Considering the consideration

 While one of my works was being (ostensively) executed in Leicester I myself was taking the waters at one of Europes traditional Spas without being Spa itself... Chance had it that I was there at all - since it is not in my usual itinerary even though it is something i would like to do more often.

 

 

Reconsidering considerations

Though taking part in an unnoticed presentation in Leicester UK with a work done for the Nieuwstraat in Dortrecht NL before I decided it was not opportune to travel there myself but let the organizers do the execution with the help of their crew of performers – instead I decided to indulge in my preferred pastime of pitching up in unexpected places – this time in the wake of a series following the history of water – more specifically the rather obscure group loosely attached to Emile Goudeau's hydropathes and based on the the 'buveurs d'eau' of a generation before around Henry Murger (1840's) a splintering that was related to the 'incohérentes' but blended in perfectly with the higher society's penchant to 'take the waters' at various Spa towns across Europe. In fact so much so as to go mainly unnoticed... by their compatriots but also by history.

Originally coined 'waterdrinkers' because they didn't have money to by (more than one) glass of wine, once part of the 'poètes maudits' and their entourage, they evolved to become absorbed by high society in the end... a metamorphosis that intrigued me...

So considering that the action I proposed was being performed unannounced, unnoticed and nu-documented in far away Leicester, I stopped to (re-) consider taking the waters – unnoticed, unannounced and not quite undocumented... for here is a report of this uncanny moment: the one in which the thought came to e, and shortly after, the moment of reconsideration. Whereas this took only a minute or so, the reconsideration involved the timespan between the original waterdrinkers of around 1840 tot the latter-day followers in a completely different guise and social make-up... in fact hardly to be compared, and then the contemporary considerers such as myself -

zut alors

so I dropped an old 50 centime (belgian frank) coin as homage – the other 50 centimes to be deposited elsewhere.

 

 

The Dort

 

On the way to Dordrecht we visited the village of Moerdijk which is slated for disappearance.... this sympathetic little enclave of nature and maritime tradition is being eaten by the inexorable appetite of industry spreading like cancer,,,

Anyway...
This time decided to combine with two aspects and try to keep the reference in the middle... ’marking equidistances’ an intervention for two... meeting in the middle as it were... point of departure being the encounter with Turner at the local museum: on the occasion of a visit of works from the Yale center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut with the centerpiece being "Dort or Dortrecht: the Dort Packet boat from Rotterdam becalmed" which Turner had painted after a visit to the city in 1817/18... along with other fascinating works skirting the tumultuous seas of the diffuse line between naturalism and abstraction...
Quite a few interesting works by Turner, compared & contrasted with Dutch counterparts that inspired him... an exhibition that worked well and worth the visit... and, as if to stay in the maritime surrounding, the practical significance of equidistance is essential for the defining of boundaries in otherwise unclear waters...

(state at) point of departure

One o’clock. After having left the point op departure on the steps of the city hall, we proceeded between balustrade of the bridge over the canal connecting the various ports in the city... and the first lamppost on the corner of the square... from there we zigzagged along the Groenmarkt street from planters and corners, posts and bollards tto the next bridge, the Visbrug with the monument for the De Witte brothers...

Across the bridge then to the Waalse kerk... formerly a church founded by Waloon  (and French)  reformist (Calvinist) refugees from the south... later (edict of Nantes) more hugenots also departed from these parts (VOC and WIC) to various continents .. onwards to the back of the city hall where we encountered a defibrillator... this had to included in the process as homage to the performance space in Chicago that so kindly executed our work a few years back...

Around the corner and we were back on the bridge.. another zig-zag and back where we started with only a couple of minutes to spare... a well rounded intervention to be sure.

(state at) arrival

Again by going walkabout (last time a couple of thousand steps backward) we didn't see much of the other participants aside from our traditional drink after.... more involvement next time... on tge way home a quick visit to Pictura, which is always a fine and interesting experience.  

 x marks the spot (locus) equidistant from/to

 

 

roundup 25

 

Colson in MuHKA

Didn't have much time to look at shows of late – for some reason scurrying about with all sorts of other things going on and only quick jump-ins here and there... saw The Muhka shows while considering the discussions on the demise of a museum, archival show of Morguen was interesting but most of it I sort of knew – fun to see the cake pieces Vaast Colson distributed (one was at the Teirlinckhuis back in the day) reunited – but aside from a few small moments not real impression... Made the effort to see the Donas show at KMSKA as well as the Magritte offering – and here too not bad but a bit underwhelmed, and as so often overrun – a problem nowadays.. 

