with the medium of television in the spirit of Nam June Paik or Wolf Vostell. The camera is filming a television set, wherein the performer seems 'trapped'.

Color PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Super 8mm Black&White PAL

As in most of Lizène’s earlier films and videos, the title is completely self-explanatory. What we have here is a film in three parts, each filmed from the perspective of a different area of Lizène’s body: his eyes, his sex and his feet. The camera covers three times the very same distance, in the same crowded street, but as the perspective changes, the images turn more and more blurry, confusing, and consequently abstract. Lizène concludes: “The author does not appreciate his film much...if he has realized this, it is because from time to time he despises himself a little bit”.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Super 8mm Black&White

Lizène intended to film the base of the wall along a very long urban promenade, a project which would never be realized except for this trial shot on 8mm. The original scheme was, according to Lizène “almost very good, would have been very long and very boring”.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White

Initially intended as a colour film where the camera, in close-up, shoots the electric plug of the projector lighting the very scene and after 3 minutes the director’s hand jerks the plug out and plunges the rest of the film into darkness, the project was finally made in 1974 but in black & white video. According to Lizène: “has hopes of being boring, not bad at all!”.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Color PAL

In 1974 Lizène declares himself a part of the suburbs (banlieue) of art. performanceFor him, mediocrity is no refuge, but the hardest path. At the beginning of this video he warns us : “the artist of mediocrity has more rights to fame and money than the talented one who can be simply satisfied with his art”. Lizène is wearing a white suit; behind him two huge breasts keep on shaking to the turbo-beat characteristic of his videos. Sentences like “long live vasectomy”, “crappy”, “too crappy”, “even crappier”, “but not crappy enough”, “worthless”, “charmless” scroll on the screen. After powdering his face with flour and painting his lips, he takes a sausage out of the fly of his trousers and slaughters it. He does so repeatedly with a cucumber, an eggplant and a black pudding. And at the end, he spits on the camera. “In the world of art, only humour, even mediocre, or its endeavours, matters to me. I strive – and that’s all I’ve ever done – for the joke. The joke in art (even when it seems lacking in interest) has as its main quality, and this is its merit, being utterly joke…it is sufficient unto itself” (J. Lizène)

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

If art entails first and foremost a playful activity, trying to stretch the borders of the useful and the profitable, Lizène is beyond any doubt the master of the useless. In ‘La Vie...’ the camera is fixed on a busy crossroads, while irregular counting patterns resound in the background: “1-2, 1-2-3”, like a dipping rhyme for the pace at which we try to run into our sterile lives, but also passing by them every time. It is not that Lizène is trying to present a broad discourse on ‘toning down’, for that his ‘art stupide’ is too elusive and his inclination towards the ridiculous too strong, as the last minutes make clear. Splotch!

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Color PAL

‘Quelques sequences d’art sans talent’ (‘Some sequences of untalented art’) was completely recorded at the studios of the Belgian-French network RTBF, as an edition of the program Vidéographie(s)’ that focused on video art during the 1976 to 1986 period. Lizène announces himself as the “artist of mediocrity and the unimportant” and he wholesales in burlesque performances, gratuitous visual effects and levities beyond current definitions of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ taste. Nothing is absolute or sacred. Like a clown, Lizène subverts and ridicules predominant norms and traditions, precisely to dismantle their inconsistency and sterility. Or to put it in one of his infamous quotes: “vive la vasectomie!”.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Super 8mm Color PAL

