Contour 2005

OLD MUNICIPAL FESTIVE HALL

Vasco Araùjo is fascinated by opera divas and their dramatic performances, often blurring the lines between male and female, as well as reality and fiction. In Sabine/Brunhilde (2003), he explores the contrast between a real German woman, Sabine, and the Wagnerian heroine, Brunhilde. Sabine’s life is filled with disappointments, finding solace only in opera, where singing becomes her escape from reality. Brunhilde, a rebellious figure from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, represents an idealized fantasy. In the videos, Sabine struggles with an aria from Brunhilde’s opera, while the second portrays Sabine recounting her life like a Wagnerian opera.

COUNCIL ROOM OF THE TOWN HALL

Catherine Sullivan, originally an actress and director, blends theatre, video, installation art, and dance in her work. Ice Floes of Franz Joseph Land (2004) is inspired by the 2002 hostage crisis during a Russian musical's performance, reflecting the clash between the Russian elite and the Chechnians' political demands. Sullivan explores the emotional transcendence of theatre and examines the patriotic, nationalistic themes in the musical North-East, set against Soviet history. She translates these elements into pantomimic acts, blending clichés and codes across different characters and locations, including Chicago’s Polish-American community and a cornfield, to highlight global emotional and political tensions.

OLD HOUSE OF ALDERMEN

In Here & Elsewhere (2002), two synchronized videos are projected side by side, connected by an interview. The interviewer, British film critic Peter Wollen, asks thought-provoking questions on themes like history, memory, photography, and identity to his ten-year-old daughter, Audrey. She responds calmly and directly, sharing her insights on complex topics. The video by Kerry Tribe alternates between interview segments and shots of Audrey's everyday life in Los Angeles. Inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s FRANCE / TOUR / DETOUR / DEUX / ENFANTS, the work explores intersubjectivity, the passage of time, and the girl's evolving understanding of the world.

NOVA

James Fotopoulos, a filmmaker since age 17, has created 8 feature films and around 70 short films, including the well-known Christabel. Known for his complex video installations, like The Mirror Mask (2005) presented in Contour, Fotopoulos addresses universal themes like loneliness, death, and love with a unique and personal approach. His constant innovation and refusal to compromise have established him as a leading figure in contemporary American underground cinema.

Ellen Cantor makes use of paintings, drawings, art books, and videos to challenge conventions and expose the influence of media on our thoughts and values. She critiques idealized images, using familiar images to reflect on personal experiences and societal myths. Fundamental fear is an emotion she knows very well. It constantly bugs her and so she must let her speak in The Evokation of My Demon Sister (2002).She evokes the fear through many layers of sound and image, mostly from feature films like among others Carrie by de Palma, Repulsion by Polanski, Nostalgia by Tarkovski, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by Tobe Hooper, and even The Sound of Music by Robert Wise.

Cui Xiuwen, a Chinese artist with a background in painting, pushes artistic boundaries without confronting the government. Her first video, Lady's (2000), explores intimacy and modern China's underbelly. Using a hidden camera in a discotheque's ladies' room, she captures sex workers preparing for their work, highlighting their struggles, investments, and competition. The mirror becomes a symbol of survival in a rapidly changing, competitive society, while a cleaning lady contrasts this daily battle.

SAINT RUMBOLD’S CATHEDRAL

Sam Taylor-Wood is a key figure among the Young British Artists (YBA), alongside Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Though less extroverted, her work is deeply personal, blending emotions and life experiences into striking metaphors. Influenced by Michelangelo, Caspar David Friedrich, and Hitchcock, she explores the sublime in art, theater, and mass culture. Her Pietà (2001), featuring Robert Downey Jr., reflects her personal grief and battle with cancer. A Little Death (2002) symbolizes mortality and desire, echoing vanitas paintings and Bataille’s concept of une petite mort.

DE GARAGE

Pipilotti Rist is a generous and expressive video artist, blending painting, music, and poetry into her work since the 1980s. She views video as a moving painting, embracing its rough, imperfect quality over polished realism. Her immersive installations transform spaces with projections and objects, often featuring her own physical presence. Feminism is inherent in her work, not imposed. With an uncompromising attitude, she creates vibrant, emotional, and spatially rich environments that redefine video art. Hilf mir ehrlich zu sein (2001) was a smaller scale work of her large screen installation on Times Square in New York called Open my Glade (2000).

Chantal Akerman is known as a film maker, but in the past few years she has re-used images from her feature films and documentaries for her own form of visual arts, namely video installations with an interaction between the different screens or monitors. These works don’t belong in a film theatre, but in museums and exhibitions. Woman sitting after killing (2001) is made out of the last sequence of her masterpiece Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975).