 

view of work by Sylvie Janssen de Bisthoven in Oudenaarde

Had the chance to visit the Maagdendaal in Oudenaarde again after a long abscene- and was again charmed by Sylvie Janssen de Bisthoven's understatements – measuring discreetly the lines, forms and translucences in what seem at first hand classic poses – structures, frameworks, but immediately extend into the space around them and become in essence sculpture – what is that spacial drawing?(re) Defined space? In any case again glad I saw the most recent suggestions that adhere to the earlier proposals but are again a fresh turn.

 

Baldessari too was a refreshing re-visitation – of course quite a few flashbacks and old friends, but in this slightly idiosyncratic set up a revamped view and admittedly quite a bit of stuff I didn't know – or didn't know how they had progressed... being one of those unknowing victims who think they know- have seen identified and catalogues (categorized) the 'artist' only to find that a lot more was missing than (didn't) meet the eye – the films for instance I had a bit forgotten even though they influenced me from an early stage in my artzoo-gazebo.

 

Also got a chance to jump into Wiels, was curious to see work by Everlyn Nicodemus who had done a presentation at Factor 44 many years ago around 'échec' and here too I recognised the work and appreciate it's engagement for the wrongs and downtrodden, fitting well into the decolonial discourse, but not really reaching me (again) – similarly I was disappointed by the offerings of David Hockney – here too a 'known' for many years, but even with high-tech (well, used of digital) no real surprise and an attempt to reach the sublime by encasing in Mahler, Munch and Vincent VG didn't help – though I was satisfied to have seen these framing works, since there I did discover new slants on old knowns, and appreciated being able to see some 'in the flesh' – another reminder that repro just doesn't cut it – even if digitally born... it does reflect today's world though – flat & schematic, blaring colours with little subtlety, blow up out of it's natural proportions... as a former seriographer I can appreciate some of those qualities but on the whole just in passing by whereas even lesser works by more intriguing minds hold sway even after all these years. 

 

 VVG

last official tri-trip

 

Last tridrive 4 Erich

Triangulation Drive as it should be – a voyage of measurement, calculating the distances that lie between us... it had been a while, but this was a great opportunity for the living to see each other and the dead to be remembered as part of a trajectory in which not all itineraries are congruent.

End of the line for Otto E. the last vestige of his material being under pressure to disappear... as we all do sooner or later; or as he himself said: “...the way from the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Mr. Nobody is short and steep” What better than to end on an artistic note – one that is not concerned with the societal trappings of careers and positions, money and fame...

(though these raise their ugly head intermittently)

 

Somewhere between Godot and the end of an official journey (Ende einer Dienstreise) is a release from the fetters of even the social mores of humans even after death. So the trip went from A to B (Antwerp to Bonn) where the ritual of dematerialization was 

 

 

 

 

 

implemented – beginning with the removal of green growth, and then an attempt to break rock – in the end only slight slivers were removed... chips off the old block, and some words were said, and some rolled oats and chickpeas left behind with stones and candles, gold leaf – one of twenty-five leaves to be shared among the closest kin... or not, for we submerged some in the river Rhine in the evening by the emergence of the moon, reflecting on it's running waters... and then to burn the certificates, so that nearly nothing would be left, hardly a trace, impossible to find for one who was not there...

 

( B to A via D )

We were there momentarily, and still will be for a while but not for ever... a sumptuous evening meal to celebrate our physical selves before retiring for the night, moon rising slowly, no longer a blood moon as it was the night before, eclipsed by our own shadow. Next grey and rainy morning we spent at the museum to visit a show on Wim Wenders... noon saw us cross the river and heat north to Düsseldorf, to our niece, the first to receive a certificate of our endeavor (we had posted the rest in a mailbox at the hotel, but these would take longer than a personal hand-over such as this... of course we celebrated this pregnant moment with 'Kaffee und Kuchen' as is proper in Germany, and had a nice time catching up on all sorts of bits and bobs of information before we split ways: the Belgian delegation to the west, the others retuning south...

