[NL/EN below] “Spoorzoekers” ging op zoek naar de materiële restanten van wat de kolonisatie van Congo heeft betekend voor de gemeente Sint-Pieters-Woluwe. De belangrijkste factor daarin was de aanleg van de Tervurenlaan en de tram en treinsporen die voor de wereldtentoonstelling van 1897 werden aangelegd. Op die wereldexpo presenteerde Leopold II zijn kolonisatieproject aan de Belgische bevolking. Het gigantische bouwproject ontsloot het landelijke Sint-Pieters-Woluwe en Stokkel. Die verstedelijking zorgde in de daaropvolgende decennia voor een toeristische dynamiek en veranderde de landelijke gemeente in een prestigieus woongebied.
Om alle rijkdom uit Congo te verschepen naar België werd tussen Matadi en Leopoldville (Kinshasa) ook een spoorweg aangelegd, wat een grote dodentol zou eisen: 1931 doden waarvan 131 kolonialen. Om die te herdenken werd het idee gelanceerd om hun namen in te schrijven op een monument dat op de Tervurenlaan een plek moet vinden.
Voor het onderzoek dook Sam Vanoverschelde in die geschiedenis en in het kunstpatrimonium, om het verhaal van die koloniale connectie bloot te leggen en in zijn context te bestuderen. Deze ‘etat des lieux’ vormt de basis voor een verder onderzoek naar het immateriële erfgoed: het verzamelen van de verhalen van bewoners en andere betrokkenen. Het hele verhaal vind je uitgebreid terug in deze catalogus
“Spoorzoekers” (“Trackers”) went in search of the material remnants of what the colonisation of Congo meant for the municipality of Woluwe-Saint-Pierre. The main factor in this was the construction of the Avenue de Tervuren and the tram and train tracks built for the 1897 World’s Fair. At that world fair, Leopold II presented his colonisation project to the Belgian population. The gigantic construction project opened up rural Sint-Pieters-Woluwe and Stokkel. That urbanisation created a tourist boom in the following decades and turned the rural municipality into a prestigious residential area.
To ship all the wealth from Congo to Belgium, a railway was also built between Matadi and Leopoldville (Kinshasa), which would claim a large death toll: 1931 dead of whom 131 were colonials. To commemorate them, the idea was launched to inscribe their names on a monument to find a place on Avenue de Tervuren.
For the research, Sam Vanoverschelde delved into that history and into the art patrimony, to uncover the story of that colonial connection and study it in context. This ‘etat des lieux’ forms the basis for further research into the intangible heritage: collecting the stories of residents and other stakeholders.
Back in the days when covid locked down our world, I answered a call from Claire Ducène who was looking for artists-researchers working in the field of history and archives, to start up a group project reflecting about the kind of work we did. After an extensive period of getting to know each other’s work through regular online presentations and conversations, we got an opportunity to create and present together at the Brussels institute for artistic research ISELP. With a group exhibition ahead of us, we started forging alliances within our group. In the summer of ’22 a residency at ISELP and La Métive brought most of us all physically together. The results of our individual and group efforts were presented at ISELP during a group exhibition that opened on January 25th 2023.
Here are some pictures of the exhibition, (read further underneath)
Pretty quickly in our presentation and research stage, I hooked up with Julian Walker and Philippe Beck connecting through our family histories that all had to do with the two world wars from last century. Julians grandfather Frederick was left with permanent damage to his eyesight due to a gas attack he suffered in a field in Houplines, near Armentière on 9 october 1918. Julian had previously investigated the matter, had documented the place and performed one of the songs of his grandfather. Philippe’s ancestors were situated in East Belgium, the German speaking part that was annexed to Belgium after WWI and reclaimed by Germany in WWII. His great-grandfather had left the area at the beginning of the war and worked for the german occupied government in Brussels, but also joined a resistance group. He had printed their pamphlets in his office. Meanwhile in Eupen, his grandfather and grandmother were enlisted in the German Wehrmacht and the labour service for the war effort. Another grandfather of underwent the same scenario but quickly deserted and joined the resistance too.
For my part, instead of diving into the Joe English history again, I presented the group the story and archival pieces of Molly English, which I explored earlier in ‘the outs and abouts of Molly English’.
We embarked on a common project, Borderlines and Frontlines, handing over the archival pieces and information to the others so each could work on a personal approach with other people’s materials.
My goal was to embark on a pilgrimage to the places where they had lived their ordeal, document that as precisely as possible and create new work from my personal perspective. I received a fragment of Frederick Walker’s war diary, some regiment information and two possible locations for the gas attack in Houplines as well as several addresses in Brussels and Eupen from the Beck family. The latter resulted in a series of pictures that accompanies Julians take on the material that Philippe handed him.
