Fragment of Le journal d'un usager de l'espace:

over de (on)mogelijkheid om een beeld te vormen van limieten

ABSTRACT

Le journal d’un usager de l’espace is a heterogeneous artistic practise where the focus is on space that is at the same time geographic, sensorial and social. On the (im)possibility to form an idea of limits relies on the ‘act of drawing’ to explore, along the way, visual possibilities in order to appropriate limits in a place (or context) as objective matter into an artistic vocabulary. The exploratory and intuitive research forms images of a limit(s), a travel trajectory or trajectories, a time, a dimension(s) and places them in an artistic perspective. The research prefers to walk next to the landscaped paths to mark the volatile and mobile, fluid and invisible limits and declare them in a new pictorial territory. Images that emerged from intimate experiences along the way came to the fore step by step during the doctorate. They assumed the appearance of a reasoning or scenario or something linguistic – or all three concurrently. An index was used to gather images, actions and intentions along the way. This index serves as a means to be able to envision continuously a pictorial research (photos, drawings, models, installations, films and maps) and to explore it to its limits.

Three phases are involved in this artistic research: a. In an initial phase, the research provides us a frame of reference that situates the concept of ‘limit’ in an artistic and historical area; b. in a second phase, the research gives us food for thought garnered along the way on a secondary Roman road on the act of drawing limits; and c. in a last phase, the drawing and thinking of limits are explored and transmuted into various autonomous images. 

Mira Sanders

PhD in the Arts

LUCA School of Arts

KU Leuven

You can read the thesis (Dutch version) by clicking on this link or/and see the movie that was made for the PhD defence on the 10th of March 2017 at Netwerk (Aalst, BE).

Part of the exhibition Along The Sides Along, Netwerk.

Translation Dutch-English for the subtitles film: Edith Doove.