24 January 2023

8PM // Rue Van Meyelstraat 49, 1080 Molenbeek

Stéphanie Roland is a Belgian / Micronesian visual artist and filmmaker living and working in Brussels. Her practice resides between documentary and the imaginary, Roland makes films and installations exploring invisible structures, hyperobjects and deep time; from the ecological and political to the geologic and cosmic.

During Blue Screen # 7 we will show 'The empty sphere’ (2022) an experimental documentary by Stéphanie Roland which portrays a space object and its fall into the darkness of a space cemetery. As a reverse sci-fi journey, this essay mixes reality and fiction to guide us, like a stalker, to the outskirts of an invisible place. Next to this film we will show the video loop ‘Exoplanet’ (2022) made with a self constructed camera, which translates sound into image.

Stéphanie Roland will also give us an insight into her current research ‘Drop! Cover! And hold on!’ which is set in the areas around the fault lines of Los Angeles.

In dialogue with the work of Stéphanie Roland we will show a selection of films by Bas Jan Ader, Marjolijn Dijkman & Toril Johannessen.

21 December 2022

8PM // Rue Van Meyelstraat 49, 1080 Molenbeek

Adina Ionescu-Muscel is a belgo-romanian visual artist living and working in Brussels. She studied Psychology in Bucharest, Anthropology and Photography & Video in Brussels. Her practice involves installation, photography and video. Since 2020 she became interested in experimenting with 16mm film and started making work in LaboBXL.

During Blue Screen # 6 we will show two films and an installation by Adina Ionescu-Muscel. We will start with “I never saw her since” (2019), a film that Adina made around her family's house, confiscated by the Romanian communist regime and transformed into the headquarters of the Secret Police.

The film “Metamorphosed bodies of the star that generates us” (2021) is part of an ongoing research where Adina is using and experimenting with ‘silver halides’ to inquire about the inner world of plants. Next to these two films we will show “Constellations” (2022) an installation that she made in the cemetery of Namur, consisting of nine light boxes in which she used a chemical analysis called ‘chromatography’.

In dialogue with the practice of Adina we will show a selection of works by Alasdair Asmussen Doyle, Rosa Aiello and a collaborative film by Luke Sieczek, Caryn Cline and Jon Behrens.

23 November 2022

8PM // Rue Van Meyelstraat 49, 1080 Molenbeek

Fairuz Ghammam is a visual enthusiast who graduated as an experimental filmmaker and works as an editor, cinematographer, teacher and (co-) director in cinema beyond genres and formats. During Blue Screen #5 we will show two films by Fairuz which are revealing the transformative impacts of moving through dialogues across languages, across cultures and across generations. For the film “Oumoun” (2017), made in collaboration with El Moïz Ghammam, Fairuz travelled from Brussels to Mahdia in Tunisia, to share a prerecorded, spoken letter with her elderly grandmother. In her most recent project “Cultuur” (2022) Fairuz takes us on a walk through her hometown Kortrijk. Moving from private space to public space and back, she questions how many memories, storylines and sounds can coexist.

12 October 2022

Rue Van Meyelstraat 49, 1080 Molenbeek

The 4th edition of Blue Screen will shine a light on the pluridiciplinary work of Katja Mater. Katja Mater is a visual artist, filmmaker, editor, organizer and educator. Her practice focuses on the parameters of photography and film as non-transparent media. By creating hybrids between photography, film, drawing, performance and installation Mater documents something that is often positioned beyond our human ability to see. Interested in revealing a different or alternative (experience of) reality through capturing the areas where optical media hardly behave like the human eye, by mediating between time, space, perception and our understanding of them, while recording events that simultaneously can and cannot be – holding midway between information and interpretation.

During the Blue Screen #4 evening we will show a selection of Katja Mater’s work, focussing on the notion of time and space. ‘Two Intersecting Loops of Silence’ (2022) is a prototype Mater made of a vinyl record that makes audible the intersection of two loops of silence. For the 16 mm film installation ‘As Much Time as Space’ (2017), Katja Mater made recordings of the house of modernist artist couple Nelly and Theo van Doesburg and combines architectural details of the house with her own drawings. Projected as a split screen, we look at a play between past and present, which every once in a while merges to form a new reality, providing a surreal time experience. In the second part of the evening, Katja will share with us an insight into the current project she is working on.

