By Julie Verheye

Boris Mikhailov’s Ukraine, currently running in FoMu Antwerp, shows a moving portrayal of a state in constant transition. The retrospective covers the unfolding of events in Mikhailov’s homeland by illustrating the developments from Soviet communism to Western capitalism and the recent Maidan protests. Pushing aside the grand narratives of the cold war and the macropolitics of the Soviet Union, Mikhailov visualises the influence on the everyday and, hence, portrays Ukraine in its most intimate setting. The exhibition blurs the boundaries between objectivity and subjectivity, documentary and diary, and recording and performing. Emphasising notions as imposition, alienation and the body, Ukraine stirs emotions with hints of witticism and vulgarity.

Mikhailov openly – yet cunningly – criticises the communist regime. His subtle critique is already present in Superimpositions, which double exposes two colour photographs so as to create a psychedelic dreamland. Mikhailov aesthetically and unmethodologically juxtaposes icons and banalities of Soviet life with deep-seated cultural taboos. The playful overlays allude to the surreal and stand far from the photomontages of Rodchenko’s, El Lissitzky’s and Klutsis’ constructivist photography. The series stunningly counteracts the strict formulated aesthetics and narratives of arts in service of social practice by deconstructing preferred-readings and creating flexible meanings. Mikhailov continues his fight against communism with Black Archive, a series of monochrome photographs contrasting the intimacy of the home with the formality of the streets. Although his critique is barely visible, the series condemns the surveillance culture and numerous restrictions in public life during Soviet times. Mikhailov’s critique of communist society peaks in the colourful series Red Skies and Luriki. The alarming red colours of the former immediately stand out due to the serial representation that alludes to the profusion of communist symbols in day-to-day life. Similarly, Luriki, a set of colourised black and white photographs with a Méliès-like allure, refers to the hypocrisy of communist propaganda which constantly painted a rosy picture in order to beautify reality. During the eighties, a period of political and economic changes caused by Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika, Mikhailov’s work gradually lost its colours both literally and figuratively. The sepia tinted photographs of Crimean Snobbism, a visual diary of Mikhailov’s friends during a holiday, and Salt Lake, an objective account of an ecological disaster, are merely a shadow of Mikhailov’s more provocative work of the sixties and seventies.

Other milestones in Mikhailov’s work are the fall of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine in 1991. At Dusk, Tea Coffee Cappuccino and Case History are reflections on the changeover from communism to capitalism and the related impact on the body. At Dusk and Tea Coffee Cappuccino emphasise the disparity between consumer culture on the one hand, and the deteriorating of the social body and urban space on the other. However, both series are easily towered over by Case History, which is probably the apotheosis of the exhibition. The images vulgarly – yet intimately – depict the precarious living conditions of the homeless, a new social class emerging with capitalism. Apart from focussing on the bodily evidence of poverty, Mikhailov also fulfils a performative role as he stages a grotesque drama in paid collaboration with the bomzhes. Appearing in recognisable poses that refer to Christianity, the photographs provoke and could be seen as modern icons. The series raises questions about the traditional relationship between photographer and subject. The exhibition concludes with The Theatre of War, a series depicting the protesting body in moments of inactivity during the recent pro-European Euromaidan revolutions.

In sum, Ukraine shows a moving and intimate portrayal of the social body in transition from communism to capitalism. Sporadically verging on the vernacular, Mikhailov records a visual diary wavering between the objective and the subjective and, hence, reopens some probing questions about photography’s ethical imperative. The exhibition inserts a sense of realism by beautifying ugliness and by rendering visible what lies dormant beneath the surface of society. Simultaneously acting as an objective witness and a participating producer, Mikhailov depicts reality not only with great solemnity but also with a sense of humour. Nevertheless, the exhibition is a roller-coaster of impressions since not all works are equally outstanding: Mikhailov’s early series, along with Case History, rise above the other works, which unfortunately sink fast into oblivion.

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The exhibition runs in the FoMu Antwerp until  05.06.16
For more info see: http://www.fotomuseum.be/en/exhibitions/boris-mikhailov.html

This review was written for the Photography and Visual Culture Class of the Cultural Studies Program

Thu 19 & Fri 20 May — 14:00-18:00 — STUK Auditorium — FREE (reservation required through ticket@stuk.be)

For the symposium Choreographing the Self the department Cultural Studies at KU Leuven and arts center STUK have invited several international renown theoretician and artists to think about the role of choreography in the production of the individual and the social. Together they examine how choreography can be understood as a tool to analyze both the aesthetic organization of movement and the socio-political construction of singular and collective identities, in search of different intersections between these ‘small’ and ‘great’ forms of choreography. With conferences by Paula Caspao, Bojana Cvejić, Jason Read and Bojana Bauer.

