Image&Word

On Saturday, November 13, amidst torrents of rain water gushing down the hilly streets of the Brussels upper town I&W researcher Tom Lambeens and his accomplices Sebastien Conard and Jan Op De Beeck launched their new journal entitled Aambacht. The occasion was the finissage of the exhibition ‘Toegepast: Fit to boost’ organised by Desig Platform Limburg in the gallery of Design Vlaanderen. The production by IMPRIMITIV, Lambeens’, Conard’s and Op De Beeck’s collective non-profit organisation, was – to say the least – an outsider in a gallery filled with design objects. It cannot be denied though, that this is what Aambacht aspires to be: an outsider journal targeted at a niche reader- and – important to stress in this case – spectatorship

On Friday, November 26 at 19h30 Ed Franck and I&W researcher Kris Nauwelaerts will present their new youth literature book Prinses Anna, published by De Eenhoorn at the Literair Museum, Bampslaan 35, Hasselt. To confirm your presence, please send an E-mail to Kris Nauwelaerts (graficus.kris@telenet.be) before November 24.

The exhibition of illustrations and preparatory sketches will take place from November 26 till January 24 2011 at Provinciale Bibliotheek Limburg, Martelarenlaan 17, Hasselt.

On October 26 we had an Image&Word meeting in Hasselt. For that occasion I prepared a short presentation on Walid Raad’s The Atlas Group: an imaginary foundation whose objective is to research and document Lebanon’s contemporary history. In Raad’s own words:

“Our aim with this project has never been to fool viewers and listeners by presenting stories and documents about anything and anyone in order to see what we can ‘get away with’. (…) This project operates between what is sayable, believable and known (as true or false). (…) Hence we would urge you to approach these documents we present as we do, as ‘hysterical symptoms’ based not on any one person’s actual memories but on cultural fantasies erected from the material of collective memories.”

(quoted from “Let’s Be Honest, the Rain helped // 2003” in Merewether, Charles. Documents of Contemporary Art: The Archive. Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press, 2006.)

The visuals of the presentation can be found here.