In dialogue with Katja Mater’s work, we will show films by Els Van Riel, Sarah Pucill and Maika Garnica & Ans Mertens.

11 March 2020

Rue Paul Devaux 3, 1000 Bruxelles

This evening we will look into the videos and performances of Anouchka Oler. Her work can be seen as desperate attempts to affect and understand the Other. Taking the shape of a magic show, stand-up comedy routine and experimental philosophy, Oler’s joyous practice consists in composing a community of interdependent beings, who all seem to be going through some sort of perpetual existential crisis. The spectator is invited to take part in speculative narratives, discussing topics such as affects, collective living, experimental ways of life, material environment and their interactions. Humans, sculptures and objects are given the rare opportunity to examine these topics both on the surface and in depth.

First we will start with Anouchka Oler’s work ‘Episode 2’ (2014) in which we see a group of decorative or utilitarian sculptures contesting, questioning or refusing the functions that are normally assigned to them. The film considers their usefulness not only from a functional, but also from a social standpoint, to the extent that the objects play specific roles for the person that exploits them. In the second part of the evening Anouchka Oler will present her new performance film ‘All Insure, All Unsure’ (2020), a conversation between Lucky and Drama More : Lucky is a Leo, Scorpio rising with a Capricorn moon, Drama More is a Taurus Gemini Cancer. Their conflicting birth charts bring Drama and Lucky to have a divergent conversation regarding doubt, leading to contemplations and digressions which are opening up a way to tell other stories.

In dialogue with the work of Anouchka Oler, we will connect two short films by Martha Rosler and Segundo de Chomón.

11 December 2019

Rue Paul Devaux 3, 1000 Bruxelles

Toon Fibbe was invited by Graham Kelly to be the next Blue Screen artist. The driving force of Toon Fibbe’s practice lies in the thinking, writing, acting and enacting of characters. It is this activity that spawns objects, texts, videos and performances. His work deals with the metaphors -bodily and ghostly metaphors in particular -that are employed to understand economic processes, currently and throughout history. It departs from the idea that political economy has always shared an affinity with the ghostly, visible for instance in a metaphor like the invisible hand of Adam Smith.

For this second Blue Screen evening Toon Fibbe will give us an insight in his practice through his work ‘FINANCE//BODY//HORROR’ an audio-visual presentation dealing with ghostly monstrous and bodily metaphors employed to understand finance – showing us how finance not only structures our lives, but moves through us, shapes and transforms us while it is slicing and dicing us into subjects for financial gain.

Next to that, Fibbe’s installation ‘Pantomime of Spirits’ will be on view, giving us a tour through a decaying 3d model of the now inoperative building of the Brussels Stock exchange. A building that could no longer meet the requirements of the current digitatized stock market. The soundtrack consists of Ferhat Oz singing live stock market data by using an application that I programmed. As we listen to his body amplifying live stock market data, he moves through the different spaces of the building, his voice and market data resonating against the lavish symbols of a now defunct stock market building. The camera follows his presence through the 3d model, Ferhat’s body producing the sound however remains absent.

We will connect two short films by Julien Prévieux and Beny Wagner, to speak in dialogue with the work of Toon Fibbe.

13 November 2019

Rue Paul Devaux 3, 1000 Bruxelles

We open Blue Screen with the work of Graham Kelly, by screening his recent film Hello Joe (2018), that he covertly produced overnight in a series of rented Airbnb accommodations. The film is constructed entirely from elements found and filmed within a number of private homes that he accessed through the online service. Domestic spaces are merged together in this portrait of an emerging corporate territory within the declining value of privacy.

As a follow up to ‘Hello Joe’ Graham Kelly will talk about his work in progress ‘Highly Recommended’ (working title), which is an ongoing project that utilises the online freelance digital labour service Upwork. For this new work he is simultaneously taking the roles of both client and editor, commissioning Upwork users from various fields of CG audiovisual production (screenwriters, voiceover actors, sound designers, 3D modellers and animators) to produce content based on their personal memories.This delegation of digital labour across multiple continents intends to expose and analyse the complexities of the loosely-regulated globalised gig economy and the pitfalls for the individuals within it.

We will connect two short films of Deborah Stratman and Corinna Schnitt in dialogue with the work of Graham Kelly.