K.U.Leuven - Arts Faculty
Erasmushuis
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21/03
B - 3000 Leuven
Research > Research Projects
Contract Research
Photofilmic images in contemporary art and visual culture (May 2012 –April 2014)
Supported by a Mandat d’impulsion scientifique (MIS) of the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique, Communauté française de Belgique (FNRS), the project aims to study the impact of photofilmicstructures in the production, the function and the perception of images within contemporary art and visual culture. With Photofilmic images are meant images that are generated on the basis of both photographic and filmic processes. Consequently, they mingle different temporal, spatial and perceptional realities. In this sense, they are transitional images fluctuating between categories which were once attributed separately to photography or film, such as stasis and movement, past and presence, composition and narration. With the advent of digital technology, photofilmic images are getting increasingly widespread in recent years. Imovie, photosynth, AutoStitch and PhantaMorph for example are computer software which allow to create animated images on the basis of photographs. As such techniques are getting more and more important in different domains of image production in popular culture and the visual arts, the impact of photo-filmic images on our visual culture will have wide reaching consequences for our use, our perception and our understanding of images and thus for our view on the world given the fact that our access to that what we call reality is to a large extent mediated through images. For this reason, the project suggests a study of photofilmic images, which goes beyond well-established frontiers between the various disciplines and sectors where such images occur and where they are discussed, in order to understand how exactly images operate within our contemporary media society. This interdisciplinary approach considers different domains such as visual art, cinema, and popular cultureand diverse academic disciplines such as film studies, photography theory, art history, visual culture studies, and media theory. Therefore, the following questions are fundamental: What technologies are used in which contexts and for what purpose? What for exactly have they been invented and how are they diffused and used in different contexts? How they are perceived according to these different contexts and uses?
In and Out of Brussels: Aesthetics / Histories / Politics Between Europe and Africa (2010-2012)
Funded by the Fondation Fernand Willame, Stichting van Openbaar Nut (Belgium).
In and Out of Brussels: Africa Inside Europe represents a multifaceted project, including an intensive collaboration between international theoreticians, art critics, and Brussels-based artists over a two year period, operating on various levels of production and output.
It centers on four recent art films by Herman Asselberghs, Sven Augustijnen, Renzo Martens, and Els Opsomer, two of which will be newly produced within the framework of this project.
Specifically, the project addresses the diverse ways in which these artists have investigated sub-Saharan Africa both as a site of political conflict, poverty, and migration, as well as an imaginary screen for the construction of European identity, humanitarian concern, and political engagement:
- Martens’ provocative film Episode III – Enjoy Poverty (2008; recipient of the Culture Prize of the Flemish Community in 2010) investigates poverty in the DR Congo, challenging the common perceptions of humanitarianism, photojournalism and politically engaged contemporary art;
- Augustijnen's Spectres, that will premier at the Brussels KunstenFestivaldesArts in May 2011, powerfully analyses Belgian colonial history, in particular the haunting of cultural memory by the assassination of Patrice Lumumba;
- Opsomer’s film, a work in progress, proposes a subtle perceptual inquiry into Senegal’s urban fabric and social networks that seeks to rupture cultural stereotypes;
- and Asselberghs’ proposed film, a self-reflexive inquiry, plans to consider the political motivations of earlier engagements of filmmakers such as Pier Paolo Pasolini, who also filmed on the continent.
In the works of these diverse practitioners, Africa emerges variously as a zone of crisis, situated between the fraught legacies of colonialism and the recent failed neoliberal state; as well, Africa figures as a terrain of artistic invention and a focal point for the critical interrogation of political practice within Europe.
The project intends to parse the political and aesthetic implications of these four films, generating discussion via interdisciplinary and international conversation. Its multiple outcomes include:
1) four symposia gathering international and interdisciplinary participants to discuss the project’s films; the first symposium, on Renzo Martens' Episode III, took place on May 21, 2010 at the Flemish Royal Academy of Arts in Brussels. On May 21, 2011, a by-invitation seminar on Sven Augustijnen's Spectres (2011) will be organized at Wiels, Centre for Contemporary Art (Brussels).
