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Black Noise / White Noise ©2008

a collaboration between Stefaan Loncke Geert Wachtelaer Ine Pieters

an installation about transgression, identity, norms and perceptionblack noise . white noise is about the tension between  presence and absence, and about what lies beyond norms and cultural constructions which set the boundaries to a supposedly liveable, social life; about what escapes normative systems. Even when these norms are meant to protect and to create liveable circumstances, they have something suffocating about them. A subject who feels this, often tries to answer some kind of inner call to reach beyond and transgress these boundaries, even at the cost of a safe or ‘normal’ life.

infra red lights, 10 projections, soundscapevisiting the installation The visitor to the installation is welcomed by the warmth of infra red lamps. These lights are used in breeding cages to simulate the warmth of the mother.
It’s the protective warmth which becomes suffocating and uneasy when you remain too long and too close to the lamps. It’s the warmth we loose when growing up, and which we seek in others. The red light might as well stand for passion.

Once this bed of warmth is passed, the visitor enters a dark space. No lamps emit light here: no action is undertaken to define the surroundings, no borders are visible: in the dark, one object doesn’t visually differ from another. In this dark space, absence rules.

The left wall  shows 9 projections, positioned in a Pythagorean triangle.
4 images on the vertical axis show a male subject. 4 on the horizontal axis a female subject.
They are holding symbolic objects of transgression, in a way that reminds of the old devotional images of saints and martyrs. The classic printmakers, used the same cliché for the images of the different martyrs, and printed their attribute of their death as a separate layer in order to define the identity of the martyr. Thus, the objects by which they were killed (because they didn’t comply to the ruling norms) have become objects of their identity.
In the installation, the male and female series hold attributes of personal transgression of norms. The transgressional drive is a reference to identity.

On the diagonal axis (sublimation of the 2 other axis which are each others opposite, being a corner of 90°), the female and male subject return as each others object of transgression.
Both try to remove the cultural conditionings (constructs, ties), represented as ropes around the head. They want to reach beyond, and when they succeed, they encounter the black noise… absence.
They can only develop new terminology, new constructions and with that, the process begins anew.

As was said, this dark space is about absence. The idea of presence and absence is also represented in the imaging of the male and female subject. From birth, the sex is determined by presence of absence of the penis. Presence is linked to masculinity, absence to femininity, as if to say that femininity has to be build up, constructed. By portraying the male and female subject from the waist, the visual play of presence has changed towards the woman. When grown up, the presence of breasts become a symbol of femininity.


On the opposite wall, another projection shows a male and female sex in a continuous flow of approach and withdrawal. Where coitus supposed to be the answer, something staggers. Unity and fulfilment is the goal here, absence to become presence, and at the point where everything should comply, where presence would dominate absence, white noise appears. Theories, norms, settings, constructions, are not allowed to fit when it would mean final fulfilment or a perfect state in which the subject is dissolved in unity.

The installation is supported by a soundscape, which contains tensions as a result of the Pythagorean issues concerning the division of the musical scale. The issue of the Pythagorean comma, is an example on how our western culture is faced with an immeasurable reality. In our western world, the musical Pythagorean scale is one of the earliest argumentations by number, in stead of by use of words… and it fails to capture nature: what escapes, is referred to as the Pythagorean comma.

I define the vulva as a space of active receptivity, reciprocity to receive, orgasmic vitality, the canal of birth and the sublime mysteries. I could posit the penis as an overt "lack" in it's hungry determinations to find a center, it's space, it's enfolding..... I have been very determined in my physical analysis to invert the dreadful Lacanian "lack", to make clear his absolute ignorance of and resistance to female sexuality.
Persistence is the key to realizing our work. And of course there must be affinities in Belgium for the rich complexity of your imagery.
All good wishes,
Carolee Schneeman

Summoning stones by Geert Wachtelaer ©2008

Erratic Ritual (Geert wachtelaer and Cia Barbett)

videoprojection for live performance with Cia Barbett and soundtrack of Noir video by geert wachtelaer

"Once we revert back to an unadultered sensation which connects us with the skin of things, we are brought experience their pulp to sparkle and pulse. A consciousness, if awakened, that can touch deep inside, down to our very flesh. And in turn, as we will see, the flesh of things feeds back andous met en contact avec vibrates our own flesh in a shared consciousness of being. An amazing dialogue happens when the inside meets the outside, something that can turn us inside out while teaching us to love."
Annick de souzenelle. « To be in the feminine tense »

Ce(n)sure by Geert Wachtelaer © 2008 (a collaboration between Stefaan Loncke, Nicoletta Branchini and Geert Wachtelaer)

The experimental dance movie ce(n)sure explores the tension between the totality of Nature and the delimited domain within, known as Culture. The camera and film-medium refer to the human eye and the interpretation of visual perception. The perception works in a selective way, by means of censorship, to prevent to being overwhelmed by the whole. Through this censorship, it becomes also the rupture (cesure/caesura) with the whole. Mankind (Culture) seems to have this process as a basic mechanism in order to make the raw Reel (Nature) liveable. To question the censorship of the and the interpretation of the resulted images, the movie presents a fragmented story, and throws it open as a jigsaw. The way of presentation of these fragments forces the viewer to raise the question “What?” The story is based on 3 moments in Greek mythology. An abstract story was distilled from these 3 moments.

