HOOT nr. 3 — Kamilé Krasauskaité

Cet été j’ai rappelé un ami, Grégoire Devidal, pour lui demander de ses nouvelles depuis que nous sommes chacun·e parti·e d’Amsterdam où nous y avons partagé quelques années. Il m’a parlé d’un projet de podcasts avec Agathe Boulanger et Gwendal Raymond.

Ayant partagé des moments de vie, de création, de tension, de doutes et beaucoup de moments de travail, il m’est apparu comme une nécessité de proposer ce nouveau numéro de HOOT à ces trois artistes. La parole et l’écriture sont au centre de leur pratique et de leurs recherches. Je leur ai alors confié mon questionnaire habituel pour m’effacer de la trame de ces conversations et laisser place à une nouvelle forme de dialogue : celui qu'iels se partagent sans que je ne les écoute, sans que je n'intervienne. Iels parlent entre-elleux, se questionnent et se meuvent comme autant d’échos infinis sur des parois fluides. Leurs échanges m’ont évoqué ceux des personnages des Vagues de Virginia Woolf dans la manière dont ils s'interpénètrent, dont l’identité des orateur·rice·s valse et les échanges se relaient plutôt que se répondent.

Elizabeth in the Woolds is the product of two superimposed compositional strategies; a thematic aggregate based on notes dating back to 2008 and an epic prose narrative. Elizabeth is the device through which this simultaneous register moves. Screen writing provides a model for multiple voices. In a film script, the narrator can be the camera; there’s a machine at the centre of the story structure which figures a demand for resolution of plot; a contrario, the thematic approach (S, U, N, as electric light) obliterates chronology, and enumerates an atemporal topological figure, or the way the world is built.

(730pp., self-published first edition of 50, Kortrijk, 2021) 

In 2015, Jacob finds himself wandering the streets, swamps and cemeteries of New Orleans. Through his search for a man named Ignatius, 'O Fortuna' tells the story of his attempt to make a film. We discover the city’s unique atmosphere and meet a bizarre cast of characters who assist Jacob with his uncertain attempts at shooting scenes of DAT LIKWID LAND.

TYPP is the community journal of Sint Lucas School of Arts in Antwerp. TYPP is partly a generator for the shared research of our advanced master students, and partly a platform for carefully selected contributions by tutors, students, alumni, guest lecturers and friends of SLA. TYPP is a stage where art and research from this community is shared with you, to enjoy, read, look, learn and get inspired. 

Each edition is carefully and freely designed by Ward Heirwegh. 

The reading score for the presentation at rile*books on Sunday June 23, an A to Z of Indexing / Organising / Cataloguing BFTK for Two Voices.

For British artist Delaine Le Bas, dress is divine. Clothes appear as both mask a nd memorial within an expansive body of work exploring mythologies of Le Bas’s Romani ancestry. Embroidered and hand-painted textile is central to the artist’s lyrically activist practice, alongside costume, writing and performance. In a new series of portraits by the British photographer Tara Darby, directed by Jane Howard, gold leaf dances across the planes of Le Bas’s face in repose, it wraps and jangles around her wrists, glimmers across her clothes. In a notebook she has inscribed: “In the forest of grief I grew into a shrub of gold.” The grief is alchemical.

As Stephen Ellcock writes:

‘The maxim ‘Know Thyself’ was inscribed in gold on a column on the threshold of Pythia’s temple, serving as a warning that wisdom, understanding, empathy and anything remotely resembling peace of mind are unachievable without selfawareness, reflection and ruthless self-criticism.’

The fragments of hope, anger, magic and curiosity redolent in Le Bas’s work form a call to action. A reminder of the racism, exclusion and subjugation that abound. Photographs of Le Bas, which Darby has been making for more than a decade, present the artist as truth sayer, inquisitive goddess and modern-day Sibyl.

Through the incorporation of texts—a conversation between gallerists John Marchant and Keiko Yamamoto with curator Claire Jackson—drawings from Le Bas’s journals, archival images taken at her home and the restyling—and reflection—of her own personal wardrobe, In the forest of grief I grew into a shrub of gold radiates psychological, social and political wisdom. Fashion is revealed as both tyrannical disguise and liberating regalia.