 

 

Over / in the run of Time

It was very fitting that we were able to visit Wim Wenders' exhibition after all, because I had already thought that the timing was a special coincidence, as I also saw this venture on the Rhine in the light of the road film "Im Laufe der Zeit," in which the main protagonist (Rüdiger Vogler) produces a special edition printed on the family press for his elderly father, in which he could hand over everything unsaid in black and white... I wanted to use the rockfall (bruchtsein/steinbruch) to also bring a conversation (posthumously) into the rubble, but it only resulted in a splintered fragment...

Yet the film's melancholy also crept in somewhere during our Rhine activity, and the burning on the bank was a good finale. In any case, during my visit to the exhibition, it became clear to me once again how much this filmmaker had shaped my perspective – our entire generation, actually... not to mention early works like the Hantke adaptation of "Die Angst des Tormanns beim 11 meter" and, of course, "Alice in den Städten, Falsche Bewegung, The American Friend, The State of Things, (Stand der Dinge) and Paris Texas, not forgetting 'Der Himmel über Berlin / ailes du désir"... and in general, the 'new German wave' has accompanied all along (colonized our subconscieous)... so I also think that "Germany in Autumn" can also be taken along in our thoughts here, albeit without Wenders... When I then look at the video footage of our event, I'm irresistibly reminded of "Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen / Even Dwarves Started Small" by Werner Herzog... Our action sort of was reminiscent of a futile and failed revolt...

 

So it was an end of an era trip – along ways we have often traveled but this time the context made it more memorable – a farewell to the Rhine, though our niece reminded us she lived just a few hundered yards from the river... so there still is a family presence.

And probably always will be.

 

Heady time for a new example

 since we had let things slide a bit - need to get it back

 (vaag veeg 2025)

beleive it or not, back to painting - very thin, very minimal but with a gesture or two... after all these years of conceptual constipation it seems like a good way forward... 

The reduction of imagery

returning to essential oils in acrylic

to practice... whether oils will ever come back

is the question

over time

but for now these shortstop gestural paintings

are keeping me afloat, between the other

daily chores and rendezvouses

short hops into studio

short hop out

some of it works, some of it doesn't

working all the while

at keeping memory afloat

in order to fill in the gaps

that occur

more and more.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jaunt (springtime)

 

 

first stop Düsseldorf

 

 

 

We started spring on March 8th with a coffee trip, celebrating Women's Day with a visit to the exhibitions in Düsseldorf: Yoko Ono at the K20 and Katharina Sieverding at the K21. The Yoko Ono exhibition was quite interesting, lots to see, including some from the early years that you don't get to see so often, and which charmed me and brought home how much of that eary work also influenced my own practice without really realizing it – osmosis - otherwise, a lot of weel-know stuff... and also very common these days, good to remember where the trends originally came from (I had forgotten, for example, that she participated in the DIAS in London... (Destruction in Art Symposium 1962, organized by Gustaf Metzger)... Katharina Sieverding was also interesting, you're more familiar with the early years in actionist Düsseldorf and have somewhat forgotten the large photographic works of the 70s... or repressed them, seen them as less relevant en though equally engaged as the earlier stuff -... good to take another look, but still not entirely convincing – heart in the right place, but the works just don't quite speak... the distance doesn't help.

Next stop Bonn

Fast-forward Meanwhile, it's April, and finally some time for a detour to Bonn... Yes The grave –. The cemetery was quite pleasant this time, with flowering trees and such. Birds were chirping, and someone had thrown their entire record collection into the general waste bin. I chose a German Grammaphon recording (Privilege Collection) of "Les Grandes Lieder de Schubert" (with Fischer-Diskau and Fritz Wunderlich, Grace Bumbry, and Irmgard Seefried, among others)... In true Romantic style, I lay down at the foot of the gravestone and Sighed and sobbed; Well, a bit Dadaist, yes – I'm thinking of the ProPathetic cabaret, for example, partly because this time we did a cult-culture combo and went to the museum (Bundeskunsthalle): Continuing our series on strong women: Sausan Sontag... interesting, but perhaps more of an overview for the younger generation who may not be so familiar with her work... Another (random) discovery was the exhibition "Para Moderne," which critically examined the lifestyle reforms since the turn of the befor-last century, including the slosh zone between Oberdada Baader's critique of democracy and Schultze-Naumberg's Nazi ideology, all the way to the Haeusserian swastika-communist superman... that's how quickly things can go wrong-wrong, hey – all the way to the alternative (commercialized) lifestyle of the hippies and to "today's false prophets & profits," so to speak - We probably needed a A decent iced coffee on the terrace of the art museum, just to be decadent... but much of the Bonn we knew is disappearing, like everything else. Nevertheless, I was delighted that some of the old avenue trees were still standing... (at Telekom, Friedrich Ebertallee) – because a lot of things are disappearing, and there's also a large construction hole behind the Science Center on Kennedyallee... we'll see wht that will become...