2) a book project (Leuven University Press, Lieven Gevaert Series) that will integrate the edited transcripts of the four conversations, which will include photographic portfolios of imagery from the films;
3) an exhibition that will combine the screening of all four films and offer the opportunity for an international book-release event.
Photography theory in historical perspective (Blackwell publishing, 2011)
It is hard to imagine today's world without photography, which is why frequently we forget to be critical about its role and significance. Fortunately, in recent decades we have witnessed an increasingly larger role of photography in contemporary art. Much work in this tradition precisely aims at resisting or opposing the common photographic language that surrounds us in everyday life. This particular function of photography in the visual arts challenges us to reflect on issues such as media, representation and art as social criticism. The increasing prominence of photography in art certainly also warrants careful study, especially with a view to the coverage of this subject in educational contexts. The aim of our book is to contribute to the understanding of the nature of the photographic medium in contemporary art, including the implications of this medium's hybridity for the potential meanings of photography when applied in artistic contexts. Based on comparative studies of media in visual arts, the book will pay attention to several key terms and focus on contemporary photography and art, broadly defined as the period from the late 1960s to the present. Our theoretical framework, however, will also cover earlier views and debates to underscore the historical roots of the contemporary issues involved.
The project is about our relation to space and time and how we can visually question previously set standards of our perception. A strip camera will be used as an instrument to create multi-perspective images. By emphasizing the link between the still image and the motion of the camera the spectator will be asked to restate his position to the stillness of the image and to his the notion of time in still images. To this end, a light weight portable strip camera recording and wireless transmission system will be realized, that is ready to be used by dancers during a life performance among other in-field use.
“Minor” photography: the case of Belgian photography during and as of World War II (with a
special emphasis on Cobra “paroptics” and “entoptics” on the one hand and on new visions of
time, story, and narrative on the other hand)
This research project is part of a broader research program that will be conducted by an international
network entailing the Lieven Gevaert Centre for Photography (K.U. Leuven), the MA
and graduate program in photography studies of the University of Leiden (prof. Kitty Zijlmans) and the
Royal Library in Brussels (Archives et musée des lettres belges). The Leuven research project will
provide an in-depth study of the contributions of Belgian photography during and as of World War II –a
widely ignored corpus in international photography studies– to new ways of thinking, conceptualizing,
and practicing, the photographic medium. The study shall focus on the two aspects that have
embodied this innovation: on the one hand the critical writings of the artists themselves; on the other
hand their creative experiments. The above-mentioned notions of “paroptics” and “entopics”, which are
borrowed from the work of the Belgian writer and photographer Christian Dotrement (born in Leuven
and cofounder of the Cobra group), are examples of the way in which artists have tried to label and
theorize themselves their own experimental practice. In this research project, Belgian photography is
considered an exemplification of ‘minor photography’, i.e. of a type of photography that, similar to the ‘minor literatures’ theorized by Deleuze and Guattari, develops new visions of the medium due to a
specific use of its own peripheral position, both geographically and institutionally, and to its creative
distance toward the ‘centre’ (or the ‘centres’: Paris, London, New York). The research project is based
on all the current top research in the field of photography, to wich both the Leuven applicants and the
members of the research network are already contributing, yet it also wants to put a strong emphasis
on the critical reinterpretation of some basic stances of this research, which has always been very ‘major photography’-oriented, thanks to the study of unresearched archives as well as to the study of
the less well-known Belgian photography. The research entails both a descriptive part and a
theoretical-interpretative part. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which the photographic
medium functions as a cultural form in a broader cultural and historical framework, more specifically to
the interaction between photography and painting on the one hand and the paradoxical use of
photography (still hampered by the idea of the medium as linked with the ‘decisive moment’) in textual
and narrative frameworks. Finally, the study will focus also very strongly on the relationships between
photography and its exhibition and publication contexts. In this respect, the research project
contributes to the emerging interest for “book history” in the photographic field.