Since 1965, the self-declared “Little master from Liege from the second half of the 20th and the first half of the 21st Century, artist of mediocrity” produces and reproduces his work, continuously underlining self-irony, failure, and the absurd. Here the challenge consists of: an ‘attempt to oblige the body to fit into the image’. The ‘subject’ – Lizène himself, hands in his pockets, dressed rather formally in black trousers and white shirt and tie walks from one edge of the frame to the other. As the camera approaches with brusque shots, his field of movement is reduced to a few steps to the left and right. The brick wall in the background reinforces the effect of the artist being imprisoned, both by physically limited space (brick wall) and the visually depicted space (the camera’s viewfinder). In his effort to make his body fit into the frame, Lizène is forced to twist himself, becoming smaller and smaller, whilst the camera moves gradually closer and closer. Bent in two, touching the grass with his hands, Lizène keeps on going back and forth, almost like a monkey, until he ‘fits into’ the image, and the viewer’s screen. In Lizène’s artistic practice, subject and object frequently exchange places (Lizène: ‘subject’ of this film, but object facing the camera, being depicted by its lense; Lizène ‘artist-subject’ creating this film, an ‘object’ representing himself, the artist:). The irony of this ‘attempt’ lays in the fact that the shrinking space is of course the result, not the cause, of cinematic intervention - in other words, it is up to the filmmaker himself to restrain his freedom of movement or not, and wanting to ‘fit oneself into the image’ is a deliberate artistic procedure.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

Also for R.T.C. (Radio/Television/Culture), a short sequence where the subject (the once again self-proclaimed “little late mid-20th century master from Liège”) attempts to hide from the camera, trying repeatedly to quit the frame unnoticed.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

In 1974 Lizène completes this 1971 project for R.T.C. (Radio/Television/Culture). A short video sequence where the subject (the self-proclaimed “little late mid-20th century master from Liège”) attempts to tame a camera (in reality it’s the cameraman who’s tamed) by flattering it (“the camera is beautiful, but is she docile?” Lizène wonders), making it do tricks (“Camera sit!... Camera stand up…!”) and finally making it lie down like a dog.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Color PAL

‘Remake et Re-remake’ (1971-2004) is a combination of the remakes of the films ‘Bas des Murs’ from 1971 and ‘Tentative de sourire’ from 1973. The camera sets out by filming the lower side of the outside walls of houses, on the edge of the wall and the pavement, until Lizène’s shoes show up on screen. Then the camera rises until it ends up in front of his face, after which Lizène actually produces a hint of a smile. Similarly to most of his more recent remakes Lizène makes use of bizarre accelerated and repetitive editing, a self invented soundtrack and, of course, a dose of wayward humour.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Super 8mm Black&White

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Color+Black&White PAL

A musical duo sings to Christmas day, the day all women are beautiful, in front of a mountain of garbage and TV monitors : “When you are a painter you’ve got to write bad songs, especially when you don’t really have any talent for that”.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black & White PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Videotape (on reel) Color PAL

Two video monitors are being recorded. On the left monitor the viewer sees a parrot, on the right monitor the audience that is present. Matthys takes polaroid pictures of the parrot and of the audience. Every few minutes two people of the crowd stick the picture of the parrot and the one of the audience on the matching monitor, until both the monitors are covered with nine pictures. This video of Matthys could be understood as an example of what is called indexical art by Rosalind Krauss. A video is an index, a trace of something that happened. A photograph is also an index. By combining the two Matthys adds another dimension to the idea of the index.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

The spatial interaction, arrived at through the closed video circuit of video camera 1 & 2 in relation to video monitor 1 & 2, is stressed by the destruction of this perception, through the use of polaroids (9 polaroids equals the surface of 1 monitor), in order to arrive at a new perception (= time), registered on tape (= registration), by video camera 3 and microphone (= synchronous registration of image and sound on video recorder).

Two video monitors are being recorded. On the left monitor the viewer sees the polaroid camera of Matthys and on the right one the image of the two video monitors is shown. The image on the right monitor repeats itself endlessly. Then Matthys starts taking photographs of the two monitors and sticking them on the right monitor. This video of Matthys could be understood as an example of what Rosalind Krauss calls indexical art. A video is an index, a trace of something that happened. A photograph is also an index. By combining the two Matthys adds another dimension to the idea of the index.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

About a building which was an astonishing lack of finishing touches, even the floors were not numbered outside the elevators. Combining video with slides and pictures, this installation was part of a phase in which Matthys methodically examined various media.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

A hand is dialing all the numbers on an telephone, from 0 to 9. Another pair of hands is typing all the letters of the alphabet on an old typewriter.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact katia@argosarts.org or jenthe@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Videotape (on reel) Black&White PAL

Through the window of a moving car Matthys is recording the houses, the street signs and the canal while following two road signs, ’Coupure Links’ and ’Coupure Rechts’. The lens of the camera is smeared with traces of raindrops. This video is meant to be used for a video installation, using two video monitors and two video cassette players.