The definitive timetable will soon appear here.

The symposium Choreographing the self is organized within the framework of the course Contemporary Dance: Theory and Analysis hosted by the department Cultural Studies at KU Leuven in collaboration with arts center STUK. Contemporary Dance: Theory and Analysis is a result of the policy plan culture KU Leuven 2013-2017. The symposium will be the first event of a series co-organized by both institutes aimed at bringing together spectators, artists and theoreticians around dance and choreography.

This symposium takes place during Extr’act – a compact two days with challenging work by a new generation of makers – the evening programmes can be checked here (Thursday May 19) and here (Friday May 20).

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do 19 & vr 20 mei — 14:00-18:00 — STUK Auditorium — GRATIS (inschrijven verplicht via ticket@stuk.be)

Voor het colloquium Choreographing the Self nodigen het departement Culturele studies van de KU Leuven en kunstencentrum STUK verschillende internationale gerenommeerde theoretici en kunstenaars uit om samen na te denken over de rol van choreografie in de productie van individualiteit en collectiviteit. Samen onderzoeken zij hoe choreografie kan begrepen worden als een instrument om zowel de esthetische organisatie van beweging als de socio-politieke constructie van singuliere en collectieve identiteiten te analyseren en zoeken ze naar de verschillende kruisverbanden tussen deze ‘kleine’ en ‘grote’ vormen van choreografie. Met presentaties van Paula Caspao, Bojana Cvejić, Jason Read and Bojana Bauer.

Het definitieve uurschema is binnenkort hier te zien.

Het colloquium Choreographing the self wordt georganiseerd in het kader van het vak Hedendaagse dans: theorie en analyse, dat wordt georganiseerd aan het departement Culturele Studies van de KU Leuven in samenwerking met kunstencentrum STUK. Hedendaagse dans: theorie en analyse is opgestart vanuit het Beleidsplan cultuur KU Leuven 2013-2017. Het colloquium luidt het startschot in voor een serie van events die zullen worden georganiseerd door beide instituten en die telkens tot doel hebben om toeschouwers, kunstenaars en theoretici samen te brengen rond dans en choreografie.

Dit colloquium vindt plaats tijdens Extr’act – een gebalde tweedaagse met uitdagend werk van een nieuwe generatie makers – het avondprogramma van donderdag 19 mei vind je hier, dat van vrijdag 20 mei hier.

by Christian Wauters

Until the 5th of June, in ‘De Halle’ in Geel, the city where he spent his youth, runs – as a homage to Jan Hoet (1936-2014) – the impressive exhibition ‘Ungenau’ (“inaccurate” but better translated as “precarious” or “off-beat”). Hoet, remembered as a globally renowned art expert and curator, established for the first time, exactly thirty years ago, his international reputation with the exhibition Chambres d’Amis to which he invited American and European artists to create artworks for homes in Ghent, private residences but open to the public for several weeks. However, not everyone was enthusiastic about this heavily acclaimed innovation, including even one of the participating artists…

Among Flemish examples of so-called Money Art, a young art genre (especially emergent since 1990) that aims at the creation of art objects on the basis of real or symbolic money, Chambres d’Amis (‘Guest Rooms’ – 1986) by the world-famous installation artist Panamarenko (pseudonym of Henri Van Herwegen, b. 1940) presents a remarkable case that cannot be ignored by the art lover focusing on the relationship between art and money. The art object consists of a wicker birdcage and a shoe box on a coconut doormat with the imprint Chambres d’Amis (97 x 105 x 67 cm). The cage is filled with copied money and a pile of (ersatz) banknotes lies on the box. The work that was not even recognized as ‘art’ in its setup, quickly proved to be a playful, mocking and even quite insulting statement or provocation by a humorous but deliberately rebellious artist. It demonstrates (and this could be the ‘hidden’ research question) how an artistic ‘parody’ can become a genuine work of art, for Chambres d’Amis made its way to prestigious art collections and an international auction (Christie’s [London] 28 June 2012), at which it was sold for £ 25.000.