another leap / and back in Belgium

 

 

this time still with a strong sexual reference but on gender-neutral terms, or perspective – specifically sex work an violence – South Africa specifically; Candice Breitz breaking a lance for sexworkers (Ghost Series, Capetown 1994-96 TLDR 2017) and critical of the white middle-class hollywood womens stance, tho well meaning not relevant to the real world.. quite an eye opener, radical and relevant without becoming screamy, letting the voices of the practitioners carry the show – another strong showing in between a slightly stayed 'Broodthaerisan' environment the series of births revisited:reviewed – pushing baby back into the womb... that simple detournement setting off quite some tought... the matriarchal manifest on the other hand seemed a bit much... would have left it to the viewer of the strong imagry to ponder...

 

revisitation

 

The (curious) reappearence of Yoshio Nakajima

I had the privilege of partaking in a rare manifestation of living live art archive with the reappearance of Yoshio Nakajima after 50 years of absence from Belgium. His name and the 'UNBEAT' are forever fixed in the annals of performance and street art in Belgium since the famous happenings in 1965... In fact one might well say that the loitering of this Japanese sage were instrumental in congealing the various tendencies of the time to create the myth that is has become:

Having arrived in Europe after his long hike/hitch-hike across Asia just in time for Szeeman's Documenta 5, he immediately was immersed in all that was going on at the time and was himself a purveyor of the oriental mystique that was all the rage...

Since the late 50's various tendencies such as abstract expressionism, new music and artistic investigations began to merge, Kaprow's first happenings were conceived as musical scores, the

'Jikken Kobo' in Japan mixed various disciplines in what they termed "Happyokai" (recital) based on dada (one hs to think here of one of Yoshio's friend Dada Khan (the 'failed' kamikaze)... as well as neo-dada and Gutai obviously)... 

 

 

So this was an opportunity to see live for oneself the flavour of an event related to these historic references: for me on the one hand the inception of Provo in Amsterdam and the relation to Robert Jasper Grootveld, as part of the Jef L archive (here in the correspondence I found material from the later Ubbeboda Symposium... more on that later) but mainly and of course the dynamics of the happenings on the Meir in Antwerp, the Happening news and the 'Unbeat'-like names such as 'Nihil' and Happy() spacemaker... multimillionaire and Dusseldorf (sic) – Thom Jasper's Veilig-Verkeer-Magiër direct from RJG... A lasting albeit short interlude in the European 'dérive' that saw Yoshio Nakajima end up in Sweden... 

 

So after all these years we have the opportunity to see what the fuss was all about... we are reminded that in those days, street performance was viewed as a major disturbance of the public order and the authorities had a difficult time to administrate a response: removal from the national territory was in fact all they could do – and did... Nowadays it seems completely laughable but it's all coming back. But in contrast to the rather wild and destructive fare of yore (thinking also of Metzger's Destruction in Arts Symposium) Yoshio has graduated to a more kind, light and ritualistic collaboration with positive vibes, even if with a critical note and reminder of our mistreatment of nature and each other (recently Ukraine and Middle-East) But the sharp edge of youth is rounded – some might say worn – and has a patina to it while still looking frash: the collaboration here was with Stakattak-frontman Nick Defour and performer & organizer Merzedes Sturm-Lie, a well as with an impromptu by Philippe Tonnard. Attendance was middling... it reminded me of the interest generated by the visit of Ben Patterson in the flux-year 2012... aside from a few academics and aficionado's there was hardly any response... here too the remnant of the public staying behind for the lecture (by historian ) in the anatomical theatre was meagre – but we got another performance which the others missed – making it an exclusive moment...

Of course it was all recorded – nowadays the documentary aspect is out of all proportion – all the more reason to partake live, giving the flavour and sphere rather than just the metadata... The song and the movement conveying the vibrations – the 'vibes' as they used to say – an essential part of the experience, and as such I am very glad to have been a part of this rare occasion... the scale of which made it possible to be up close and personal for a brief encounter as it were...

of which kind is a bit of a mystery...

and must remain so.

Ho!