exhibition

Belgian Treasures from the Argos Collection

Leading European curator Ive Stevenheydens will present a screening of short experimental films from influential Belgium artists representative of Argos Centre’s past and present.

Argos Centre for Art and Media is Belgium’s leading contemporary art centre for audiovisual and visual arts.

Belgian video art is internationally known for its avant-gardism, its eclecticism and its multiples crossovers with other disciplines. Belgian artists have long been pioneers in the use of the medium.

 

The films:

 

Jacques-Louis Nyst – ‘L’objet’, 1974

The discovery of a child’s toy: a small blue metallic coffee pot, presents a complete enigma to an archaeologist of the future.

 

Jef Cornelis – ‘A Weekend with Monsieur Magritte, Part 1: Saturday’, 1997

Compiled from fragments of amateur films Magritte made himself on super-8 and 8mm.

 

Eric Pauwels – ‘Violin Fase’, 1986

A solo in two movements; dance and camera. Eric Pauwels twirls the camera around the body of Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. We see a possessed woman, bathing in sweat, exploring the boundaries of physical exhaustion.

 

Nicolas Provost – ‘Plot Point’, 2007

Plot Point questions the boundaries of reality and fiction, the codes of cinema and the narrative tools – ‘planting’, foreshadowing, aftermath, tension curve, climax, plot point – that play with our filmic memory. Winner of Best European Film Award, Festival Du Film De Vendôme, France.

 

Sarah Vanagt – ‘The Corridor’, 2010

For five days Sarah Vanagt and cinematographer Annemarie Lean-Vercoe followed a donkey during its weekly mute visits to old people in nursing homes in South-England.