The background of this joke has been extensively documented. Jan Hoet (1936-2014), both hyped or maligned as an ‘art pope’ in artistic circles, organized an unusual exhibition under the auspices of the Museum voor Hedendaagse Kunst (Museum of Contemporary Art) in Ghent (Belgium), from the 21^st of June to the 21^st of September 1986. It was an art event in which fifty-one residents of Ghent declared themselves willing to provide (part of) their home to an artist for three months. The underlying idea of this idiosyncratic exhibition, which housed contemporary works of art in a social context, was to break the conservative exclusivity of the museum. One of the artists who was to participate in the project, called Chambres d’Amis, was Panamarenko who declared in a television interview (BRT-Flemisch Department, 21 June 1986) that he considered the initiative as ‘heresy’ and as restricting freedom and did not feel like participating. In his own idiom, he stated:

 (…) I was forced to make something for people in the so-called art world, (…) [I]t had to be modern of course, because they had here and there made an earlier purchase. (…) [T]hey wanted a modern version of all that old crap, without the content being different and that annoyed me.[1]

He nevertheless took part in the event:

So I took a birdcage and filled it with [fake] money and I did the same with a shoe box as well [sic] (as everybody always said that I possessed shoe boxes full of cash!). Finally, I added a doormat with the imprint ’Chambres d’Amis’ in big letters and there you have it!

In order not to have to say no, I said no by participating. I presume that many people, being so ostentatiously faced with that money, feel that they have been miffed.

Although the work was exhibited in the hallway (after all, the base was a doormat!) of the De Wilde-Van Peteghem residence at the Olympiadeplein n°.9 in Ghent, the organizers were not pleased with the contribution of an artistic funnyman! In his opening speech of the art event Chambres d’Amis Jan Hoet said: “This is something that we cannot call a true work of art!” But Panamarenko’s provocation did not end there:

The anger [of the curator] became even worse during the opening ceremony, which was broadcast on television. While the lectures were held, Jef Geys [°1934, an internationally renowned Flemich sculptor, photographer and installation artist] and I sat, deliberately uninterested, at a table, eating oysters and talking. That was an idea of Jef Geys, but of course it was staged. They [the organizers] had agreed but nevertheless. While ministers were speaking and everyone was listening, we sat at a table for two, eating oysters and babbling, with a lot of swearing in between and the television people of course broadcasted the silliest excerpts that nobody understood. The oysters have been paid by Jan Hoet but for Jef Geys, the game was over: in Ghent and in the presence of Jan Hoet, he was never to show his face again. But he [Hoet] just did not dare to throw me out (laughs).

With his mockery Panamarenko had pointed out the weakness of ‘modern’ (i.e. 1986-) art-enthusiasm as described in the testimony of art historian Dirk Pültau, editor-in-chief of the Flemish/Belgian art magazine ‘De Witte Raaf’ (The White Raven):

The atmosphere around ‘Chambres d’ Amis’ is indicative for the “ardency” of that time. Jan Hoet was the great defender of contemporary art and present-day art was presented as something that was afflicted and had to be defended. (…) If you look at it afterwards that enthusiasm was really only aimed at presenting contemporary art as a kind of controversial spectacle-commodity. This promotional fire has, in the long-term, made any serious approach to the art of our time impossible. The total acceptance of present-day art comes atz the expense of flattening it and making it more enjoyable. But I must admit that I have followed that apologetic discourse for a long time. I was far too uncritical of the things the museum did. (Gielen, 2004, p. 197).

With a bitter undertone, the above quoted cultural sociologist Pascal Gielen has also noted in his publication ‘Kunst in Netwerken…’(Art in networks…, 2004, p. 197) that ‘Chambres d’ Amis’ paved the way, for Hoet himself, to Documenta IX (Kassel, Germany – 1992):

The concept-note, with which Hoet finally applied for Documenta, covered only five pages. From this you can at least deduce that discursive mediators play a minor role in such decisions. Selection processes often build on previous merits and networks of formal and informal contacts. Moreover, in the art world, ‘babble’ is more central than text.

Furthermore, ‘Chambres d’Amis’ meant the end of the collaboration between Jan Hoet and the television director, executor and scriptwriter Jef Cornelis (b. 1941) who, between 1963 and 1988, made numerous artistic and cultural-historical breakthrough programs for the Flemish  department of the Belgian Broadcasting Corporation, thereby drawing TV attention to Hoet as well. Cornelis dedicated a six-hour broadcast called ‘De langste Dag’ (The Longest Day) to ‘Chambres d’Amis’. It was a satire on a mad contemporary art world, figuring, for example, quarrelling artists (a.o. Panamarenko and Geys) as well as Hoet’s (frequent) outburst of anger. In the year 2000, the director explained his point of view:

I lampooned Hoet in front of the camera; this was not an attack on his person but by reason of the media show in which the art had ended up at that time. A few moments later Hoet became aware of that and it meant the final break. (Gielen, 2004, p. 196).

With this contribution to ‘Chambres d’Amis’, Panamarenko, in his own picaresque way, commented critically on a wide-ranging promotional initiative for contemporary art. As we have seen, history proves that he was not the only one to comment in a critical way on propaganda  for “a modern version of old crap, without the content being different.” In this perspective, the birdcage and shoe box filled with photocopies of bank notes, can be considered as an authentic work of art with a far-reaching, meaningful and even timeless symbolic value.