With the help of the Flanders Fields Museum, I got hold of more detailed information that could pinpoint the exact location of the gas attack. I spent a week in the area, figuring out the possible routes Frederick’s regiment must have followed and went on numerous nightly trips filming those spots. On the 9th of october 2022, exactly 104 years later, I was in the field where it all happened. Well, actually I documented the three locations: the two Julian had pointed me too and the one I discovered. I made ‘reconnaissance’ drawings of those places as they are now, just like my own great-grandfather Joe had done during his time when he was on the lookout with his friend Samuel. This resulted in an accordion fold sketchbook with three landscapes and with the nightly videofootage, i made a short film retracing the exact route I had finally discovered.
For the exhibition, with a group of 16 different artist each having their own output and collaborations, we presented our work as a common project: Philippe presented his personal work and 5 new portraits of our protagonists. Julian analysed and reworked a letter, in fourfold, of Molly English that she had sent during WWII to Kathleen Molloy, a relative in Waterford. He also presented four postcards – genuine WWI mail from soldiers to their family – he had erased to write a personal message to his grandfather. A third piece of his is a meticulous description of one of Philippes historical items: the doorknob of his great-grandfathers office. He also wrote a text on the wall as a reflection the common path we had walked.
My work consists of the sketchbook and the video called ‘The Field’
Together with Yves Geunes, we created an interface to browse alternatively through the archive that is our groups ever expanding body of work: the Fictive Archive Investigations…
In the spring of 2022 I was commissioned by the ‘Sint Goedele Scholengroep‘ to have a multitude of images made and a few videos produced for internal and external use. The group is comprised of 13 creches, 21 kindergarden and primary schools and four middle schools, each with their own profile and specialities. They all needed to have their distincting features presented of course, from the special needs school to the ‘classic’ colleges, from the ‘Teenage-school’ to the selfmanaging schooling, from the OKAN classes to the STEM system…
With such a vast amount of work, it was almost impossible to organise shoots where we would have the permissions upfront to depict the children – gdpr has made that kind of work for schools rather difficult. So the goal was to have several sets that avoided that issue by depicting them as unrecognisable (as well as other ‘normal’ ones of course). Consequently I’m only allowed to present the unrecognisable ones. If you’re interested in seeing images that do depict the kids, there’s a set of selected images that stay behind a password: contact me if you would like to access them.
Installation Performance for viola, masks & moving image
First try-out at the Tristero House (Schaarbeek, Brussels) on April 8 2022
There Here Now is a new project I’m working on with viola player Sigrid Keunen. The sculptural/music performance she was working on counterpointed nicely with an audiovisual version of the Marklin series I was developping. We put our heads together for the first time during a residency at Tristero House and currently planning new residencies to develop the piece further.
The latest residency at ZSenne Artlab has turned the place into a full-on exhibition space, presenting a series called ‘Marklin’. I have previously experimented with the series during the very first ‘Archive of Untold Stories’ but now I’ve taken the step of making the large format prints this series needs to be gazed upon.
‘Marklin’ is a series that reflects on how mankind treats Mother Earth. Each time I take a plane, I shoot through the window with my LCA-compact camera, while the landscape disappears underneath me. The series expresses a nostalgic fantasy, but also that universal vision in dreams, to fly without wings, or to fall out of a nightmare.
Given the state of the world we’re living in right now, what I’ve registered might soon be gone for good. The strange aesthetics of these images pushes one to reflect on how we are dealing with our habitat.
The pandemic urged me to review my means of living as well, so I’m blatantly stating it as it is: I’m presenting this work to survive the consecutive waves of lockdowns and closures in the cultural field.
The ‘Heldenhulde’ Headstone Joe English designed for the flemish soldiers during WWI. Using a celtic cross is a nice example of cultural appropriation, inspired by his Irish roots.
The family archive has proven to be a great source of inspiration. Two photography projects sprouted from the historical research: ‘Met Kop en Schouders‘ is an exhibition commissioned by ADVN to accompany the research, publication and database about ‘Heldenhulde‘. English designed the headstones this organisation provided during WW1. In ‘Mystic Land‘ I went on a pilgrimage to all the places he was during the war, resulting in a series of landscapes reflecting on the state of our world 100 years later.
Diving into that history for over a decade now, historical research in general and the history of flemish nationalism specifically, has become a constant element in my work. It has inspired me to setup projects like the ‘archive of untold stories‘ or even ‘byebye leopold‘.