(In)site, site-specific photography revised, applied to the archaeological site Sagalassos
"(in)site, site-specific photography revised, applied to the archaeological site Sagalassos", is a practice-based artistic research project on photography and archaeology.
In archaeology, photography is mainly used as a technique aimed at gathering data and evidence. The current research project is an attempt to redefine in a theoretical as well as in a practical manner the traditional relationship between archaeology and photography in order to produce new forms of image-making more adapted to contemporary visual culture. The project considers photography a "mode of engagement", i.e. a practice in which a picture is shaped and constructed by the photographer, not a practice in which a picture is mechanically taken. Thanks to this shift it becomes possible to take into account an artistic input, for archaeological photography will be able to establish a dialogue with new forms of presentation and interpretation, and to make them profitable for both art and science. The concrete output of the project will be twofold: publication of theoretical research and exhibition of the practice-based photographs (the latter in collaboration with the city of Leuven and the Photo Museum of Antwerp).
A three year project lead by Bruno Vandermeulen (University of Leuven) and Danny Veys (Hogeschool Sint-Lukas) and partners Sagalassos Archaeological Research Project, Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography and Visual Studies, Fotomuseum Provincie Antwerpen and the City of Leuven. The project is funded by the Institute for Practice based Research in the Arts of the Association KULeuven.
Hilde Van Gelder and Helen Westgeest are currently writing a book on the theory of photography in contemporary art, to be published by Blackwell.
Alexander Streitberger
Alexander Streitberger is currently working on the concepts of modernism and modernity in photographic discourses and a book with Peter Downsborough.
Archived
Philippe Van Snick Project Contract Research under the auspices of the Research Platform in Art of the Association K.U.Leuven
By means of a profound theoretical reflection on post-war abstract and minimalist painting, steered by Hilde Van Gelder, a framework is set for an in-depth study on Belgian minimalist painting in general, and, more specifically, on the work of Philippe Van Snick. Throughout several specific workshops, publications and a concluding international symposium, this research project tries to fill a manifest lacuna in reception history of modern art in Belgium.
Philippe Van Snick will create a series of paintings, starting from a reflection on his own artistic vocabulary. Hereby, his working space is both a laboratory and an observatory. This research amounts to major survey of Van Snick's body of work in M Leuven (Spring 2010).
Research partners: Lies Daenen (CERA Foundation), Bart Geerts (KHLimburg/HISK), Joris Ghekiere (Karel de Grote Hogeschool/painter), Luk Lambrecht (CCStrombeek), Pieter Vermeersch (artist), Lore Van Hees (City Museum of Leuven), Eva Wittockx (STUK Arts Centre)
Status and functions of photography in the discourses on art in the seventies and eighties: A theoretical practice between anti-modernism and analysis of the discourse
Based on an epistemological and historiographical approach, the study considers the place of the critical discourses on photography in the 1970s and 1980s within the history and theory of photography and art. Therefore, the research will focus on the artists-theoreticians (Victor Burgin, Allan Sekula, Martha Rosler) who contributed profoundly to theoretical reflection on photography and art in terms of a critical analyses of the cultural, historical and political contexts and uses of images. Furthermore, there will be an examination of the reciprocity between theory and artistic practice, which seems to be one of the leading factors concerning the orientations and transformations of critical discourses in contemporary art.
Olivier Mignon (supervisor: Prof. Alexander Streitberger)
“The Unwanted Self: Contemporary Photography from the Low Countries”, Brighton University Gallery
4April till 14th of May 2008
This major exhibition will showcase the work of nine internationally renowned photographers rarely seen in the UK and which exemplifies current tendencies indicative of contemporary ‘low countries’ photography. Belgian photographers
- Geert Goiris, Gert Jochems, Marie- Francoise Plissaart and Marc Trivier
– and Dutch photographers - Frank van der Salm, Gertjan Kocken,
Marnix Goosens, Viviane Sassen and Maritine Stig – are included in the exhibition, which seeks to explore the relationships between the genres that each artists is working within and the national contexts and traditions that might inevitably shape and influence what they do.