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[1] This text and the two following citations are quoted from an article by Panamarenko, which he mainly edited himself: “Indispensable lexicon …” in the Flemish newspaper ‘De Standaard’ (The Standard) of the 21^st of April 2005 (my translations).

The international conference “Photography Performing Humor” will explore the nature and meaning of the relationship between photography, performance and humor within the field of visual arts and visual culture.

Although humor is clearly omnipresent in a wide spectrum of photographic practices — ranging from advertising or art photography to family snapshots with their obligatory ‘smile’ or the classic Tower of Pisa joke — the topic has yet to be fully discovered by researchers. While in recent years photography theory has witnessed the affective turn, its focus remained largely on photographic representations of suffering, trauma and loss.

It is no coincidence then, that one of the central metaphors to think the affective quality of the medium, Barthes’ punctum, relates affect to being wounded. This conference resolutely chooses to elaborate a lighter, humorous side of photography and aims to map different strategies and practices.

Venues

LUCA School of Arts
Paleizenstraat 70, 1030 Brussels

The evening lectures on 13 April (8 pm) take place at:
Vlaams-Nederlands Huis deBuren
Leopoldstraat 6, 1000 Brussels

Dates

13/04 > 14/04/2016

Registration

Attendance to the conference is free but registration is required before the 8th of April 2015.

Register by sending an email to performinghumor@gmail.com

Conference Programme

Wednesday, 13 April 2016

• 9:00 am Coffee & registration
• 10:00 am Welcome
  Carl Van Eyndhoven (dean LUCA School of Arts)
• 10:10 am Opening word
  Mieke Bleyen (KU Leuven)
• 10:30 am Keynote lecture
  Louis Kaplan (University of Toronto)
  A Morbid Sense of Humor: Reflections on Photography’s Dark Comedy
  Moderator: Hilde Van Gelder
• 11:30 am Coffee break
• 11:45 am Heather Diack (University of Miami)
  Playing It Straight: The Alliance of Humor and Photography in Conceptual Art
• 12:15 pm Sandra Križić Roban (Institute of Art History, Zagreb)
  Elements of Humor in Proto- and Conceptual Photography in Croatia
• 12:45 pm Johan Pas (Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp)
  “Défense de photographier.” Parody as a Postmodern Strategy in Some European Artists’ Books, 1960s-70s
  Moderator: Liesbeth Decan
• 1:15 pm Lunch break
• 2:30 pm Sian Bonnell (based in Cornwall; Falmouth University, Cornwall)
  Wilful Amateur
• 3:00 pm Lieven Segers (based in Antwerp; MAD-Faculty, Hogeschool PXL, Hasselt – LUCA School of Arts, Genk)
  8 words on making something good
• 3:30 pm Thomas Mailaender (based in Paris and Marseille)
  Screening A Very Serious Job
  Moderator: Nicola Setari
• 4:00 pm Break
• 8:00 pm Lieven Gevaert Leerstoel Lectures (at deBuren, Leopoldstraat 6, 1000 Brussel)
  Paulien Oltheten (based in Amsterdam)
  Sifting and sorting / centrifugal thoughts
  Hilde D’haeyere (KASK School of Arts, University College Ghent)
  CINEMACINE. Lecture on the Mechanisms of Screen Comedy
  Moderators: Mieke Bleyen & Liesbeth Decan
• 9:30 pm Reception

Thursday, 14 April 2016

• 9:30 am Coffee & registration
• 10:00 am Keynote lecture
  Esther Leslie (Birkbeck University of London)
  Photography and Laughter’s Shattered Articulation
  Moderator: Edwin Carels
• 11:00 am Coffee break
• 11:15 am Alexandra Olivia Tait (University College London)
  Düsseldorf’s Commedia dell’Arte: Artistic Self-Staging in polke/richter richter/polke (1966)
• 11:45 am Ann Kristin Krahn (Braunschweig University of the Arts)
  Adding a Giggle: Lee Friedlander’s Practice of the “Shadow Self-Portrait”
• 12:15 pm Andrei Venghiac (based in Gothenburg)
  Reflections on the Concept of Play
  Moderator: Volkmar Mühleis
• 12:45 pm Lunch break
• 2:00 pm George Emeka Agbo (University of the Western Cape)
  Facebook and Photographic Humourisation of Political Activism in Nigeria
• 2:30 pm Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
  Uneasy laughter. Photography and Humor in Poland
• 3:00 pm David Helbich (based in Brussels)
  Being Part of the Problem is the Solution. Sharing and Conceptual Art. On “Belgian Solutions” and “Trying to Look Like a Building”
• 3:30 pm Kevin Atherton (based in Dublin; National College of Art and Design, Dublin)
  Performing the Performance Documentation
  Moderator: Els Opsomer
• 4:00 pm Mieke Bleyen (KU Leuven) & Liesbeth Decan (LUCA School of Arts)
  Closing remarks
• 4:15 pm Reception

The conference ‘Photography Performing Humor’ is organized by LUCA School of Arts in collaboration with KU Leuven, Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography, Lieven Gevaert Leerstoel vzw, and Het Vlaams-Nederlands Huis deBuren.