Videotape (on reel) Black&White PAL

A stately street in Ghent, along two sides of the canal, filmed with a keen interest for the numerous bridges.

Videotape (on reel) Black&White PAL

Through the window of a moving car Matthys is recording the houses, the street signs and the canal while following two road signs, ’Coupure Links’ and ’Coupure Rechts’. The lens of the camera is smeared with traces of raindrops. This video is meant to be used for a video installation, using two video monitors and two video cassette players.

_Unknown Black&White PAL

Videotape (on reel) Black&White PAL

Troubled by the heavy equipment, a cameraman is filming a meadow lying low as he walks around, a slope on the left, barbed wire on the right. A second camera is recording from the centre.

Videotape (on reel) Black&White PAL

The video starts from four videotapes, shot from a car (left, right, front and back) leaving the sea-front promenade at Knokke-Heist. The perception of this straight street is first of all analysed into four components by four cameras. At the same time this perception is conditioned and structured by social convention in the shape of traffic regulations (traffic signs erected in this street) with which the running car has to comply. At the exhibition, this perception was reconstructed and restructured by erecting four independently operating recorder-monitor sets in one room.

Videotape (on reel) Black&White PAL

The camera circles around a circular square in Ghent. In each of the above-mentioned works several cameras film simultaneously a countryside, a street, a square, ... from different angles, so as to obtain continuous and synchronous images from a certain number of co-ordination points in a well-defined circuit. Each shot made in this way is shown on a monitor. During the projection, the monitors are placed in such a way as to allow simultaneous, continuous or even frame-by-frame perception of the co-ordination points distributed within the circuit followed, which is impossible in reality.

16mm Black&White

1 Swennen, Walter creator
1 Mees, Guy creator
1 Charlier, Jacques creator
1 Josefstein, Leo creator
1 Lohaus, Bernd creator
1 Panamarenko creator
2 Storez, J. contributor Sound recording
2 Daniel, Alain contributor Sound recording
2 van Rooy, Guido contributor Sound recording
3 Goris, Jules contributor Camera
3 Feroumont, P. contributor Camera
4 Charlier, N. contributor Editing
4 De Hert, Robbe contributor Editing
5 De Decker, Anny contributor Collaborator Panamarenko sequence
5 Poirier, M. contributor Collaborator Guy Mees sequence
10 Ministerie van Cultuur, België - Le Ministère de la Culture, Belgique contributor

16mm Black&White PAL

In each of the two versions of "Portraits", Guy Mees plays with the contrast between the attitudes of the three characters in his video who change places on a stage of different levels. It is a game with sculpture, proportion and with differences that are neutralized or neutralize the effect of the stage and its levels. What is important here is the surprise and the coincidence that contradict the hierarchy, and confirms the humour.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

The work shows three persons on wooden boxes of different heights which change positions. The sound is from the environment.

16mm Black&White PAL

This film, composed of three parts (1 - 'Réflexion / emission’; 2 - 'Une part de silence pour une part de réfléxion / animation’, 3 - 'Concentration’), was made the year of the first video exhibition in Belgium, held at the Gallery Yellow Now in Liège. It is a transitional work, between cinema and video: although filmed with a 16 mm camera, it already quotes television.

Color PAL

An early film by Nyst anticipating the work he would make years later: poetical ambience pieces, built around congealed memories, associations arousing from the imaginary and undermining the real. The poetry derives from the editing, from the wide range of colours, from the rhythm of its numerous evocations. “The sea we hear is no longer a sea, but a descriptive text, a book with pages, wallowing like the waves on a hypothetical beach. (…) The landscape is faded out; it is smothered in its artifice, its Polaroid mirror image.” (Éric de Moffarts)

Black&White PAL

4 points limités / La caméra est reliée au magnétoscope par un câble de 100 mètres’ is one of Jacques-Louis Nyst’s earlier experiences with the medium and one of the few videos of the first Nyst period not to use a canvas-like white surface as a background. Teapots, hats, eggs, etc, are here replaced by images of gates and fences in the wilderness. A female voice indicates their exact location : the first is situated 100 meters south; the next 100 meters west; the following 100 meters east; and finally, the last one 100 meters north. These four points are the precise boundaries (or limits) of the Nysts’ video universe.