I’m now also on the board of directors of the ‘Museum aan de IJzer‘, commonly known as the ‘IJzerbedevaartcomité‘. Working in that field gives me the opportunity to keep a close watch on what’s happening in the realms of nationalism today and I can voice my perspective on the matter. It’s also how I became the director of the renewed ‘IJzerbedevaart’ in 2020 and the one in 2021. Those annual pilgrimages voiced the revendications of the flemish emancipation movement for more than a century. Looking back on that history from our current perspective, it gives a tremendous array of themes to reflect on the current states of politics and society.
Discover the historical research about Joe English, in dutch, at www.joe-english-kunstschilder.be where you’ll also find the newsletters (44 and counting!) that I have done the layout for since 2017.
Joe English, Leven & Werk
Biographical video on the life of my great-grandfather (1882-1918), painter and soldier who died during WW1, later a symbol of the flemish nationalist movement. The video was produced for an exhibition of his work back in 2008 and used in lectures.
As a kid, my bedroom was right next to my dad’s darkroom and I spent quite some time discovering the magic of developping film and photos. Photography is a constant since he handed me his old Canonet camera in my early teens.
vieux
I’ve practiced photography in many different ways, from the crossprocessed lomo’s during the Visual Kitchen days to joining the ‘stadsbiografie’ collective, diving into black and white again, or getting into landscape photography with my Pentax67 for Mystic Land. And sometimes it goes even beyond photography, like I did with Universal Minutes, when I ‘painted’ with perished polaroids. The latest project I’m focussing on presenting now is ‘Marklin’.
During the quarantine I took part in a Random Scream project ‘Universal Minutes’ conceived by my friend Davis Freeman. From march 23d to may 1st, at 17:21pm sharp, I took pictures together with my fellow photographers, wherever we were. I took a batch of perished polaroids from the archives and took several shots within that one minute. Time took its toll on these polaroids, they hardly could develop properly as they dried out over the years. Some simply wouldn’t expose, so I pressure-painted the emulsion. A relative experience of time in this relative time experience the quarantine enforced us. Check out the complete series here.
I’m selling these time pieces now, at 50€ a pop but for each sale 10€ goes to Couscous Connection a project of a neighbour of mine, distributing free meals twice a week for the poor, homeless and needy in my area.
The series is on display at the group exhibition ‘Over tijd – Du temps’ at De Markten in Brussels from sept 17th to november 8th. It had to shut down earlier because of covid restrictions, but there’s a guided tour by curator Nora Kempeneer (in dutch) so you can have a virtual visit (and some pictures)
exhibition view courtesy of De Markten by Lander Loeckx
I had the pleasure of being invited for a residency of two weeks at ZSenne Art Lab. The intention was to research and experiment with different forms of presentation, looking for solutions to tell stories with pictures and objects in a different and personal way. I came up with the archive as a form of unfolding different spatial scenarios. It refers to the historical research I’ve been doing a lot lately, spending a lot of time in different archives, but also to the temporality of items and their meanings.
The Archive of untold stories sprouted from the urge to find a way of presenting some of the projects that have been developing over the last months and years. These all vary in different stages of completion, some are over, some are ready to present, some are merely vague ideas still locked-in in a collection of items. By gathering all these projects box per box in an archive and a public space, it also gave me the opportunity of presenting the links between them, developing themes through different projects. When people visited, they related to different themes and boxes, but it always started long conversations that resulted in me getting lots of new paths to discover.
During the first days I mainly regrouped the items in separate collections and presented the keynotes that describe the different projects: Mystic Land, Marklin, Strada, Grenzen, The extinction survival archive and Molly.
As wel as some leftover prints, catalogues and books from older series, (Stadsbiografie, Bastards and Heldenhulde) a selection of prints from ‘Mystic Land’ were presented as an introduction to my work. Mystic Land used historical research to define places and routes to travel, resulting in a series that exposes how man uses his environment, manipulates it to his benefit, but not always to great result.
Building further on that environmental theme, the Marklin series took up the most attention as it is on the brink of completion. It was presented with the item that connects it through time, the inspiration from my childhood, a papier-maché maquette, in front of a projection illustrating the size of prints this series needs to be presented in.
Gathering the material from over 15 years of shooting these images, I composed several series looking for formal connections and combinations. The Marklin series is ready for print and display, but I’m still thinking about counterpoint objects like the papier-maché maquette: maps, wireframes, 3D prints, scrap sculptures etc…
Building and thinking further on the environmental, Strada is the next project that tackles the theme. Back with my feet on the ground I would be exploring the highway researching its quality as a landscape and as a biotope. It is temporarily on hold due to a complete blocking of the flemish roads and traffic agency. The issue being safety, I suggested that knowing the problem may also resolve it, resulted in a categorical ’Njet’.
