Ecdysis
03.11.2023 - 16.12.2023 ELEKTRA GALLERY
Montreal, Quebec (CA)
Laura Colmenares Guerra is a Colombian artist based in Brussels, working with installation, sculpture & digital narratives in the field of 3D (animation, Virtual Reality and 3D printing).
Laura explores the intricate relationships between contemporary Western societies and the natural world, encompassing ecosystems, the environment, and all living beings. Her artworks pivot around a profound exploration of the intersection between these domains, leading her to create immersive settings that relate to the politics of landscape and the notions of territory. She explores the constructions of the concepts of nature, natural and language as a foundation medium for reality.
ECDYSIS
Laura Colmenares Guerra & Jana Irmert
Ecdysis is the natural process through which reptiles and insects moult, shedding their old skin or exoskeleton multiple times during their lifecycles. In this animated piece, a slow-moving camera meanders through a 3D reproduction of the Amazon Rainforest's topography, creating an abstract fluidity that simultaneously evokes a profound sense of vastness and the outstanding likeness to the texture of an animal's skin.
Upon closer examination, the intricacies of the Amazon basin's topography reveal an uncanny resemblance to the skin of a living, colossal creature. Indeed, with its rich diversity of river ecosystems and rainforests, the Amazon can be envisioned as an immense and interconnected organism.
The animation was developed using the 3D reproduction of the Amazon basin's topography, created within the framework of the Ríos Trilogy project.
The sound composition was made entirely from field recordings in the Amazon using hydrophones and ultrasound recordings. Through various processing methods, the sound elements are extracted from the dense jungle environments and transformed into melodic formations and rhythmic patterns.
Credits: Laura Colmenares Guerra (3D animation) & Jana Irmert (field recordings and sound composition)
Ce qui disparait se transforme immédiatement en éternité
26.10.2023 - 29.10.2023 KIKK Festival
Namur (B)
Ce qui disparait se transforme immédiatement en éternité.
Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff in collaboration avec Antoine Meissonnier
Installation, 2021
"Ce qui disparait se transforme immédiatement en éternité" explores the multiple questions of climate repair and technosolutionism using artificial intelligence.
The installation stages a fictional laboratory for measuring the melting of symbolic mini icebergs which are generated in ice before being placed in an analysis cell with the aim of finding the ultimate iceberg: the one which, by its shape, will make a consensus, which one will take the longest to melt, based on the analyzes of the icebergs previously generated.
The installation uses a genetic algorithm specially developed to try to solve this problem of climatic optimization...
Obviously, the starting postulate is absurd, and ironic. Just like the idea of imagining being able to "repair" the climate by artificially prolonging the life of icebergs with the help of a genetic algorithm.
Cycles
26.10.2023 - 29.10.2023 KIKK Festival
Delta, Namur (B)
Cycles is an installation where everyone is invited to become aware of the relationships linking cyclical and unpredictable phenomena. Harmony and chaos call out to each other in this space where the eight strings of light dance and unfold.
Despite the vivacity of its propulsion, the wire leaves an impression of floating. By marking the nuance between the purity of this suspended movement and the violence of the mechanism that fecundates it, the work proposes an experience where infinity cohabits with the restarts that are part of it.
These dialogues are also found in the sound space: the tuned engines envelop the music diffused with their elusive timbres and draw this landscape in which the harmony is built as much by its power as by its vulnerability.
TSUNAMI by SONORO QUARTET
15.10.2023 - 17.05.2024 Various locations
On tour
One of the Belgian string quartets causing a furore is undoubtedly the Sonoro Quartet. Now their international dream is also coming true. Within the European Concert Hall Organisation, they were chosen as Rising Stars and will represent BOZAR in no less than 16 European concert halls during the ‘23-‘24 season. Their luggage will also contain a token from one of our most distinguished Belgian composers, Annelies Van Parys. She wrote the work Tsunami especially for this tour.
About Tsunami
"The piece is inspired by the marvelous call of the Japanese Cicadas. Their sound struck me when I was walking through the parcs in Tokyo during my residency at the TOKAS Tokyo Arts and Space. Not only their voicing, but also their rhythm as well as the strength of their call was extraordinary to my ears and I immediately knew I would use them for a string piece. When the request for Sonoro Quartet came a few weeks later, I gladly accepted because I knew this would be the perfect ensemble for my idea. So the Tsunami here is not one of water but one of Cicadas…" - Annelies Van Parys
10.11.2023 - 19:30
Muziekverein Vienna
Tickets
12.11.2023 - 17:30
Müpa Budapest
Tickets
26.11.2023 - 18:00
Philharmonie Cologne
Tickets
EXHALE / PUST
14.10.2023 - 15.10.2023 KOREDA dansefestival
Inderøy (NO)
A large inflatable fills the room and slowly transforms into different abstract shapes. Like an enlarged deep sea creature it slowly and quietly contracts and expands into different corners of the space.
