Contour 2013

The Hof van Busleyden (Court of Busleyden) was built at the beginning of the sixteenth century for Hiëronymus van Busleyden, ecclesiastical jurist and member of the Great Council, the highest court of law in the Netherlands at the time. He was also a Maecenas and humanist and a friend of Erasmus and Thomas More. The building was designed by Rombout II Keldermans, who hailed from a distinguished family of master builders. Between 1619 and the First World War the building served as the ‘Berg van Barmhartigheid’ or ‘Mount Charity’, which lent money interest-free to the poor. Most of the building was destroyed during the war, leaving only the walls standing. It was rebuilt and in 1938 it became the municipal museum.

Petra Bauer is an artist and filmmaker exploring political, cultural, and social traditions, focusing on gender, ethnicity, and class. She examines power structures in everyday situations and uses film to address social and political issues. In Choreography for the Giants (2013), Bauer investigates the Mechelen Ommegang, a historic procession held every 25 years. Through a publication and a video installation (in collaboration with Marius Dybwad Brandrud), she critically examines how organizers strive to represent Mechelen’s diverse society in this world heritage event.

Sonia Boyce emerged in the 1980s as a key figure in black British art, exploring racial and gender identity. Her practice evolved in the 1990s to focus on multimedia and collaboration, using art as social interaction. Move (2013), an 11’33” video, examines Göteborg’s underground nightclub scene in the 1980s and the 2001 anti-globalization protests. Boyce invited dancers to improvise responses to these histories, exploring how spaces enable or hinder collective action. The film blends performances, an immersive soundtrack, and reconstructed nightclub imagery to evoke past and present debates.

Alejandro Cesarco explores narrative, reading, and translation through prints, books, photography, video, and installations. His work examines how words and images gain meaning through context and personal experience, emphasizing storytelling as a way to create order and understanding. Musings (2013) is a video featuring anecdotes on dreams, fate, and creativity, drawn from authors like Sontag and Bergman, evoking a 1960s atmosphere. The Reader (2011) is a slideshow on crime fiction, where viewers take on the role of detective, engaging with fragmented narratives and unresolved mysteries.

Keren Cytter explores human relationships and dramatic conventions through film, video, performance, and drawing. Inspired by her own life and that of her friends, her work examines love, desire, and miscommunication while disrupting conventional storytelling. Something Happened (2007) reinterprets Natalia Ginzburg’s È stato così, blending Hollywood melodrama with documentary aesthetics. Corrections (2013) follows a guilt-ridden man, using repetitive camera movements and deconstructed storytelling to question narrative dependence. Cytter’s unconventional use of actors, dialogue, and editing creates emotionally charged yet self-aware films that challenge cinematic expectations and explore the artifice of human interactions.

Josef Dabernig has been active as an artist since the late 1970s, working with photography, objects, texts, architecture, and film. His films, often set in former East Bloc countries, explore modern decline through absurd scenarios, portraying human behavior in decaying public spaces. Wisla (1996) follows a football coach and his assistant in an empty stadium, with artificial crowd noise, highlighting aggression and power dynamics. Sports Ground Panorama 5 in Gyumri (2008–2013) is a photograph of an Armenian football school, reflecting post-earthquake resilience. Excursus on Fitness (2010) depicts six actors performing isolated exercises, questioning physical discipline and the body’s role in different life stages. Dabernig’s work examines the intersections of sport, space, and human behavior.

Gustaaf De Bruyne (1914–1981) was a Belgian artist known for his paintings, drawings, etchings, and engravings. He studied in Mechelen and Antwerp before teaching at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. His work evolved from realism and expressionism to surrealism, often reflecting on life, death, and human self-destruction. Contour presents Melancholia (1949) and Nieuwjaarswensen (1954–1977), a series of 24 burin engravings marking each new year. Curator Jacob Fabricius discovered De Bruyne’s work alongside archival postcards and photographs, drawing connections between his prints and themes of theatre, discipline, and punishment, reminiscent of James Ensor’s Christ’s Entry Into Brussels (1889).

Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys have collaborated for over 25 years, creating films, photography, sculptures, and installations featuring marginalized, surreal characters. Their work blends burlesque simplicity with dark humor, offering critical reflections on artistic identity and human social behavior. The Brown of Mechelen (2013), a video installation, mirrors their earlier audio play Brigitte Pannecoucke. An anonymous narrator discusses topics like poisonous snakes and travel, interwoven with jokes and riddles, while atmospheric footage of Mechelen in 2013 unfolds in the background.