Black&White PAL

4 points limités / La caméra est reliée au magnétoscope par un câble de 100 mètres’ is one of Jacques-Louis Nyst’s earlier experiences with the medium and one of the few videos of the first Nyst period not to use a canvas-like white surface as a background. Teapots, hats, eggs, etc, are here replaced by images of gates and fences in the wilderness. A female voice indicates their exact location : the first is situated 100 meters south; the next 100 meters west; the following 100 meters east; and finally, the last one 100 meters north. These four points are the precise boundaries (or limits) of the Nysts’ video universe.

Black&White PAL

In spite of its title, this video is previous to the outbreak of colour in the Nysts’ work. A black and white photograph of Danièle Nyst is followed by an image of the “real” Danièle Nyst knitting. The camera tracks the wool thread and then offers us a close-up of the wool ball just as we hear a loud and clear “Jaune” (Yellow). ’Information sur la couleur’ ("Information on colour") is characteristic of Nyst’s first experiences with video, at a time when plastic artists had only recently discovered the medium and used it still as a mere extension of their work, often resulting in somewhat conceptual and minimalist (yet ironical) pieces.

Black&White PAL

In both 'La clé du paysage’ and 'Un dimanche après-midi à 6h du soir’ the spectator is in the position of the voyeur, spying Danièle Nyst through a window. In 'La clé du paysage’, Danièle Nyst is sitting on the garden, glancing through a magazine. Her image is cut up by the window frame. The spectator (and storyteller) remains in the house. In 'Un dimanche après-midi à 6h du soir’, it’s the other way round. The furtive narrator is outside. We hear the rain, the moos of the cows and other sounds of the countryside. Inside the house, Danièle is going through a series of books that she piles up conscientiously on top of her bed.

16mm Black&White PAL

A short film in which the camera films a photograph of a nude woman on a table in a living-room. The voice-over describes, in French and English, how an avarage day in her life looks like.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

The discovery of a child’s toy: a small blue metallic coffee pot, presents a complete enigma to an archaeologist of the future. The scientist no longer has any information at his disposal on Twentieth Century civilization. Patiently he attempts to unveil the significance of the object. His imagination, which distances itself from historic truth, progressively enters into a dream state, in which tenderness and fragility are the only reality.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Color+Black&White PAL

Conference grouping the different sequences: ’Le paysage’, ’Le voyage de Christophe Colomb’, ’Le tombeau des nains’, ’La mort d’une poule’, ’Le Robot’, ’Revolver’ and ’L’ombrelle descendant un escabeau’. The paper sunshade approaches Spring, it is growing amongst the crocuses. In fair weather it is in full bloom. It shivers and closes at the fall of evening because it is afraid of the brilliant moon. When it rains, it curls and shrinks. With heavy winds, we can see it lifted up and away, making somersaults in front of the windows on the first floor. When calm returns, it slowly descends from the sky like a parachute towards its point of origin, which is also its landing place. The sense of direction of paper sunshades is a major question. A few scientists hope to explain it through observation of travelling pigeons, the polar star and bats.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

In both 'La clé du paysage’ and ’Un dimanche après-midi à 6h du soir’ the spectator is in the position of the voyeur, spying Danièle Nyst through a window. In 'La clé du paysage’, Danièle Nyst is sitting in the garden, flipping through a magazine. Her image is cut up by the window frame. The spectator (and storyteller) remains in the house. In 'Un dimanche après-midi à 6h du soir’, it’s the other way round. The furtive narrator is outside. We hear the rain, the moos of the cows and other sounds of the countryside. Inside the house, Danièle is going through a series of books that she piles up conscientiously on top of her bed.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

