Ver Banden / Associations

Gruzemayer is helping to realise

“VER BANDEN”

Jef Lambrecht

….associations of sorts,

a three-part quick-fix exhibition series with work by Jef Lambrecht, founder of the Belgian Institute for World Affairs (with Karel Schoetens) the Saint Nicholas Chapter and various departments including EAR… known by the wider belgian public as radio journalist specialising in middel eastern affairs and freelance commentator on the arts.

#1 Ver Beelden (part one) april 28th to May 15th 2016

a dive into the archives, basement, attic, rifling through the shelves… an attempt to give an impression of artistic activities from the early stages until fairly recently…  say 1980-2000) omitting a large section in which JL was busy mainly with writing books on the situation in the arab world, concentrating of travel and research, and participating only sporadically in artistic situations.

A small show in the museum of contemporary art in Antwerp, the MuHKA comprises an attempted overview INBOX and three larger works in the forum space on the second floor, as well as an evening of never seen rushes at the nearby CinemaZuid on the 18th of may at 19:30

see relevant websites for details…

photo Dialogist kantor 1992

part 2

next up is an occupation of the Orbino container-space in the Middleheimmuseum Antwerp, Open air sculpture park… from 19th may to 6th of june 2016…

here spoken, written painted word will be the main theme…

part 3

will take place in the ‘Poortgebouw’ opposite LLS 387 contemporary art space, with larg-scale works and most recent drawings, among other things… from the 29th of may to june 26

High performance photohumor & more

Or something like that. The original point of departure was a misfired proposal for the symposium photography performing humor which has been postponed... having a background in all these concepts, Patrick Morarescu and I thought we might do something with it and decided to open a small investigative studio at Buktapaktop in Brussels in advance of said symposium... we even got friends to fly in from Switzerland and Germany for what ended up being a bit of Belgian shut- & lockdown tourism...

Anyway, we had prepared some ludicrous questions based on Barthe’s Camera Lucida, referring to the ‘affective turn’ mentioned in the symposium’s open call, as well as various investigations into the ‘Augenblick’ (blink-of-eye-moment) by such as Karl-Heinz Bohrer (Ästhetische Negativität) and Vilém Flusser (Bildmischung) as well as our own hare-brained ideas concerning the subject, object, ocular operator...

Luck would have it that the run-up to our slapstick operation would be marred by the terror attacks in Paris, reminding us as Charlie Hebdo did - that being funny can cost you dear... but is it a reason to stop? No- so rather than postponing as so many, we decided to go ahead and wing it. The small impromptu studio was based on basic historic models, using daylight and diffusion through drapes & curtains, some props and attitudes... or as one sitter said, nomadic studios as one still finds in far-flung places and which used to wander about our fairground circuits... 

Perhaps because of the lockdown a lot of the sitters opted for the new fashion of covering your face, everyone is beginning to hide behind veils and headdress, balaclava’s and bataclans.... except those who are about to blow themselves up... a different kind of blow-up than we considered in the 60’s... even the kids decided democratically not to participate for fear of having themselves displayed on facelook and/or other unsavory social media... now that imagery has become so free-for-all (everyone pays), no-one wants it any more... 

(one of P.M.’s projects is ‘performing grounds’ in which no humans figure but which speaks of human activity and intervention in the landscape and architecture of our public space – maybe that will be all we can  document (doculent?) in the future... without permission)

After a rather slow start the studio warmed up with the presence of friends, and an interesting series of discreet portraits were produced... the second part of the operation was curtailed somewhat by the fact there was no longer a need for a preparatory discussion for the upcoming symposium, and essentially boiled down to a short (presumably comic) performative send-off of the proceedings after which some socializing and banter rounded off the evening, before heading off into the uncertain night.

Heinrich O

Back on track (river) barge/plot

High time to update or rathe resuscitate this channel, having been off on a tangent again ….and still now,

- just hanging on… and getting things done by fluke. 