Generously supported by OPAK Research Fund (LUCA School of Arts) and Lieven Gevaert Leerstoel vzw.

In our master Cultural Studies we keep up with modern advancements and theories in our field, and nothing highlights this more than our course on Online Publishing. This year we asked our students to create their own cultural website in teams up to 5 people. The results were more than satisfactory, and in some cases we were blown away by the design and creativity of our students.
Below you’ll find a short article on how one of these groups went to work to create a beautiful and useful website.

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Our journey started with an assignment from the Online Publishing course within the Master of Cultural Studies from the KU Leuven.  Five international students coming from different countries and continents found each other through a common love for Asian art.  The term is broad and encompasses a wide variety of expressions such as painting, sculpture, calligraphy, and dance among others; and different mediums: paper, canvas, bronze, ceramics, etc.  There we were: five heads, one passion, and a world of possibilities. Fortunately, there was also one goal, which helped us to start drawing some lines and define what was to become that Asian art website.

There was the brainstorming moment, in which the sky was the limit, and ideas were generated.  But we had to keep it feasible and realistic, so the main boundaries were defined: a portal that consolidated the different venues related to Asian art in Belgium, in other words, we wanted to aggregate in one location the information about art galleries, museums, institutes, and other institutions in Belgium dealing with our topic.  Then we moved on to the next step: identifying the available sources.  So we selected and collected the relevant information partially manually and partially using features offered in existing tools such as “feed” in Drupal Gardens. Oh! By the way, by that moment we had already decided to use Drupal Gardens instead of a fully-fledged installed version of Drupal. First of all because we agreed that Drupal Gardens offered all (or at least most) of the features we needed, further it would be simpler to split the work over an online tool and avoid having to synchronize/consolidate bits and pieces of work from each of us. The following step was to reflect and organize how we wanted to share what we have collected. We decided to group the items by the main actions in the visitor’s mind, in other words, was the user looking for a place to visit and explore Asian art, or was she/he looking for galleries to buy some artworks, or a place to learn? This helped us keep the structure and navigation simple and shallow, which meant that the information was readily available instead of buried under multiple pages (clicks). Hence, we also added the maps to the end of each page.  Regarding the look and feel, we wanted to keep it clean, artsy, and convey the Zen philosophy. Lastly we also wanted to connect our site to social networks not only as a means of “spreading the word”, but also as a solution to providing a platform in which people could discuss topics and post news in a fairly independent location, i.e.: not within the website itself.

In summary, our main steps were as follows:

• Define the topic and draw the boundaries
• Identify the available sources
• Select and collect the relevant information
• Reflect and organize how we want to share what we have selected
• Define the tool we wanted to use
• Create a website to share our work with other Asian art lovers living in Belgium or visiting the country.

Of course it didn’t always run smoothly from one bullet point to the next, and we had some bumps and frustrations along the road, but we suppose it is part of most endeavours. We are happy that we kept moving and hopefully others will have a chance to visit us at http://asianartbe.drupalgardens.com/ !

Daniela Barroso, Aida Khosa, Margarita Konstantinou, Natalia Qi, Noah Zhao

The conversation between Eleanor Bauer and Rudi Laermans will be an experiment in public thought and intellectual exchange on the topic of artistic collaboration and collaborative methods within the field of contemporary dance. Laermans extensively discusses the different modes, the internal dynamics and the implicit political horizon of collaborative practices in the second part of his recent book Moving Together: Theorizing and Making Contemporary Dance. One of the key terms he proposes to conceptualize artistic collaboration from a sociological as well as a political point of view is the notion of ‘commoning’. Bauer has addressed collaboration and commons in group pieces such as Tentative Assembly (the tent piece) (2012) and even more explicitly in the current performing arts practice exchange platform and archive that she co-initiated with Ellen Söderhult and Alice Chauchat called Nobody’s Business. Bauer and Laermans already exchanged views on collaboration’s potential and politics but regard this public collaborative talk as a unique occasion to move on. Both prepare questions for each other inspired by their respective work and previous exchanges, and will invite the audience to collaborate in their collaborative talk on collaborative practices within contemporary dance.