The title in 'Le cygne et son image’ soon becomes the white canvas on which Nyst has drawn what appears at first as a tail or a path. The screen is horizontally divided in two, the lower part occupied by the canvas and the upper by Nyst’s naked body. When the swan the title refers to appears, it may seem that it is its own image that it contemplates on the white surface. Nyst’s swan is a walking stick but that of course doesn’t matter. Once more Nyst’s work appears as an affirmation of the universe contained in everyone’s home, and over all of the poetry emanating from every day’s objects. This short video is one of Jacques-Louis Nyst’s earlier experiences with the medium. If we distinguish two periods in the Nysts’ video work (each corresponding to a different generation, that of the plasticist videomakers of the 1970’s and that of the video storytellers of the 1980’s), ’Le cygne et son image’ is clearly characteristic of the first, a time when plastic artists had only recently discovered video and used it still as a mere extension of their work, often resulting in somewhat conceptual and minimalist (yet ironical) pieces. In Nyst’s case, as his plastic work of the time was concerned with the poetical reading of everyday objects, his first videos will follow the very same path. It is almost as if he used the screen as a canvas where all sorts of objects can be placed and played with: from coffee pots and eggs to dolls and plastic bags. Nyst confronts these objects with the ways in which we represent them. The common and the banal are transformed into pure poetry. Nyst’s fake innocence, poetical humor and logical delirium are the result of associations, metaphors, displacements, connections, gaps and puns.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

In 'Le paysage’ a cup of coffee reflects: “I was drawn towards this landscape straight away. Calm, slightly hilly. The ideal place to rest oneself” before actually alighting on the tablecloth.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

The robot in 'Le Robot’ is as a matter of fact a broken spring from the Nysts’ bed. Here it appears as a giant that a hand attempts to flatten, but ends up releasing. As the “robot” breaks free, we hear a bird singing. 'Le Robot’ is one of Jacques-Louis Nyst’s earlier experiences with the medium. If we distinguish two periods in the Nysts’ video work (each corresponding to a different generation, that of the plasticist videomakers of the 1970’s and that of the video storytellers of the 1980’s), this short video is clearly characteristic of the first, a time when Nyst’s plastic work was concerned with the poetical reading of everyday objects, and his video experiences followed the very same path. It is almost as if he used the screen as a canvas where all sorts of objects could be placed and played with: from coffee pots and eggs to dolls and plastic bags. Nyst confronts these objects with the ways in which we represent them. The common and the banal are transformed into pure poetry. Nyst’s fake innocence, poetical humor and logical delirium are the result of associations, metaphors, displacements, connections, gaps and puns.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

In 'Le tombeau des nains’ two pebbles are laid on the canvas-like white surface common to most of the Nyst’s videos of the time. Two fingers come along, and move about the pebbles, revealing the two black stains they were hiding. The fingers repeatedly attempt to move the stains as well, with no success. Puzzled at first, but soon resigned, the fingers put the pebbles back on top of the black spots.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

This short video is one of Jacques-Louis Nyst’s earlier experiences with the medium. If we distinguish two periods in the Nysts’ video work (each corresponding to a different generation, that of the plasticist videomakers of the 1970’s and that of the video storytellers of the 1980’s), 'Le voyage de Christophe Colomb’ is clearly characteristic of the first, a time when plastic artists had only recently discovered video and used it still as a mere extension of their work, often resulting in somewhat conceptual and minimalist (yet ironical) pieces. In Nyst’s case, as his plastic work of the time was concerned with the poetical reading of everyday objects, his first videos will follow the very same path. It is almost as if he used the screen as a canvas where all sorts of objects can be placed and played with: from coffee pots and eggs to dolls and plastic bags. Nyst confronts these objects with the ways in which we represent them. The common and the banal are transformed into pure poetry. Nyst’s fake innocence, poetical humour and logical delirium are the result of associations, metaphors, displacements, connections, gaps and puns. In ’Le voyage de Christophe Colomb’ an egg reveals itself slowly, just as the land does when approached by sailing ship. This egg which suggests another famous egg, Colombus’s (a story generally used to illustrate the skills of practical judgement and evaluation), bears an inscription: “TERRE” (both Earth and land in French). The TV snow suggests the sea, and the sound of submarine radars and astronaut speeches recalls that of the sailors. A new world has been discovered, a journey achieved, and all of that without ever leaving the Nyst living-room space and objects. Nyst’s work appears as an affirmation of the universe contained in everyone’s home. For the Nysts, their Presseux-Village, where all their videos would be shot, is not only the centre of their world, but also that of the universe.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Videotape (on Reel) Black&White PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

