Michael Borremans, Taking Turns (2009). Photo courtesy Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp.
Mechelen, or Mechlin if you like, is one of of Flanders' Six Art Cities, and yet it is less of a touristic hotspot than, say, Bruges (its canals and lace!), Ghent (its Altarpiece by Van Eyck!), Brussels (its Manneken Pis and tasty waffles!) or even Antwerp (its hipness and fashion!). In the yearbook The Low Countries Derek Blyth describes it as a ‘Bruges without the tourists’. At least, that was his recollection of this town. But it turns out that a sleepy provincial town can be roused from centuries of lethargy: ‘It just takes energy, fresh ideas…and some lofts’.
...and art. More specifically, video art. For the fourth time in a row, Mechelen is host to Contour, the Biennal of Moving Image. This event presents artists working with film, video and installation in special locations in the historical marrow of Mechelen, in unexpected or unusual venues within walking distance from one another in the city centre.
This fourth edition is the brainchild of the Brussels-based curator and writer Katerina Gregos. Entitled 'Hidden In Remembrance Is The Silent Memory Of Our Future’, the exhibition ventures to investigate history. It advocates its importance and deals with questions of historical representation and historiography (one of the central themes is the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989). Gregos selected 18 artists from 12 countries. Some of them are household names, others are promising new talents.
The renowned Flemish painter Michael Borremans contributes Taking Turns, a claustrophobic and unsettling film built around two identical female figures inhabiting a dark, confined space. The Dutch Wendelien van Oldenborgh’s Après la reprise, la prise, on the other hand, is more deeply rooted in actual ‘real life’. This slide piece brings together three seemingly diverging themes- manual labour, women and production of culture – and confronts the past with the present in an active, participatory way. One of the head honchos of video art, the Finnish Eija-Liisa Ahtila, tackles colonialism, its contemporary repercussions and the tension between two different cultures. In Where is Where? the specific starting point is an actual event that took place in Algeria at the end of the 1950s when the country was still under French occupation.
And if you want some local culture, there’s also a work by Mechelen native Herman Asselberghs. Well…not so much local as global, because in his Black Box, 9/11 is dismissed as the benchmark and dawn of the new century. Asselberghs’ film opts for a less destructive and more redemptive and emancipatory moment with little spectacle value but more political potential: 2/15, the day the world protested against the US government’s decision to invade Iraq. Thus the Biennal of the Image also becomes the Biennal of the Shifting Image, looking into the viability of an alternative media landscape.
Contour 2009 can be visited from Thursday to Sunday, every week, until October 18.
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