5 April - A free one day symposium, with contributions from the participating artists and the exhibition’s curators, examining questions concerning national cultural identity and its relevance in today’s era of new forms of internationalism and
globalization. Info 01273 643010.
The exhibition has been organised by David Green (University of Brighton) in collaboration with Jan Baetens (University of Leuven), Frits Gierstberg (Nederlands Fotomuseum), Rotterdam and Christoph Ruys (PhotoMuseum Antwerp).
Photography and Medium Specificity. The Case of Henri Van Lier Contract Research under the auspices of the Research Platform in Art of the Association K.U.Leuven
Despite the current hype of media hybridization, medium specificity remains a crucial issue for each challenging theoretical and practice-based research on photography. Certainly in the case of photography, where the introduction of digital photography seems to have suppressed the very idea of medium specificity, this reflection may play a key role in the redefinition of artistic and theoretical innovation in the new media era. The pioneering work by Henri Van Lier of the 1980s, which is now being rediscovered, will be the starting point of a research project that will put medium specificity once again on the agenda.
The project will be a mix of practical and theoretical aspects, focusing on the one hand on the creative 're-illustration' of Henri Van Lier's "Philosophy of Photography" (to be published in an English version in the LGC Series) and on the other hand on a series of lectures, workshops, and conferences on the theme (both in Belgium and abroad). The whole project will be presented also as an exhibition, an event that will be addressed also as a project of curatorial medium specificity. The project will start in February 2006 and finish in July 2007.
Promotor: Jan Baetens - K.U.Leuven (jan.baetens@arts.kuleuven.be)
Copromotor: Geert Goiris Hogeschool Sint Lukas Brussel (photofactory@excite.com)
Research partners: Bart Van Den Bossche (KU Leuven - Italian Lierature), Marc Lits (UCL - COMU), Bernard Darras (Sorbonne - Paris I), Inge Henneman (FotoMuseum Antwerpen), Mieke Bleyen (Lieven Gevaert Centre - KU Leuven)
Funding: European Union (trough an “Erasmus IP” grant)
Didactic program and research on the teaching of intercomparative relationships in art
Output: a two week international seminar (2004: Bologna, 2005: Groningen, 2006: Lisboa) and a workshop on the didactics of interart relationships (2006)
Photherel project on the digital dissemination of endangered photographic heritage
Researchers: Jan Baetens and Maerlant Centre (Sara Roegiers, Fred Truyen)
Partners: Photomuseum Province of Antwerp, Université du Mirail-Toulouse, University of Bucharest
Funding: European Union (through a grant allowed by Socrates-Minerva)
Output: online handbook for the museal and digital presentation of endangered photographic heritage
Completed in 2005
For all details: see the online Photherel presentation by Prof. Jan Baetens, Sara Roegiers and Fred Truyen at the ICHIM conference in Berlin (August 2004)
What can Pieter Bruegel mean in the 21st century? Bruegel Revisited invites contemporary artists to formulate an answer to this question through the two-dimensional image. Their work will be exposed in the summer of 2006, from may 12th till September 3rd , in the Castle of Bouchout in the National Botanic Garden of Belgium, Meise. Prof. Hilde Van Gelder is curator of the exhibition.
The central question in this group-exhibition is in which way photography, video and film can be an adequate medium to reflect critically on society. The Lieven Gevaert Research Centre selected renowned Flemish contemporary artists who explore this issue.
Participating artists: Hans Op de Beeck, Nico Dockx, Anne Daems, Dirk Zoete, Angelo Vermeulen, Katrien Vermeire, Vincent Meessen, Arno Roncada, Herman Asselberghs.
This exhibition is a part of the Bruegel 06 project, organized by the VZW De Rand of the Flemish Community. For more information, click here.
