Fantasie (New Composition)
26.03.2025 - 23.04.2025 multiple locations
Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, Gent (B) - La Seine Musicale, Parijs (F) - Concertgebouw Brugge (B)
Symfonie Orkest Vlaanderen, Kristiina Poska, Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir & Soloist Lore Binon with Ensemble Revue Blanche
Annelies Van Parys tells a story about the relationship between the individual and the masses. How does that group dynamic of brotherhood that Beethoven so longed for work? The libretto of the work is by Gaea Schoeters.
Nemo Observatorium 02002
21.03.2025 - 22.03.2025 BLIK X BLIK
Pilsen (CZ)
NEMO OBSERVATORIUM 02002 - Styrofoam particles are blown around in a big transparent cylinder by five strong fans. Visitors can take place one by one on the armchair in the middle of the whirlpool, in the eye of the storm, where it is calm and safe. Spectacular at first sight, this installation turns out to mesmerise as a kind of meditation machine, challenging the visitor to stay centred and find peace in a fast changing environment. After a while the space seems to expand and one's sense of time deludes.
Biennale en Commun(s) / HABITER, arts numériques et hybrides
20.03.2025 - 20.05.2025 Université Évry Paris-Saclay, Bâtiment Facteur Cheval
Évry-Courcouronnes (F)
Manufacture poétique d’icebergs artificiels - Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff
A frozen safe, Antarctica constitutes the largest reserve of fresh water on the planet, accounting for approximately 90%. Its ground is rich, and about 20% of the world's reserves of oil, gas, and minerals are believed to be buried there.
Officially, a neutral and demilitarised territory, reserved for scientific study, Antarctica is a terra nullius, belonging to no one. The Antarctic Treaty rules out any possibility of exploiting natural resources until 2048. Unofficially, some scientific bases serve as flags for states to claim a part of the continent.
In 2012, under the guise of scientific research, the Russians drilled up to 3,768 meters to test hydrocarbon extraction technologies in polar environments. The Chinese mapped the continent's resources.
The installation Manufacture Poétique d’Icebergs Artificiels represents the map of the Antarctic continent, divided into 350 iceberg units. Audiences are invited to rearrange these units into a new, artificial topography of the territory. This staging becomes the play-support to explore future challenges related to the white continent, blending geopolitical fiction and geostrategic projection.
Les Unités Icebergs – Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff en collaboration avec Vanessa Bell
The iceberg unit is a fictional unit that fits in a child's hand and measures the cryosphere and its disappearance. These units - which could be described as pixels or satellite tiles - evoke the division of resources into geo-strategic parcels. And they raise questions about geo-political borders and fractures.
By ironically reusing the codes of projections used in industrial drawings, these prints weave several narrative threads that echo our immediate present and future.
Tipping point at Biennale EXPERIMENTA
08.02.2025 - 01.03.2025 La Bastille – Salle Dutrievoz,
Grenoble (F)
The installation Tipping Point by Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff is a sensitive and poetic tribute to those dying glaciers. It stages the (re)birth of an artificial glacier protected by a dome; a drip is feeding the glacier that will grow during the exhibition. The device invites the viewer to attend the birth of this artificial glacier. It is inspired by the “ice stupas” invented by the engineer Sonam Wangchuk and used to fight against water shortages during the summer in Ladakh.
Between a laboratory experiment, an attempt to repair the climate or an ironic collector’s item, the installation confronts us with time and scales; 10.000 years ago, the stabilisation of our cryosphere coincided with the first human traces we found in Mesopotamia, while the fist glaciers are disappearing in 70 years under the pressure of the human activity.
Luminous Ether - Prototype in Symbiosis: Art in the Age of AI
23.01.2025 - 29.03.2025 SWPK Gallery
New York (USA)
Luminous Ether by Aernoudt Jacobs is a work that renders the inaudible electromagnetic fields around and beyond Earth perceptible through voices generated by AI algorithms. It combines ancient methods and novel techniques to visualize electromagnetic waves through an installation of luminous foil speakers enhanced with robotics and AI. A prototype will be showcased at the SWPK Art Foundation in New York during the expo Symbiosis: Art in the Age of AI.
The exhibition Symbiosis: Art in the Age of AI is a platform for dialogue and exploration. Through this show, we aim to develop a deeper understanding of the symbiotic relationship between humans and machines, and demonstrate the wide range of possibilities for using AI in art. As opposed to only focusing on the currently popular type of AI technology (i.e., “generative AI”), we want to present a more broad conceptual and aesthetic landscape of AI arts.
