Tallieu Art Office

The Physical Mind at Chroniques Biennale

Friche la Belle de Mai
Marseille (F)

During a residency in Shanghai, Teun Vonk discovered by chance that it eased his stressed body and mind to apply physical pressure to his body. Contrary to what one may expect, the registration of sensory input does not improve in a heightened state of sensitivity, such as stress. Such a state serves the evolutionary purpose by filtering out irrelevant information, only focusing on the accurate response: fight or flight. When experiencing such a state, applying pressure to the body has a strong  stress-relieving effect. Participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states

With The Physical Mind, Vonk seeks to let participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states by applying physical pressure to the body. The installation consists of two inflatable objects. The participant lays down in between, is lifted up and gently squeezed between the two inflatable objects. The lifting creates an unstable feeling, a slightly stressful sensation that is directly contrasted with a secure feeling of being gently squeezed between two soft objects

Paradoxically, this forced physical stimulus reduces feelings anxiety and paradoxically stress and the flight- or fight-response disappear. The participant experiences and increased sensitivity to stimuli, normalized alertness and a calm state of mind. The positive effects of this increased receptivity can continue for a few hours after the experience. The installation evokes empathy in bystanders who witness a participant undergo the experience.

Teun Vonk
Chroniques Biennale

1 Drop 1000 Years at Chroniques Biennale

Friche la Belle de Mai
Marseille (F)

1 drop 1000 years

Homeostasis is a fundamental process for the balance of life. By allowing an organism to maintain an appropriate temperature according to the conditions in which it evolves, it is both a symbol of adaptation and durability. 

The Global Conveyor Belt is a huge ocean stream called the thermohaline loop, it stirs up the waters of the five oceans and conveys heat on a global scale. Carried by the currents of this deep circulation loop, a drop of water crosses the globe in less than a thousand years and, in so doing, sculpts the world: with it travels nutrients, heat and animals, thus regulating the entire climate and ecosystems of our planet. We know for sure that this current has been slowing down abnormally for more than 200 years because of human activity, and if this deregulation keeps on going it could lead to a worldwide collapse of life through climate change. Water is the matter of life.

Seeking to highlight the finesse of our homeostatic system and the fragility of its balance, the artist proposes an artistic interpretation of these intimate and global currents that happens to be essential to the survival of our species and its environment.

Martin Messier
Chroniques Biennale
Free with reservation

Ad Hominem in Fin et début / Einde en begin

iMAL
Brussels (B)

Alex Verhaest’s work is focused on story, she is influenced by cinema expanded and a youth of video games. With each new story, Verhaest dives into what it means to make films in a multi-screen post-Nintendo society. Her narrative work speaks to the beautifully perverse paradox of the human incapability of connection in the age of communication. The basis of each project is a highly narrative script, existing or newly written, that she unfolds into a body of work. Verhaest’s highly pictorial style operates on the juxtaposition of film, animation and video art, threaded into a poetically uncanny world.

Ad Hominem, is an interactive philosophical choose-your-own-adventure film, based on Sofie Verhaest’s doctoral thesis Eutopia Unbound, in which the player is cast in the role of Change. The player is invited to pick an answer to questions proposed by four different characters representing four distinct utopic ideas. Through a maze of historical quotes on collectivism, individualism, progressive thinking and conservatism, the player is guided towards an event, organized in honor of Change's arrival.

Alex Verhaest
iMAL

Threnody by I Solisti & Spectra

Festival 20.21
STUK, Leuven (B)

With the death of Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho the music world lost one of the great figureheads of her generation. Threnody -as the name suggests- is about this farewell. It originally started as a tribute to Saariaho who was also for Annelies Van Parys an important example as a leading lady composer. The piece thus inscribes itself is in a long tradition of Déplorations like the very famous “Nymphes des bois” (Déploration sur la mort d’Ockeghem) by Josquin Desprez. Van Parys used several quotes from his Déploration that on some instances in the piece is shimmering through like a distant and fragile echo of the past. While writing the piece, she got confronted with another, much closer loss, which reflects in the echo of the quote “vous avez perdu votre bon père”.
Next to Threnody of Van Parys, there is music of Saariaho, Venegas and Jacobs.

