texts > VLAM, a text
In case a building is provisionally unoccupied,
it needs to be filled.
You can go without food and with little to drink for a while.
Especially when your entrails contract in accordance with
your internalised attention: be it contemplation, meditation
or both for that matter. But then, in a not so sudden effusion
of emotion, you long for a revelry: One shall be fed and refreshed
- the craving, right? Contemplation and meditation have raised
innumerable discussions and one sets out for confidential
winks, laughter, arguments and renewed friendship. The interest.
The 'interesse'. Let's get a move on!
Such feeling of hankering concentration can be found in the
swerving camera positions in Lieve D'hondt's film on the empty
interior of the previous 'Passementerie Van den Brulle'. Next
to the fish market (now transformed into a playground), close
to the river of Aalst and not far from the bridge where the
trains hurtle in and out. The cool eye (?) skims past the
erosion, interiorizes the spatiality and yet records history.
This film, registration 'in illo tempore', projected on a
small monitor in a modest corner of a passage near a concrete
flight of stairs, is at the heart of the VLAM exposition.
Its counterpart, similarly modest, is diagonally located at
the other side of the factory, in the little documentation
chamber next to the control room, which, much like the bridge
of a ship to its captain, offers a panoramic view of the former
production hall. We discover Eugeen Liebaut's scale-model
and some blueprints for Netwerk 2: the new purpose of this
building.
When a building that is awaiting its transformation, remains
vacant for a little while longer, it can yet be interpreted:
the 'oikos', the hearth, the fire needs to be maintained.
The VLAM exposition contained the work of sixteen contemporary
artists. The diversity of media (from sellotape to video)
and divergent themes (from irony to architecture), were tuned
in to the intensity of this building's spatiality. The measuring
has begun; the works of art are the extraordinary touchstones.
(Let's) party!
Frank Snyders
Vlam
Group exhibition Netwerk Galerij.
Location project in Netwerk's futur buildings
06/05/01 > 10/06/01