Entrance is free

Rudi Laermans is professor of social theory at the Faculty of Social Sciences of KU Leuven and also a regular guest teacher at P.A.R.T.S., the Brussels based international dance school directed by A.T. De Keersmaeker. His research and publications are situated within the fields of social & cultural theory, cultural & arts policy, and the sociology of the performing arts. He recently published ‘Moving Together: Theorizing and Making Contemporary Dance’, in which he unfolds a theoretical perspective on the work of several Flemish based dance artists such as A.T. De Keersmaeker or Meg Stuart on the one hand and analyzes the co-creation of contemporary dance from a sociological point of view on the other.

Eleanor Bauer is a performer and performance-maker based in Brussels, Belgium. Originally from Santa Fe, New Mexico, she studied dance, choreography, and performance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (BFA, Dance) and P.A.R.T.S. (Performing Arts Research and Training Studios, Brussels). Bauer is an artist in residence at Kaaitheater in Brussels from 2013-2016. She works at the intersections of choreography, dance, writing, music, and performance art. Her pieces range in scale and media towards challenging categories, methods of producing, and ways of thinking performance. Her versatile works such as ELEANOR!, At Large, The Heather Lang Show by Eleanor Bauer and Vice Versa, (BIG GIRLS DO BIG THINGS), A Dance for the Newest Age (the triangle piece), Tentative Assembly (the tent piece), Midday & Eternity (the time piece), and BAUER HOUR have toured internationally to critical acclaim. Along side making her own work, Bauer has performed with Xavier Le Roy, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker/Rosas, Boris Charmatz, Emily Roysdon, Matthew Barney, Mette Ingvartsen, Trisha Brown, Ictus contemporary music ensemble, The Knife, and others. Bauer also frequently teaches, mentors, and writes about dance and performance. For more information, visit www.goodmove.be.

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Source: http://www.stuk.be/en/program/public-talk-contemporary-dance-1-%E2%80%93%C2%A0artistic-collaboration-collaborative-talk 

Arnout De Cleene (°1986) works at the Dr. Guislain Museum in Ghent (Belgium) as a scientific employee. He studied cultural studies at Maastricht University and did research on outsider literature at Leuven University.

This blog appeared first on the “Public Disability History” blog on 02/02/2016 http://www.public-disabilityhistory.org/2016/02/the-dr-guislain-museum-ten-inscriptions.html

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By Arnout De Cleene

1.
The Dr. Guislain Museum is located in the city of Ghent (Belgium). The museum can be found in the well-preserved buildings of Belgium’s first psychiatric asylum. At first sight one would consider this an ideal situation as the museum specializes in the history of psychiatry.

2.
[1947]

3.
The Dr. Guislain Museum opened its doors in 1986. In those days visitors needed to go to the attic in one of the old buildings of the Hospice pour hommes aliénés. The Hospice was a specialized psychiatric institution founded in 1857. The institute was commonly namedHospice Guislain after its founder, Belgium’s first psychiatrist Joseph Guislain (1797-1860). Today, the Dr. Guislain Museum encompasses a permanent exhibition on the history of psychiatry, a broad collection of outsider art and temporary exhibitions on subjects related to the history of psychiatry (such as melancholia, trauma, shame, etc.). The museum tries to be a place where scientific research and expertise (on psychiatry, mental illness, madness, etc.) can be translated into (mostly visual) presentations that aim to reach a large and diverse public.
One of the intriguing and problematic aspects the museum continuously is confronted with is the following: the building used in order to present the exhibitions seems to interfere with what is being shown and how it is interpreted.

The museum’s central court and one wing of the nineteenth-century buiding. The court has a green lawn, several trees, roses and a terrace. © 2012, Guido Suykens.

4.
[GALTON]

5.
The building of the Hospice Guislain indeed is one of the most telling “objects” that can be found in the collections of the Dr. Guislain Museum. The different wards, the chapel, the remnants of a fire in 1928, the gardens, all offer overwhelming visual historical evidence. At the same time, however, the building is being used in order to house several exhibitions. It thus also encloses the objects, artworks, books, testimonies, etc. on display. For curators, visitors as well as for the items on display, this situation creates opportunities, as well as frictions and difficulties. Not all objects or items used in the exhibitions are directly connected to the history of psychiatry. However, being placed in a context that so to say breaths psychiatric knowledge and actions, the objects are interpreted as belonging to the history of psychiatry. They kind of become psychiatric themselves. As such, everyday objects are enriched and charged with meaning: by putting them in the Hospice Guislainthey immediately become relevant to the history of psychiatry.
However, what can be considered as an enormous opportunity – being located in the building of a well-known psychiatric institution – also can be looked at differently. The building indeed is a pervasive framework from which it is hard and seemingly impossible to escape. It is very difficult to tell a story inside the Dr. Guislain Museum that does not immediately acquire psychiatric interpretations. As such, the range of potential meanings an object, artwork or story can acquire, is not only enriched, but also limited, precisely because they are presented in the Hospice Guislain.
To put it bluntly: if you put a portrait on display in the Dr. Guislain Museum, it can become a psychiatric portrait. If you see an artwork, you’ll perhaps think of it as outsider art. If you see a pencil on the museum floor, you just might think it was a mad(man’s) pencil.