The exhibition features works by Alexandra Dementieva, Anna Frants, Petermfriess, Aernoudt Jacobs, Eunsu Kang, William Latham, Lev Manovich, and Koen Theys.
Lecture par Nature - Disqualifier l'univers
15.01.2025 Organised by Chroniques
Bibliothèque de Berre l'’Étang (F)
Disqualifier l'univers by Barthélémy Antoine-Loeff & Vanessa Bell is an immersive performance combining light, ice and magma, exploring the states of matter in the universe. Inspired by the demotion of Pluto into a dwarf planet, it questions the way we categorise and limit the world. Through ice volcanoes and floating mountains discovered on Pluto, Barthélémy Antoine Loeff and Vanessa Bell weave a narrative about New Worlds and exoplanets, echoing our own environmental disqualification.
Lecture par Nature - Nous entrons dans l’heure bleue comme en nous-mêmes
14.01.2025 - 01.02.2025 Organised by Chroniques
Médiathèque Berre-L'Étang (F)
This exhibition takes a unique look at water, highlighting its fragility: the birth of an artificial glacier to symbolise the fight against its disappearance, and an interactive experience based on the geopolitical issues surrounding Antarctica... A sensitive experience to help you grasp contemporary environmental issues. Three installations to see and experience: Tipping Point, La Manufacture poétique d'icebergs artificiels and Unités d'iceberg.
Exhibition by Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff in collaboration with Vanessa Bell.
Aquaphoneia at 798 Art, Science Technology Biennale 2025: SYMPTOMATICA | HORIZON
11.01.2025 - 30.04.2025 798 CUBE
Beijing (ROC)
Aquaphoneia (2016) by Navid Navab
This alchemical installation features a floating horn that echoes the ghost of Edison’s machine. But unlike early recording, herding sound energy to etch pressure patterns in solid matter, this odd assemblage transmutes voice into water and water into air.
Disembodied voices abandon their sources to cross the event horizon of the horn. Estranged, the schizo-phone falls into the narrow depths of the bell, squeezed into spatiotemporal infinity, calcinated, liquified and released. The aqueous voice then flows into three alchemical chambers where inner time is surrendered to the tempi of matter: unbound, yet lucid and sound.
The Physical Mind at Chroniques Biennale
07.11.2024 - 19.01.2025 Friche la Belle de Mai
Marseille (F)
During a residency in Shanghai, Teun Vonk discovered by chance that it eased his stressed body and mind to apply physical pressure to his body. Contrary to what one may expect, the registration of sensory input does not improve in a heightened state of sensitivity, such as stress. Such a state serves the evolutionary purpose by filtering out irrelevant information, only focusing on the accurate response: fight or flight. When experiencing such a state, applying pressure to the body has a strong stress-relieving effect. Participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states
With The Physical Mind, Vonk seeks to let participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states by applying physical pressure to the body. The installation consists of two inflatable objects. The participant lays down in between, is lifted up and gently squeezed between the two inflatable objects. The lifting creates an unstable feeling, a slightly stressful sensation that is directly contrasted with a secure feeling of being gently squeezed between two soft objects
Paradoxically, this forced physical stimulus reduces feelings anxiety and paradoxically stress and the flight- or fight-response disappear. The participant experiences and increased sensitivity to stimuli, normalized alertness and a calm state of mind. The positive effects of this increased receptivity can continue for a few hours after the experience. The installation evokes empathy in bystanders who witness a participant undergo the experience.
1 Drop 1000 Years at Chroniques Biennale
07.11.2024 Friche la Belle de Mai
Marseille (F)
Homeostasis is a fundamental process for the balance of life. By allowing an organism to maintain an appropriate temperature according to the conditions in which it evolves, it is both a symbol of adaptation and durability.
The Global Conveyor Belt is a huge ocean stream called the thermohaline loop, it stirs up the waters of the five oceans and conveys heat on a global scale. Carried by the currents of this deep circulation loop, a drop of water crosses the globe in less than a thousand years and, in so doing, sculpts the world: with it travels nutrients, heat and animals, thus regulating the entire climate and ecosystems of our planet. We know for sure that this current has been slowing down abnormally for more than 200 years because of human activity, and if this deregulation keeps on going it could lead to a worldwide collapse of life through climate change. Water is the matter of life.
Seeking to highlight the finesse of our homeostatic system and the fragility of its balance, the artist proposes an artistic interpretation of these intimate and global currents that happens to be essential to the survival of our species and its environment.