EXHALE starts from a movement we all share: breathing. This process of inhaling and exhaling as an expression of our physical and mental states is in constant change and usually unconscious. Yet it can also be a portal to control psychosomatic phenomena like stress and anxiety. Breath connects mind and body, the yogi said a 1000 years ago. However in these eco-calyptic times where fear is the best selling currency, science tell us about earlier mass extinctions and the cycles of life in our earthly atmosphere. With scientific prose, dance and electronic sounds, the audience is invited inside a large inflated lung where performers and visitors become one and the invisible air is shared as a physical and tangible medium. ‘Breathing is the first and the last thing you will do, you will breath about 10000 liters of air today. Without breath, no life.’
Dance by Liv Hanne Haugen and electronic sounds, performed live by one of Norways leading and internationally acclaimed electronic musicians Per Martinsen, communicate abstractly and open - sometimes violently and loud, other times soft and quiet, with each other, always in presence of the sound of breathing. Visual artist Lawrence Malstaf is manipulating, pulling and re-shaping the bubble in a dance that also makes the audience move. Text by Vibeke Thorp.
Producer: Anne Katrine Haugen - Consultant: Margunn Kilde - Production: Haugen Productions
Boze Bejaarden
07.10.2023 De Grote Post
Oostende (B)
An 8-part tragicomic operetta radio play set in and around a retirement home. Enraged Elderly is a comedy of errors riddled with miscommunications as well as romantic, saccharine and warm moments. Simultaneously, as befits an operetta, it is sharply critical of how we deal with health care and with the elderly.
Having published an online radio play, the WUNDERBAUM collective presents an in-person version with eight actors, four musicians, two singers, one conductor and a radio-play specialist live on stage. Annelies Verbeke and Gaea Schoeters wrote the texts. Annelies Van Parys composed new music and arranged arias from the classical operetta repertoire.
plant machete
06.10.2023 - 08.10.2023 Festival X
Concrete, Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, UAE
David Bowen - plant machete
This installation enables a live plant to control a machete. plant machete has a control system that reads and utilizes the electrical noises found in a live philodendron. The system uses an open source micro-controller connected to the plant to read varying resistance signals across the plant’s leaves. Using custom software, these signals are mapped in real-time to the movements of the joints of the industrial robot holding a machete. In this way, the movements of the machete are determined based on input from the plant. Essentially the plant is the brain of the robot controlling the machete determining how it swings, jabs, slices and interacts in space.
tele-present wind
04.10.2023 - 25.11.2023 festival accès)s( #23 - From Solastalgia
Pau (F)
tele-present wind by David Bowen - This installation consists of a series of 42 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.
Ríos Trilogy in CAPTURE#2
23.09.2023 - 14.01.2024 Le Pavillon
Namur (B)
The Ríos Trilogy by Laura Colmenares Guerra is an extensive project consisting of three chapters exploring the Amazon Basin from local and global perspectives. It offers a perspective on the region that aims to understand how people within traditional Western thinking relate to Amazonia. Through different approaches, the Trilogy attempts to understand the meanings and definitions attributed to this territory. It also sheds light on the history of colonisation and how it has impacted Amazonia, providing insights into the current socio-environmental threats facing the region.
The Ríos Trilogy is composed of three chapters:
CHAPTER N.1: RIVERS // AMAZONIA GEO-LINGUISTICS
Interactive, experimental research tool that allows mapping information related to the Amazons Rainforest on social media.
CHAPTER N.2: SPECULATIVE CARTOGRAPHIES
21 ceramic 3D printed speculative cartographies emerging from the digital hybridisation process of Amazonia-related data and the actual topography of the Amazon basin.
CHAPTER N.3: R€¥€R$€
Virtual Reality (VR 30') piece that underlines the existing tensions where human, cultural and environmental aspects rub with power, economics and multinational interests in a context of climate stress.
CAPTURE #2 is the second in a series of exhibitions devised by the KIKK to showcase the diversity and creativity of the digital arts in Belgium. The exhibition presents recent projects by artists who all use new technologies to capture the world in their own way.
Curator: Marie du Chastel
Nemo Observatorium 02002 in CAPTURE#2
23.09.2023 - 14.01.2024 Le Pavillon
Namur (B)
NEMO OBSERVATORIUM 02002 - Styrofoam particles are blown around in a big transparent PVC cylinder by 5 strong fans. Visitors can take place one by one on the armchair in the middle of the whirlpool or observe from the outside. On the chair, in the eye of the storm it is calm and safe.Spectacular at first sight, this installation turns out to mesmerise as a kind of meditation machine. One can follow the seemingly cyclic patterns, focus on the different layers of 3D pixels or listen to its waterfall sound. One could call it a training device, 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.
CAPTURE #2 is the second in a series of exhibitions devised by the KIKK to showcase the diversity and creativity of the digital arts in Belgium. The exhibition presents recent projects by artists who all use new technologies to capture the world in their own way.
Curator: Marie du Chastel