Early twentieth century picture representing one of the corridors adjacent to the central court. Halfway the corridor a man is leaning to the wall. At the back two more figures are visible. The photograph is duplicated and placed on a piece of yellow paper on which the following inscriptions can be found: N°2132, C. Bretagne, Louvain.

6.
[IIIII][IIIII][IIIII][IIIII][II ]

7.
The light that shines through the windows of the Hospice Guislain and falls on the objects and stories on display, colours them in a specific way. The spatial structure of every exhibition necessarily repeats the ground pattern of the wards. The bricks and metal fences order and organize, limit, colour, direct and produce the meaning that the public can ascribe to the gathered objects.
The building provides the visitor with a tangible context. It can be gazed at, walked upon, strolled through, felt. The Hospice Guislain indeed is an object within the context of the history of psychiatry as well as it is the context in which items relevant to that history are presented. It mirrors the mechanisms of a museum – as an institutional space that orders, selects, omits, sanctifies, contextualizes. As such, the Dr. Guislain Museum, as a (former) psychiatric and (present-day) cultural institution, is highly visible.
The question curators of the Dr. Guislain Museum time and again are confronted with is whether one can one escape from the institutionalizing effects the walls, bricks, wards and architecture seem to have (and had in the past). And if so, whether this is something one really wants. Would it be possible for the Hospice Guislain to become a dynamic, malleable environment, despite the sturdiness of its walls? And would it be possible to conceive the relationship between the public, the curators and the material context of the exhibitions other than in terms of visibility?

8.
[I H O]

Black and white nineteenth century drawing of the complete Hospice Guislain site. Collection Dr. Guislain.

9.
Carved in the bricks of the outside walls of the Dr. Guislain Museum one can find crosses, dates, names, etc. It remains unclear what caused these inscriptions on the museum’s surface: man-made, weather-influenced or other origin. It is impossible to know who has written these signs, what they were supposed to mean, to whom they were directed. These inscriptions could be written by patients, museum visitors, doctors, gardeners, etc. An inscription reading [1947] could have been written in 2014, and vice versa. A name can be the tag of a woman, or the name of the relative she longed for. Twenty-two vertical stripes are twenty-two days since admission, and they are twenty-two birds that flew across the sky. They are twenty-two stripes written by twenty-two different persons, referring to twenty-two different things. And so on.
We often do not pay attention to these brittle signs. Our gaze is directed towards the items on display. History should be looked at intentionally, so it seems. There’s little, not to say, no space left for an unintentional encounter with our past. Perhaps this is what can be derived from the inscriptions represented and talked about here: that what matters in the Dr. Guislain Museum is not only what can be looked at from behind safety glass. It is also what becomes clear when the eye drifts away to the space that is not curated by the museum staff.
The inscriptions also invite us to reflect on their more general implications. The building of the Hospice Guislain in which the Dr. Guislain Museum is housed, literally bears the stamp of its public. The environment in which the exhibitions take place, is inscribed by the visitors that have walked the grounds of the building for more than 150 years. The walls are eroded, inscribed, altered, and waiting to be deciphered and interpreted. The reader perhaps will recall the famous distinction made by Roland Barthes between ‘textes lisibles’ and ‘textes scriptibles’.¹ The first texts were those that seemed to have a fixed meaning one could accept or reject. The second kind of texts needed some more work and energy. Those texts kind of were written again when being read. Can the Museum Dr. Guislain be considered such a ‘texte scriptible’? Would it be possible to think of a history of psychiatry – of histories of psychiatry – presented within the Dr. Guislain Museum, as a museum that is (re)written while it is being read, curated while being visited, as a ‘musée scriptible’?

10.
[X]

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Original post: http://www.public-disabilityhistory.org/2016/02/the-dr-guislain-museum-ten-inscriptions.html

Recommended Citation
Arnout De Cleene (2016): The Dr. Guislain Museum: Ten Inscriptions. In: Public Disability History 1 (2016) 2.