Manon de Boer explores memory, identity, and interpretation in her video and film work. Her Sylvia Kristel portrait contrasts personal and collective memory, revealing how storytelling subtly shifts. In Screentests (4 fragmenten over verlangen) (2005), she collaborates with actress Sara De Roo, examining desire and freedom through evolving monologues. Filming five times over weeks, de Boer captures how De Roo internalizes and reshapes the text, culminating in a contrast between intimate indoor shots and a cinematic seaside finale.

THEATRE CHAPEL

Runa Islam creates films that analyze cinema itself, exploring narrative structure, illusion, and the relationship between film and reality. Her short, intense works often reinterpret existing films. She demands close observation from viewers, as in Be The First To See What You See As You See It (2004), where a woman disrupts porcelain in a store. This action invites interpretations — feminist, social, or phenomenological — challenging perception and meaning in film.

CHURCH OF SAINT CATHERINE

Ana Poliak, a filmmaker and visual artist, founded Viada Producciones in 1989. In Sin Titlo (2005), she extracts only the prologue and ending from her film La Fe del Volcán, leaving the story absent for viewers to interpret. The prologue reveals her vulnerability, reflecting both personal heartbreak and Argentina’s crisis. The ending follows a woman walking through a desolate landscape, intensified by Nietzsche’s words. This circular installation challenges perception, blending personal and collective struggles into an open-ended experience that mirrors life’s uncertainties.

Hito Steyerl explores themes of exclusion and displacement in politics. Her video November (2004) is rooted in her friendship with Andrea Wolf, a leftist militant who joined the PKK and was killed in 1998. The work transcends biography, examining how revolutionary gestures resemble popular culture and cinema. Mixing past feminist fiction with contemporary footage, Steyerl questions what remains after revolution—how its imagery and symbols persist beyond its actual demise. November is about memory, power, and the aesthetics of political struggle.

MAGDALENE CHAPEL

Anouk De Clercq sees video as a fusion of arts—animation, music, architecture—collaborating with diverse artists. Pang (2005) integrates painting for the first time, inspired by Ophelia in Shakespeare and Pre-Raphaelite art. She explores vulnerability, mixing filmed images with digital animation to capture silence, desire, and surrender. The central figure embodies 19th-century beauty—ethereal, melancholic, and distant. Composer Stevie Wishart’s mystical music mirrors this mood. Light, rhythm, and texture shape a dreamlike narrative, making the work a projection of inner emotion, both universal and deeply personal.

TAPESTRY DE WIT

Dara Birnbaum, an American video artist, critiques television’s manipulative power. On her first visit to Belgium, she was struck by the presence of radio on TV, sparking her latest video installation Tapestry for Donna: Elegy (2005). Since the late 1970s, she has deconstructed television footage, exposing its hidden codes and biases. By isolating, repeating, and rearranging images, she challenges mass media’s authority, uncovering political influence and sexism. Inspired by Baudrillard and Lacan, she “talks back to the media,” urging viewers to question the narratives they consume daily.

HOME ASTRID 

Gülsün Karamustafa is a socially engaged Turkish artist exploring identity, Istanbul’s East-West duality, and women’s struggles in Islamic society. A former political prisoner, she was denied a passport for 16 years but now embraces artistic freedom. She creates installations with found materials and uses video to address migration, gender roles, and political repression. Tailor Made (2005) captures a unique Istanbul fashion show featuring casino performers, highlighting their poor working conditions and social rights. The piece is accompanied by music from Istanbul’s alternative band, Baba Zula.

CHURCH OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST

The Gaze (2005) is a video installation by filmmaker Dany Deprez, offering a dual reinterpretation of Rubens’ The Adoration of the Magi in Saint John’s Church, Mechelen. It presents the painting from two perspectives: that of the children, linking it to modern times, and that of Mary, a young mother fleeing violence after childbirth. Narrated by philosopher Marc De Kesel, her inner monologue explores motherhood in hardship. Deprez, known for blending video with painting history, continues his artistic dialogue, using gaze and composition to reflect on women’s experiences across time.

LAMOT

Katrien Vermeire is a Flemish photographer known for her harmonious yet dissonant work, blending natural and artificial elements. Her photographs, like one of a girl in a dark garden, capture intimate moments through light and composition. Vermeire also creates soft, symmetrical landscapes under cloudy skies, exuding charm and grace. While her subjects vary — ranging from opera to powerful women — her work always emphasizes beauty and elegance, with a seamless mix of the real and the constructed, often resembling the serene balance of an English garden.