'La farde aux canards’ combines ducks with an array of functional objects (a foot bath, electrical cables, and so on), entities whose literal meanings have nothing whatsoever to do with one another, and which in that sense, also remain 'constant’ in substance. Nyst’s combinations, however, generate new and different meanings and in this case, the viewer’s hilarity.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

In 'L’ombrelle descendant un escabeau’ (a title directly quoting Marcel Duchamp’s 'Nu descendant un escalier’) Jacques Louis Nyst appears once more as the explorer who discovers for the first time a common and well-known object, the paper parasol this time. He tries to explain its origins, way of life, and even reproductive techniques. Reality, even when it takes the likes of something as absurd and laughable as a paper parasol, opens up new horizons, attaining unusual points of view. Just as René Magritte would fill the object with new meanings by changing its context, Nyst displaces the object through the image and within it. This small displacement is the cause for the metamorphosis that takes place and we’re left at the boundary of a legend which is neither real nor fictional.

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Color PAL

Recorded in the Nysts’ living-room during a rainy day, this video marks the introduction of colour (in this case green) in the previously black and white universe of the Nysts’ videos. 'La mort d’une poule' shows a top hat held in the air thanks to the help of a stick. The sound of a hen coming from inside it will be abruptly interrupted when the stick falls down and the hat dramatically drops on the table.

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Color PAL

As in 'La mort d’une poule’, sound plays a key role in 'Revolver’. A real hand confronts a sculpted one. It imitates its gesture, proposes new ones. Then what we have interpreted so far as a human hand suddenly turns into a revolver.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

A suite of photographic and filmic images made in the country. An ode by and for the environment of the sheep.

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Color PAL

A science fiction story in which people disappear from the Earth and the machines keep on working. The fictive situations being inspired by objects from the Nysts’ immediate surroundings.

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Colour, Super 8

kleur, Super 8

Black&White PAL

‘Aller-retour’ is a two way journey between Greece and Belgium. In the late 1950’s the Greek and the Belgian government signed a series of agreements to facilitate the arrival of Greek workers in the Belgian coal-mines. Twenty years later Riga travels with a group of Belgian Greeks on their way back to Greece for the summer holidays. It’s the very same route they once took in the opposite direction, across Germany, Austria and the former Yugoslavia. It’s not an easy journey, and Riga cruelly highlights the contrast between the comforts of those travelling to New York with the Concorde and the difficulties the Greek workers encounter on their bus trip home. The villages that warmly welcome them in the summertime are poor and arid; immigration appears as the only possible way out.

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Black&White PAL

This report for Canal Emploi is an illustration of Pierre Bourdieu’s theories on social capital and the influence of family background and social class in academic success. Bourdieu maintained that a working class child with the same intellectual capacities than a child out of a bourgeois milieu had less chances of succeeding in school. Jean-Claude Riga follows two young men, children of Italian immigrants across the streets of Seraing in the Liège region. They speak of their failures in school, of racism and integration, and of the class divisions that reign on the small city of Seraing. There are the bourgeois Belgians on one side and the immigrant workers on the other. Both men feel the impossibility for the blue-collar class of realizing long studies, sharing both the same diploma obsession. “Il faudrait pouvoir faire un metier qu’on aime” (one should be able to do a job one likes) they affirm. Once they tried to escape from the factory-lives of their parents, but were confronted to the conditioning of their working class education. They felt less confident than their Belgian classmates, expressed themselves clumsily, were concerned by different issues. At the end, both ended up returning to the working class milieu they felt comfortable in. Riga asks them if they would go back to Italy. But ironically enough, although in Belgium they will always remain foreigners, in Italy they are regarded as Belgians.

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16mm Color

The camera is moving slowly along a ’polder’ landscape. The viewer gets to see the things the hiker does. There’s no road nor any human presence, only nature.