Co-production November Music
As part of Sounds Now

Annelies Van Parys
Festival 20.21
Tickets

SHRINK 01995 - The Presence of Absence at Frankfurter Kunstverein

Frankfurter Kunstverein
Frankfurt (DE)

The exhibition The Presence of Absence will occupy the entire exhibition space of the Frankfurter Kunstverein, covering 1,000 square meters. Thematically, the exhibition revolves around humanity’s timeless engagement with the idea of transience and its forms of representation in art. The title refers to matter as a presence where traces of the living are inscribed. Vital energy is powerful yet fleeting. It leaves a mark, a trace that, captured in matter, can endure over time.

The exhibition will juxtapose exhibits spatially, presenting the abstract idea of a “presence of the absent” from both artistic and scientific perspectives within an expanded conceptual space. The curatorial narrative will venture as far as the astrophysical phenomenon of the black hole. Thoughts on the expanse and time, and the infinity of the universe lie beyond our human imagination, yet simultaneously raise the question of who we are. Our planet hovers somewhere between immensity and eternity. And for a fleeting moment, our own lives open a window.

The self experiences the wonder of reality through the senses of our bodies. These consist of the elements of exploded stars in the cosmos: the nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, or the carbon in our cells. In fleeting moments, we connect with eternity and give traces of being a material form. Art is one way to do that.

Curated by Franziska Nori, with scientific support from Anita Lavorano and Laura Perrone

SHRINK 01995 - Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the flow of air. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body.

Lawrence Malstaf
Frankfurter Kunstverein

Nemo Observatorium 02002 at Prisma Festival Aveiro

Igreja das Carmelitas
Aveiro (PT)

NEMO OBSERVATORIUM 02002 - Styrofoam particles are blown around in a big transparent cylinder by five strong fans. Visitors can take place one by one on the armchair in the middle of the whirlpool, in the eye of the storm, where it is calm and safe. Spectacular at first sight, this installation turns out to mesmerise as a kind of meditation machine, challenging the visitor to stay centred and find peace in a fast changing environment. After a while the space seems to expand and one's sense of time deludes.

Schedule
2-3 october: 10h00-12h30 / 13h30-18h00
4-5 october: 10h00-12h30 / 13h30-18h00 / 20h00-24h00

Lawrence Malstaf
Prisma Festival Aveiro

1 Drop 1000 years on tour

South America
Buenos Aires (AR), Santiago (CL), Bogotá (CO), Mexico City (MX)

Martin Messier
1 drop 1 thousand years

Forcefulness and daring: with Martin Messier, the sensation that we are in front of something imposing and totally new is constant. His installations, transformed into a large instrument with which Messier develops his concerts, integrate technological processes that require the physicality and energy of the moment to activate, making him one of the most exciting contemporary artists that can be witnessed live. He arrives with 1 drop 1000 years, an installation/performance in which lighting, sound and presence generate a powerful immersive flow inspired by the alteration and balance of current climatic phenomena.

2 October 2024 - ARGENTINA, BUENOS AIRES, MUTEK AR
5 October 2024 - CHILE, SANTIAGO, MUTEK CL
9 October 2014 - COLOMBIA, BOGOTA, Festival No Convencional
18 October 2024 - MEXICO, MUTEK MX

EXHAUST

MOLENFEST
Parvis Saint-Jean-Baptiste, 1080 Molenbeek, Brussels (BE)

EXHAUST is the medieval execution of an internal combustion engine. The accused, a truck engine, is paraded from the Quartier Heyvaert in Molenbeek to the Brussels Grand Place, where the scaffold awaits. Before the execution is carried out, the convict’s heinous crimes are read out to the public. They are the unfulfilled promises of endless progress and growth. Violence is met with violence, so that catharsis might take place.