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PLAYGROUND

by Geert Wachtelaer © 2008

My stories have been lived, not invented . Somewhere in me exists a lively archive with images, fragments that I collected during my life . These memories pushes itself regularly at me during the making of a film . The constant stimulation or selfexpression puts my work and myself in question. In which context situates the work of art itself. The 'learnprocess' and 'workprocess' gets the opportunity and time to form and ripe. In my work there are different conflicts: social, human, metaphysical.

This projection (part of a videoinstallation about urbanization) contains a landscape made by human hands. A landscape with 'dead matter' Concrete walls and building constructions as architecture. An atmosphere of metal grids and concrete pilons. A non-architecture, an architecture in transformation. The architectural postmodernisme as a pluralistic style within a logical globalistic conflict theory of modernization. Modern architecture is unbearable light. (has relation with the notion 'place', and 'time'). They demonstrate silence, absence, evacuation, memory. They are nostalgic souvenirs.

Text by Geert Wachtelaer

performer Yan Wing

Music by Noir

voice and translation by Anna Proscoerina

As Common Sense Dictates by Geert Wachtelaer © 2008 (a collaboration between Hilgarde Follon and Geert Wachtelaer)

A short movie based on a chaptre of Paulo Coehlo's book 'The witch of Portobello'. With his permission.

Filmed in Paris. The film was selected but because of the controverse of the imagery the film.

FACES by Geert Wachtelaer © 2008 (a result of a collaboration between Stefaan Loncke, Frederique Galliot and Geert Wachtelaer)

The experimental dance film Faces with attention for the fight of a transgressive desire, ‘Ce(n)suur' concentrated on the power of the Nature, concentrates Faces on the power of the Culture.

Geert Wachtelaer wanted to bring a very dark piece in image with much different tensions, with as a scenery a factory.

Together with contemporary dancer Frédérique Galliot and Stefaan Loncke they bring the female and the male patterns, an exploration through contrasts and the implications of contrasts The movement of Frédérique that concentrates on inner/external and humanely/animal contrasts, is narrow with the work concerned. There is a clear butoh undertone, and just as with ce (n) suur gives the camera work of Geert Wachtelaer a powerful extra dimension at the narrative structure of the movements.

PRIVATE CITY by Geert Wachtelaer © 2007

‘Private City’ is a dream-like ‘impression’ video. Geert Wachtelaer interweaves powerful levels of meaning, without resorting to cinematographic tricks or special effects. At first glance, he is acting as just a temporary prophet, but records his surroundings in an impressive way. The metropolis in the form of a number of desolate cityscapes is bleakly explored and displays just minuscule mechanical movements, void of any human warmth. Enhanced by startling sounds—dark, somber and desolate—the senseless emptiness of this cold city becomes a harsh reality.
Is it ‘too late’, as the graffiti on the wall reads? No, because luckily there is an antithesis to this alienation. Fortunately, there is a reaction in the shape of a person, real flesh and blood. A woman who internally objects to the vulnerability of her existence and her surroundings. An initially dislocated being yearning to escape from her cocoon. A solitary archetype—guardian of all life—wandering in search of identity, in search of her own ‘Private City’…
Geert Wachtelaer could not have chosen a better performer for this role than Emilie de Vlam. She fulfills her role simply brilliantly. Every fiber, every muscle of her body is placed under enormous, intolerable strain. For many minutes she is embroiled in a struggle for life. A sparkling performance. Doesn't she literally embody the horror of her fate? In a sensual, passionate piece of self expression, she examines and eats—virginally and innocently—leaves and earth. Or is she really so innocent? Could this woman be the modern-day ‘Diana’, the governess of the wild animals who acts as the protector of purity, challenging the decline and immorality of the city? Her ‘Private City’ is continuously taking shape. You can smell the woodland and taste her lips. Abandoned in a yearning glow, exhausted but satisfied, she mixes with the natural elements to eventually melt together with the inner fibers of a tree … there are plenty of Freudian theories to consider here: sufficient scope for interpretation. But aside from that, these scenes are put together in a beautiful way and are filmed with intensity.
With ‘Private City’, Geert Wachtelaer highlights the eternal balancing act between the forces that surround us. The forces between man and wife, earth and air, fidelity and infidelity, modernity and tradition, loyalty and betrayal… but above all, between passion and emptiness. Nobody can withstand the emptiness. Acknowledgement of this appears extremely productive in itself.

Olivier Bras
Artist, February 25, 2007.

The woman seems to be the only person in the city. She seems to be struggling with living in the city. She seems very isolated. The city could exist in her mind. There is a feeling of a certain darkness and sadness when she interact with her surroundings these feelings are heightened by the soundscape. The city itself is very still, quiet, and cold.

The sequence in her room when she is lying on the floor. It reminded me of Francis Bacon’s paintings and especially of Lucien Freud’s. It really struck me. The colors were very muted, cool, almost black and white.

Jean-Pierre Gagne

Artist, January 5, 2007