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16mm Black&White

A message on the screen commands the viewer to keep his eyes shut for the next three minutes. White geometrical forms appear on the black screen, but you can only see that if you disobey the instruction. If you do keep your eyes shut, the light of the white figures will pass through your eyelids, creating a physical, enjoyable effect.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

black & white, 16mm

black & white, sound, Super 8

Super 8 mm Color

George Smits was often nicknamed “Toet” by his friends. He was a creative all-rounder: apart from visual works of art (paintings and sculptures), he also created experimental music, and he also designed installations for which he invented his own instruments. In Belgium, Smits was a pioneer of audio art, as well as one of the first artists who worked with 8 mm film and video. ‘The Colour Company presents a collection of films by... (1970-1973)’ is a collection of early works made with Super 8 mm film and a hand-held camera. Some of these works document the artistic practice and life of the artist—his friends and acquaintances frequently feature in the films. But above all, the films express wonder at the medium itself. We see for example Smits in his painting studio. Thanks to the stop motion technique, the painting “grows” before the eye of the camera: Smits paints layer over layer, constantly causing to appear new shapes and fields of sound on the same canvas. A leitmotif on this medium-long, silent compilation is Smits’ flirt with light: the sun strongly reflects on the glass objects he carries around and into the lens of the camera. Silhouettes and shadows cause the image to hesitate between figuration and abstraction. Or he films the light through fabrics, nets and other materials. As a matter of fact, Smits carries out a thorough investigation into the different colours of the light spectrum. He meticulously moves mirrors at different angles, which yields various colour results: the complete sunbeam is white, while a tilted mirror breaks the beam resulting in the successive colours of the rainbow. Further in the work, he conjures up rainbows working with a self-made installation consisting of a slide projector, various prisms and perforated slides. As a whole, this film echoes strongly the early cinematographic avant-garde.

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Super8 mm Color PAL

A person wearing an unconventional apron is pouring milk and chocolate powder in a bowl. When the mixture is ready, it’s poured into the small baking tins displayed on the table.

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Black&White PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

16 mm Color PAL

This video documents the thinking behind and making of Office Baroque, an on-site work the American artist Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) created in 1977 in an empty house in the centre of Antwerp. For months, Cherica Convents and Roger Steylaerts followed the artist and others involved in the project, till its final completion. The makers remain deliberately in the background: the video is detached and merely documents. Supported by the menacing soundtrack (Syntheses, by André Stordeur), the documentary becomes almost abstract. The makers abstain from any comments whatsoever—they opt for soberness and detachment, creating space for their own subjects: the house, the artist, the curators and the labourers working on Office Baroque. Their editing is postmodern: throughout the entire documentary, we frequently see the final result, even when Matta-Clark is still engaged in the preparatory activities.

For this school of contemporary artists, the process is as important as the result, the work itself, curator and initiator Flor Bex explains. The interview with Bex provides a clear insight into the work process of the architect-artist and highlights the problems that can occur during the realisation of his or her concept. And in Antwerp, there were scores of problems! Take for example the cut-out the artist had wanted to make in the façade of a detached, medium-sized, five-storey apartment block facing Het Steen, the medieval castle near the river Scheldt. The artist had intended to make a spherical cut-out in the building, with the centre of the sphere outside the building. However, the idea was rejected by the town council. Matta-Clark therefore decided to turn the exterior project into an interior project—which made it an exception in his oeuvre. The artist-architect thus cut out a fragment of the building at every floor, creating a deconstructivist sculpture that stretches from the roof to the basement. He chose to work with two semi-spheres, one in the centre of the building, the other situated at a distance defined by the golden ratio. The intersection of these two semi-spheres created the main opening that was tear-shaped.

What was truly amazing, was the fact that Matta-Clark did most of the work himself, with the critical eye of the architect and the precision of the painter. Most of this involves hard physical labour. We see the artist measuring, drawing, hammering, cutting, sawing, slashing and drilling. Matta-Clark: “This is my first project vertically through a building. In fact, the public moves through ‘drawings’, rather than through spaces. The concept is the product of a complex drawing and not of the interpretation of a façade, like my earlier work. There is point here from which it is possible to get a direct idea of the work. The complexity and the depth of the work are almost impossible to size up or document.”