Another project in development is ‘Grenzen’ (Limits, but merely a working title). My ancestral research got me greatly interested and thoroughly knowledgeable about flemish nationalism. That movement has had a great impact on politics and society in the country. It has defined a language border, regional borders and many issues during its development over the last century. Like in Mystic Land I’m planning to meticulously travel alongside this demarcation and reflect on this division, supported by a study on limology, compiled and written by an expert in the field, Luc Boeva, who confirmed his aid and collaboration. I’m also looking into financing a residency in Dandong, China, on the North Korean border to do likewise research and creation on that border and the specific aspects of the bordertown. It will be a combination of landscape and documentary photography.
Shortly before starting the residency I came up with another idea to work on: The Extinction Survival Archive. The state of our global environment, the state of national and international politics, it all seems to be announcing an impending doom. While previously working on this theme with the company Random Scream (the pieces Investment, Expanding Energy, 7 promises and A better place) it seems twenty years of activism hasn’t really amounted up to much resolve: I should instead be organising the survival of my offspring. If our systems collapses, how can I provide the necessary information for my kids (or grandkids) who only have known the internet as a source of information when electricity will probably not be available to power a global network. Naively, I collected everything I had gathered from my ancestors (and just couldn’t part from): the horticulture courses from my grandfather, pocketbooks on basic building techniques from my architect father, books my parents had about health, natural medicine, internal medicine and even my own ‘SAS survival guide’ from my scouting days. It also includes a section of children’s books on geography, physics, the human body…
The Extinction Survival Archive instigated many long talks with visitors. We reflected on how a new monetary system would be needed and eventually we would go back to seeds as a payment method. How brussels people grew vegetables in public parks during WWII, or grew mushrooms, rhubarb and chicory in their basements. Reflections on ‘the power of the archive’. What would we need to stock in order to survive? The next step in this project will be starting up a Brussels ’preppers’ community: doomsday preparers are a common phenomenon in the states, so there must be a lot of knowledge. The aim is to gather and prepare for doomsday in a metropolitan environment.
Finally, one of the most bewildering boxes contained a donation I received from Hilde Verstraete, granddaughter of Karel, who was a friend of my great-great-grandfather Henry English. It contained a photo album, loose pictures, letters and postcards from my great-grand-aunt Molly, who must have been a peculiar person in her days. She was crippled as a child due to a medical mistake, stayed single all her life and travelled all over, even to ‘indochine’. She had a career as a governess, maitre-d’hotel, a Red Cross nurse in the UK during WWI, worked for the Belgian government in London during WWII and eventually retired back in Bruges. I got to know of all this because I still have two 90 year old great-aunts, twins, who have known her in the days. I had gotten first impressions on her extraordinary life when researching for ‘Mystic Land’. As she was the one who organised lodging for her three sisters and little brother in the UK during WW1, I had visited the addresses in the UK in 2016, because Joe went to visit them during his leave from the battlefields. Now I have even more addresses in the UK, in Biarritz, Knokke, Hasselt and Brussels, places where she lived as a guest in befriended households. From Waterford in Ireland, I received copies of all the letters she had sent to another friend of the family, Kathleen Molloy, that had been carefully preserved by her offspring, Renée Fraher. There’s material in there for a new quest, not sure what it could turn out to be: a documentary or a vodcast. There’s some urgency while there’s still witnesses to talk to. To many of the visitors, this was one of the most intriguing ‘untold stories’.
While I would have wanted to do even more creatively, I must say the concept of presenting an archive of several projects in different stages of completion, felt like the right way of dealing with my work. It has something ancient, archaic, and refers back to my sources, the historical research and the knowledge I have been accumulating. But it also stays an active source, it keeps growing, keeps building up. Even if not every individual project will see completion, it enables me to keep working on my material and present it to a public, even if I can’t find the resources to start up new creations or the funding commissions keeps treating my work as irrelevant.
In 2016 I started researching the whereabouts of Joe English during WW1 and consequently visited all these places. His get-away from the besieged city of Antwerp towards the Belgian coast eventually bringing him to Calais was one of the trips I attempted to do as he did, on foot. I described the research and the travels on a blog (in dutch) and presented the results at Museum aan de IJzer, from september 2017 to march 2018.
There’s two sets of pictures:
contemporary landscape photography shot on film with a Pentax67.
A set of cross-processed snapshots of subjects that survived 100 years of history.