Carl De Keyzer is a Belgian photographer and Magnum member since 1994, known for his large-scale documentary projects. His work explores themes of societal collapse, covering subjects like India (1985), the Soviet Union’s fall (1989), and remnants of Belgian colonialism (2009). Zona (2003) documents life in 35 Siberian prison camps, once Stalinist gulags, now housing a million inmates. Captured over multiple visits (2000–2002), his 243 images reveal a hidden world of forced labor and survival, highlighting the enduring impact of historical oppression in these isolated, harsh environments.

Edgardo Aragón Díaz’s work intertwines collective and personal memory, reflecting on past events through remakes and films that blend family stories and social issues in Mexico, particularly in Oaxaca. His approach replaces moral judgments with emotional ties, offering a unique perspective on themes often represented in the media. In Hunter (2013), he highlights the contrast between immigrants' lives and zoo animals’ protected existence. In Family Effects (2007-2009), Aragón Díaz uses re-enactments of family history by children, touching on themes of corruption, crime, and social stigmas, underscoring the lasting impact of his family's turbulent past.

Louise Hervé and Chloé Maillet are French artists known for their interdisciplinary practice, blending historical facts, fiction, and new realities through films, installations, and performative conferences. Their works explore the "archaeology of knowledge," merging scientific discourse with personal narratives. A Treatise on Baths (2013) is an installation involving slide projections, researching historical events like the freezing of a colonel and Incan freeze-drying methods. The Waterway (2013) is a film set in a French spa resort, blending underwater archaeology, rejuvenation treatments, and the search for immortality, creating a speculative and associative narrative.

Judith Hopf explores how power structures and social conventions shape and alienate individuals, focusing on the human body as a medium of expression and interaction. Her video work blends personal experience, political views, and critical theory. Some End of Things: The Conception of Youth (2011) humorously depicts a figure dressed as an egg, symbolizing societal exclusion due to non-conformity. Zählen! (2008) features a horse performing arithmetic, based on the "Clever Hans" phenomenon, revealing how external cues influence behavior. Hopf’s work critiques intolerance, social pressures, and the physical and psychological boundaries that define identity.

Marine Hugonnier, a French artist based in London, works with films, installations, collages, and photographs, exploring how images shape our view of the world. Her work emphasizes that images are never neutral, always reflecting political, historical, or cultural influences. She views landscapes as a form of cultural mediation, influencing and being influenced by history. In Apicula Enigma (2013), filmed in Austria's Carniola region, she explores the metaphor of the beehive as a camera obscura, using the nature documentary genre to reflect on the hidden content of the hive, symbolizing the world as a whole.

Liz Magic Laser's work blurs the boundaries between theatre, performance, and video, often set in semi-public spaces like banks, cinemas, and newsrooms. She explores the hidden mechanisms in political speeches, films, and literary texts, often combining live performance with technology like streaming. In Flight (2011), Laser stages a performance in Times Square, referencing iconic film scenes of chases and fights, contrasting cinema’s revolutionary struggle with personal trauma. Prison Score (2012) presents a video installation in Mechelen prison, pairing film posters with choreographed movements, exploring hysteria and emotional expression through prison film scenes.

Pernille With Madsen is a Danish artist who uses video, photography, and installation to explore architectural spaces and their transformative qualities. Her work often disorients viewers by collapsing familiar structures into alien, unfamiliar forms. In Dissolve (2010), she creates a dizzying experience with shifting camera movements that obscure the boundaries of space, leaving the audience in a state of spatial uncertainty. Untitled - Stands (2013) blurs the scale of mock-ups and real images of a stadium, merging abstraction with architectural detail. In collaboration with Yvette Brackman, Foreign Material (2013) presents a spinning papier-mâché globe, symbolizing bureaucratic power and inertia. Madsen’s work reflects themes of disorientation and the collapse of familiar structures.

Pablo Pijnappel and Giles Bailey collaborate on works that merge narrative and performance, often blending fact with fiction. Pijnappel, known for creating enigmatic stories through film and slide projections, examines memory, history, and the instability of personal and collective narratives. His works are often autobiographical, like Nima (2013), a story in postcard installments interweaving personal history with broader tales. Bailey, a performance artist, explores the reinterpretation of texts and histories in his performances. Their joint project The Playmakers (2013) involves inmates from Mechelen prison, using experimental theatre and oral history techniques to create a collective narrative. Lucas (2013) is a sound installation based on a confessional monologue, inspired by Julio Cortázar’s novel, exploring the complexity of memory and identity. Their works emphasize narrative fragmentation and the reshaping of personal and historical stories.