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1 Roland Barthes, S/Z. Paris: Seuil, 1970.^↩

By Gert-Jan Meyntjens

Last week, in order to get into the right and enthusiastic frame of mind about the then forthcoming Bowie-album Black Star, I saw Francis Whately’s  2013 documentary David Bowie: Five Years. It was evening, I had been reading Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman that day, and watching this documentary about five decisive years in Bowie’s career seemed a good way to unwind.

Even though I am not a fan of music documentaries – their tendency to idolize can be quite hard to bear – I found this documentary rather compelling. Contrary to what its trailer suggests, Five Years shows and not only tells about Bowie’s merits. Having Sennett’s ideas fresh in my mind, here I could see fragments of the craftsman at work.

In Richard Sennett’s views, the craftsman is he or she who does work well for the sake of the work itself. Craftsmanship implies individual skill developed to a high degree through repetition and practice, as well as an attitude of receptivity. Amongst other things, this attitude of receptivity refers to the capacities to cooperate with others in the setting of the craftsman’s workshop, to work with new technologies and to be inspired by knowledge and practices from other domains than the one the craftsman is working in. Combined with expertise, this attitude of receptivity allows the craftsman to deal with the resistance and problems he or she inevitably encounters as well as to continue developing his or her skills.

Few people will dispute that David Bowie understood his craft. He knew how to write songs and how to perform. However, what Five Years interestingly reveals are Bowie’s other skills. Skills that precisely allow someone with the right know-how to have a long career in the arts.

Most importantly maybe, Bowie knew how to cooperate. He carefully selected with whom he wanted to work, but then left those around him enough space to do what they did best. He listened to them, was open to suggestions, but at the same time he was the one making the final decisions. Sennett suggests that it is such a combination of openness to individual initiative and authority (based on know-how) which forms the backbone of the good craftsman’s workshop.

Furthermore, Bowie’s dealing with new technologies (not repudiating them, but working with them), his tendency to complicate things for himself (a condition sine qua non to feed the craftsman’s interest in his or her own work), his openness towards other domains both in and outside of music, are all characteristic for the good craftsman.

On the day of his passing away, many compared Bowie to a chameleon that constantly changed his persona and music. As much as this is true, Five Years shows how Bowie was equally a skilful craftsman who could organize a workshop and nourish his own and his audience’s interest by being open to external influences. In the thin white duke’s own words: “My work gives the impression of changing a lot, but actually I am probably quite consistent.”

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Francis Whately, David Bowie: Five Years, 2013.

Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, London: Penguin Books, 2008.

By Jan Baetens

Curated at FOMU (Fotomuseum Antwerpen, 23 Oct. 2015-14 Feb. 2016) by Cultural Studies alumna Rein Deslé, August Sander. Masterpieces and Discoveries is a must-see exhibition that completely reshapes our idea of the author of People of the 20^th Century, the famous portrait album that aimed at giving an overview of the human diversity of contemporary life in the Weimar Republic (it was this diversity, as well as the sharply marked social stratification of the portrayed people, that made this work politically suspect for national-socialist eyes).

Although best known for his work as a portrait photographer and mainly considered a representative of the New Objectivity tendencies of the era, the work by Sander (1876-1974) is of a dizzying multiplicity: industrial publicity, landscape photography, botanical studies, among others. “Pure art” seems to be missing, but to label this as an absence would imply an anachronistic view of photography. The divide of “applied” and “pure” photography, which certainly existed since the 19^th Century (not always to the benefit of art, by the way, as demonstrated by the historical error of pictorialist photography), was not always present to the mind of many photographers, who did not experience their commissioned work as something they had to do to make a living and, if possible, to enable them to focus in their spare time on more interesting forms of photography. The dichotomy was not between art and commerce, but between well-made, relevant, attractive and thus meaningful photography and the rest.

Sander is a superlative example of such a practice and such an authorship (and it is necessary to read this term in the strong sense of “auteur”, i.e. of a conscious and ambitious individual trying to express a worldview through the specific use of a given medium), whose pictures are a perpetual source of inspiration for both his peers and his audience. In that sense, he is an example for today’s artists, who have to cope with a new cultural and economic situation in which the gap between art and commerce, so typical of the second half of the 20^th Century, has come under strong pressure. As the Sander example demonstrates, the future of art should not be looked for in “more art and less commerce” but in the supersession of this divide.

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Links:

Exhibition page: http://www.fotomuseum.be/kalender-fomu.masterdetail.html/p_detail_url/nl/dcul/fotomuseum/kalender/august-sander.period_1.html

Photo gallery at the GETTY Musem: http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1750/august-sander-german-1876-1964/