As it is Gruzemayer has an office as it were, to redress the gap after the 'former offices' were closed... tat's quite a bit of dust - years ago... what eight or so? anyway after an introductory get together the first effort will be a sort of informal info-office dealing with the activities of a friendly boat indeed, the Tenace, on tour through Belgium along what's laft of a once extensive and efficient canal system.

see also  'Tenace on Tour'

We will be accompanying the good boat through the province of Hainaut and perhaps even rekindle an old project while we're at it

Die Landschaft / a project by PDC & DMM...  but that is still a big question... more wishful thinking i guess...

anyway the good boat Tenace is already on it't way and will be ascending at Ronquières on, yet ascension sunday… but it seems the musicians couldn’t make it

 so it’s now slated for monday the 18th of may…

oops, news just in - no ascension concert, need to move on, sorry, check site for next move

after that plod on water-wise past La Louvière, and the the next boat-lift Strepy-Thieu, where new and old meet…

after that Mons, visiting the goings-on of this year’s cultural capital including a project by Lise Duclaux at the ‘Carrosse’  home for mentally and phiscally disadvantaged at St Symphorien, just on the city limits… part of an overall participation outsider art project for a show called ‘Monsens’ opening at the BAM on june 20th…

( see also sites liseduclaux and monsens for more and update info...)

...but back to our musical barge Tenace - it will be picking up and disgorging passengers and bicycle followers and then continue along the canal Nimy-Blaton-Peronnes, intervening with wildcard-wildcat art along the way, a bit like hobo-signs and such, to Peruwelz, where a longer stay of two weeks and activities of all sorts will take place, supporded by the very interestingly active local art centre ‘Arrêt 59’ (across from the train station) - and there will be a sort of info-expo-office at the rue de Roucourt 67 (Dépendance interdépendante du bureau G... Depinterdep)…

more soon

end-of-year cupcake

as an end-of-year treat there is a small Gruze-intervention in a multi-facetted Cadavre Exquis project developing in the ‘Vitrine de la Rue de Flandre 7’ Brussels… (invited by Annick N)

 a good way to look again at the floating island C, which had been languishing at the top of the landing for some time now, waiting for an outing into the unknown… this situation, with it’s constant change and variant participants is just the ticket… it is a hollow rendition of a cut out form of the island, reversed upon setting, and in that sense a play on Gaudi’s investigation of reverse gravity… the negative is a free agent in the limited space of the vitrine and was intended for the showcase across the entrance, now garnished with dead and dusty flies… but the lock seems to have gone block tight…

an empty year /darkened

Darkened days A year since the HTH was closed, now on the verge of dilapidation The ivy grows across the shuttered brow now blind to the landscape below Water and heat have been disconnected, the leaves gathering in the eves Conspiring an overflow Into the house, warping the herringbone floor (actually it's staff an tail) The exhibitions long gone, The echoes of literature faded Just a bitter aftertaste of local beer Gone stale ( the drips carefully accumulated have been set aside and run down...) A sorry state for all concerned And a harbinger of worse to come I fear.

It seems the house and gardens are protected Protected from what and for whom? Not the winter magpies They laugh at al passers by And the shivering beasts Left behind

just to round off 13 / looking for homes

still looking for homes - hald-wild garden style, need space, no fluffies... Some Teirlinckhuis-clan cats still need homes to go to, if able to provide contact bureau gruzemayer thanks

The smell of eurosoup wafts over the Glogauerstrasse…

Well, it’s been a long time but finally Heini got to Berlin… born before the wall went up and now, long after it’s gone, come to have a look-see. Another aspect was this story of having been registered in Berlin at time of birth, it still being a military section-zone at the time… but it seems there is no record of it, and as such just a ruse. In any case I thought it might be appropriate to prepare my contribution to the ELAA performance fest ‘second’ in German… and it made for an interesting train of thought (I find thoughts travel differently in German..) As it happened, it was all in English… which sort of threw me, because the basic trajectory was a German one and now I ended up on a different set of rails leading somewhere close to the middle of nowhere… fine by me, and the whole thing has more of a Eurosceptic ring to it than originally intended… Essentially a short introduction into the manner of the European commission, and resulting in a sort of inedible Maccedoine soup in a dog-bone broth… held up by lashings of gelatin and wire… common garden variety as well as galvanized.

Attempts to get the populace moving proved futile, perhaps Berliners don’t like to get told what to do any more… and so it was also difficult to engage them in a poï-poï style greet & role play… to say not at all thank you. But the initiation did break a rather hushed silence which befell the situation during the first part of the evening… and so it was a sort of successful mess… especially since the soup never could stand on it’s own… as far as I know, ( have not yet heard the report from the second half of the festival)

More soon.