Agnieszka Polska's work explores how past and present actions influence each other. Through videos and animations, she references forgotten or significant 20th-century artists, appropriating their identities to pay tribute. In Future Days (2013), a blend of animation and live-action filmed on the Swedish island of Gotland, Polska creates a fictitious “afterworld for artists” where key figures from the 20th century and forgotten Polish artists interact. Wearing masks of their characters, they engage in ironic discussions, commenting on art and exposing the limitations of human knowledge, mixing humor with melancholy.

Mark Raidpere, initially a fashion photographer, shifted to art in 1997, focusing on his biography and themes of marginality, violence, and inner struggle. Since 2001, he has worked primarily as a filmmaker, exploring sexuality, loneliness, and tragedy. In his video 10 Men (2003), Raidpere captures ten inmates in an Estonian prison, using static shots and slow motion to evoke both fear and empathy. The prisoners’ tough appearances are juxtaposed with a melancholic lullaby, prompting viewers to question whether they are brutal criminals or victims of society.

David Shrigley is renowned for his humorous, direct drawings that offer witty, often ironic observations on everyday life. His work features spelling mistakes and inaccuracies, adding spontaneity and critique of the absurdity of society. For Contour, Shrigley created posters outlining the rules of the prison, church, and stadium, emphasizing the importance of rules in a chaotic modern world. His short animation films, Conveyor Belt, Headless Drummer, and New Friends (2006-2012), combine humor with existential themes like life, death, love, and hatred, using simple line drawings to depict absurd scenarios and satire.

Dario Šolman, a Croatian artist, has spent over a decade working on The Heart of Perspective, the Making of the Film, a series of multimedia projects exploring modern-day relationships with art, culture, politics, and other societal systems. His visual language blends symbolism and geometry with various elements. Target Orbit (2013), part of this larger project, is a digital animation film inspired by architecture, technology, nature, science fiction, and more. The work encourages viewers to reflect on how they perceive and experience art, offering a deeper exploration into the nature of visual representation.

Sarah Vanhee works across performance, visual art, and literature, creating fluid, temporary spaces that challenge existing paradigms. Her projects confront societal systems with absurd, utopian, or poetic ideas, offering alternative perspectives. I Screamed and I Screamed and I Screamed (2013) is an installation with video, sound, and performance, developed with inmates at Mechelen prison. Vanhee disrupts the sterile anonymity of the prison by amplifying the voices of its inhabitants, challenging the silent, obedient bodies within and questioning the normalizing influence of society.

Peter Wächtler works across sculpture, drawing, animation, sound, and video, exploring genres and common narratives, particularly focusing on themes of empathy, education, and oppression. His work often includes writing and examines the dynamics between groups, such as a "team of animals." In Untitled (2013), Wächtler presents four clay sculptures of animals carrying bricks, alongside a stop-motion animation of black wire creatures violently interacting. The piece highlights his use of rudimentary, abrupt animation and explores the tensions and roles within organized groups. He is a member of the Etablissement d'en face platform and co-founder of Sotoso.

ARTISTS & WORKS

The Playmakers (2013) by Pablo Pijnappel & Giles Bailey is a live performance where different individuals, such as prison staff or former inmates, read monologues from prisoners involved in a workshop.

David Shrigley’s Rules of the Prison (2013) features posters listing humorous and absurd rules.

Søren Andreasen’s Mass and Order (2013) consists of four linocuts, displayed within the prison building but not for public viewing. Each work engages with themes of authority, institutional control, and personal expression, offering reflections on the prison experience.

Football club KV Mechelen was founded in 1904, when it was known as the Football Club Malinois. In the early days the team was made up almost exclusively of students from the Catholic University of Leuven.This helped feed the rivalry between Malinois and Mechelen’s other club, Racing Mechelen, also founded in 1904. KV Mechelen, which acquired its Flemish name in 1970, enjoyed its most successful spell at the end of the 1980s.

ARTISTS & WORKS

Josef Dabernig, Sports Ground Panorama 5 in Gyumri - Levon Ishtoyan Football School (2008-2013, photo print on the windows of the cafeteria)

Pernille With Madsen, Untitled - Stands (2013, video installation)

David Shrigley, Conveyer Belt, Headless Drummer en New Friends (2006-2012, animation films)
animation films, black & white, sound, 5’15”

David Shrigley, Rules of the Stadium (2013, posters)

Søren Andreasen, Mass and Order (2013, 4 linocuts in the business class section of the stadium)