Taking their time, Convents and Steylaerts confront us with every detail. The registering camera as it were scans the architecture and the interventions of the artist. Not only the soundtrack alienates the viewer, but also the images of passers-by and of life outside: a brass band, wading birds and tourists skewing at the camera contrast sharply with the mental world and environment in which the artist lives.

Matta-Clark considered Office Baroque his best work ever, “because it was so invisible.” It was the last large-scale work the artist worked on before he died in 1978 of cancer.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

16mm Black&White

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic,Black&White PAL

A Chewing-art taste performance.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

The video records an action performed by Christine van de Mortel. She sneaks into a channelling section in concrete, located in the mud on a construction site. We see the sneaking in; a view of the tube that completely encloses the body; the body sneaking out again on the other side, the mud being sprayed off her body and the interior of the canal section. The presence of mud accentuates the obligatory contact with the ground, the existence and dimensions of the body, the narrow passage and the contact with the environment. The awareness of the body and its size is an essential feature of Christine van de Mortel's oeuvre.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Color PAL

A video recording of photographs, made by Van den Boom, of disposable articles and packages that were recycled. The intention of recycling is to give new purposes to objects that were meant to be used only once. A male voice-over and steel drum music accompany the images. Recycling for non-artistic uses mostly takes place in the Third World and in the margins of Western cities. The garbage products are transformed into toys, music instruments and practical objects.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

Experiments with one camera, one monitor and one recorder.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

A parody of the marketing and creating of new needs through advertising.

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U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

The recorded image of a publicity poster is transformed into a porn poster.

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U-Matic(LoBand) Color PAL

We see a person and neon light. The artist is seated facing the monitor and paints moving images with bright colours, painted and manipulated until a "cubist' effect arises, similar to the effect of Picasso's paintings.

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U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

For a large part of the twentieth century, and of the previous one, the goal of art has been suppress the points of escape, to wipe out straight lines starting from the eye of the spectator to disappear somewhere in the horizon, or what the horizon of the spectator should be: the heroic, with which he should identify, the horizon in perspective from which he should give his orders. Here an inverse situation is proposed: a closed room, of which we discover the space through a long panoramic shot. The glance skims along the walls, guided by a trace of light, 'folding' at each angle: a tactile glance.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) Black&White PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

Black&White PAL

This work attempts to create a video-space, by confounding the perception of the spectators. A compilation of Video-Tape, Concept-Video and Twin's.

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U-Matic(LoBand) black&White PAL

"Twins", a video-technical redoubling of a character by means of the blue-key technique. At the outset, a woman undressing herself is filmed in Super-8. This films is then projected on the woman, who starts the whole series of movements all over again. This combination is then recorded on videotape.

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.

U-Matic(LoBand) black&White PAL

Filmed in the studio of the Antwerp ICC; use of split- and overflow-techniques. Topic is the medium itself. A video camera records its reflection in a mirror, while several actions are being performed in front of it.

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Black&White, Super 8

Three numbers are written in black on a white piece of paper. An invisible hand is writing over them, until they become unreadable.

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Color

A cup of coffee is standing on the table, next to two pieces of paper. The pieces have drops of coffee on them. As time goes by, the stains get bigger and bigger. New pieces of paper are laid on top of the other. In the end the coffee cup gets poured out

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Color

A women is reading at a garden table. Every minute she changes the side she is sitting at, until she’s back where she started. The camera starts turning round to film her and her book. Afterwards she starts looking at photographs of herself, sitting at another table but with the same book in her hands.

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Super 8mm Color

In the bright, blue sky airplanes have left the traces of their engines, with lines of white clouds as result. They are the minimalist painters of the sky. Some lines are very visible, while others are already fading away.

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Black&White, Super 8

Two people are playing ping pong./loop 1: ping-pongspel met 2 spelers; loop 2: scores.

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U-Matic(LoBand) Color PAL

This video work is archived and preserved at argos and made accessible through our library. Please contact library@argosarts.org for an appointment or further information.