The engine is a miracle of the modern age. It fueled the industrial revolution and sped up our advance, but the ecological price we had to pay for it is enormous. This story has to come to an end. We must change, and change requires sacrifice.

From his home base in Brussels, Kris Verdonck has spent years crafting a wholly unique body of work that spans visual arts and theater, installation and performance, dance and architecture. Performer and artist Benjamin Verdonck is the executioner on duty.

EXHAUST
MOLENFEST

Cycles & 1 drop 1000 years at Sonica Glasgow

Tramway
Glasgow, Scotland

For more than 15 years, the artist Martin Messier has created artworks in which sound art meets light, robotics and video. In the form of performances and installations, these works place the body front and center.

Sonica Glasgow, the biennial festival dedicated to world-class music and audiovisual art for curious minds and adventurous spirits, is back for its 8th edition, presented by Cryptic, who are celebrating 30 years of innovation in 2024. Get ready to be immersed.

1 DROP 1000 YEARS
Signs of the climate crisis are not always visible – but its hidden effects are no less devastating. Even a minute fluctuation in the constant temperature of the thermohyline loop which circulates through Earth’s five oceans could transform our ecosystem. It takes a millennium for a single drop of water to travel the world in this current, a fact that informs Martin Messier’s new work, in which digital water currents stream, splatter and splash, set to a bubbling electronic soundtrack that underscores water’s vital importance to our continued survival.
21 September 2024 - 20:15
Tramway Glasgow

Sonica Talk: Martin Messier: Placing the body front and centre - Sound, Light and Robotics
Martin Messier will discuss the intersection between sensory experiences and technology. He will share insights into his projects through engaging videos and discussions, revealing how sound, light, and robotics can redefine our understanding of the human/machine art form. By giving voice to materials through movements and sound, Messier creates performances that highlight the synchronicity between sound and image, transforming ordinary objects into captivating experiences. 
21 September 2024 - 11:00
Glasgow School of Art

CYCLES
In Martin Messier’s Cycles, thin straps of dazzling light flail out into empty space, then float down almost weightless in the dark. Their movements – sometimes one beam acting alone, sometimes all eight in complex interplay – form patterns that move from the closely choreographed to the seemingly random, while an accompanying electronic hum suggests industrial machinery or a hive of insects intent on some inscrutable task. Messier transforms his fascination for harmony and disorder into a dance for white light, a simple medium describing highly involved systems.  
19 -  29 September 2024
CCA, Glasgow

wilderness & the journey in Hyper Nature

Prectxe, Ice Culture Cargo
Dongbin Culture Depot, Pohang, South-Korea

wilderness

Thirteen disposable plastic shopping bags playfully dance in the gallery space articulated by wave data collected on a voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
Data for this installation was collected as artist at sea resident aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute Research Vessel Falkor as it transited from Astoria, Oregon to Honolulu, Hawaii, July 2019. While in the middle of the enormous ocean, at times, it felt this place was completely untouched by human activities. This delusion was destroyed by the occasional piece of human made debris floating in this vast wilderness. Using an on-board accelerometer, every movement of the ship caused by wave action was collected during the entire journey. The Z movement data is directly mapped to the movements of the bags floating in the gallery space creating the effect that the bags are suspended in waves of the Pacific.

the journey 
the journey is an installation that uses multi-beam sonar seafloor data collected during a transit on the Pacific Ocean July of 2019. During this journey aboard Research Vessel Falkor, an approximately 10 mile wide swath of seafloor was scanned using a sophisticated onboard multi-beam sonar depth sensor. The data gathered from entire journey is converted to an 3D model surfaces of the seafloor underneath the vessel as it transited the Pacific Ocean. For the installation, a portion of these 3D models will be carved into individual sections of clear acrylic and set end to end recreating an approximately 27-foot installation in the gallery space. An RGB led strip will be installed in the bottom of the acrylic sections and programed to illuminate a section of the journey chasing across the gallery space. This will recreate a sense of movement illustrating the vessels journey across the Pacific Ocean as it scanned the seafloor.