AMERICAN MANAGER FOR PARADE, THÉÂTRE DU CHÂTELET, PARIS IN 1917
Glass Negative. Victoria & Albert Museum Photograph by H. B Lachmann.

‘Parade, The Public Event’ doesn't claim to be a mere performance; rather, it stands as a path towards a future built upon unrestrained artistic expression and sincerity. This initiative pays homage to the 1917 ballet PARADE, choreographed by Leonide Massine, featuring music by Erik Satie, a script by Jean Cocteau, and set designs by Pablo Picasso. As aptly expressed by Rothschild, the ballet's theme revolves around artistic frustration, as the performers strive to beckon the audience into the true spectacle concealed within. This prompts us to ponder where the boundaries of the stage genuinely demarcate.

The tradition of Maison Breton as a sanctuary for artists has been reclaimed by Radicale1924. Their mission is to summon the past into contemporary artistic exchanges, engaging in a contemplation of collaborative efforts, aiming to broaden, critique, enhance, and subvert surrealism.This exchange thrives due to the open-hearted hospitality of numerous residents of Saint-Cirq Lapopie, who graciously welcome both artists and friends during this period.

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MIKES POPPE

Mikes Poppe performs

Wash your dirty money here. Lavez vorte argent sale ici. Waschen Sie Ihr Schwarzgeld hier (2023)

I lie down in a mini dumper.

I'm being driven around the medieval village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie.

I'm covered in garbage bags and bars of sunlight soap.

I hold a donation box in my hand.

Using a megaphone, I call out:

“Wash your dirty money here,

Lavez votre argent sale ici,

Waschen Sie Ihr Schwarzgeld hier.”

This action is repeated for an undetermined period of time.

MIKES POPPE (Belgium, 1983)
Since 2007, while focusing on his academic research on “Performance Art”, Mikes Poppe quoted a number of live performances in the form of re-enactments ('Archive-projects').
He specialized in meticulously reconstructing canonical / historical performances (from the 1960ies & 70ies), confronting them with so-called 'Inspired-by projects': ie semi-autonomous performances inspired by the historical antecedents, creating a personal interpretation / transformation of the original material.
Poppe re-enacted work of Marina Abramovic, Danny Devos, Vito Acconci, Chris Burden just to name a few. Nowadays he regularly presents autonomous art performances, drawings and installations.
His visual artwork has strong performative elements and can be seen as complementary to his live art projects.

ELIAS CAFMEYER

Camping et stationnement de véhicules aménagés interdit (2023)

T-shirts

Last year, Elias Cafmeyer, displayed ‘Camping et stationnement de véhicules aménagés interdits’ (2022) a contemporary interpretation of a surrealistic “objet-trouvée”: a white van has become completely useless by the presence of a brick wall. Elias Cafmeyer made this work during his last stop after an Odyssey through Europe. This van was his refuge for several months. As a reaction to severe regulation on tourism in the Lot region, Cafmeyer treated his own van as if it were an empty building in an urban environment where the owner tries to keep squatters out.

In the current edition, Elias unveiled a creation in parallel with his preceding installation, Camping et stationnement de véhicules aménagés interdits (2022). Amidst the background of his mobile atelier, t-shirts are displayed depicting on one side an image captured by Regan Elena, echoing his former work. On the reverse, a poetic composition penned by Siham Mehaimzi finds its dwelling – The circle completes, an enigmatic embrace of beginnings and ends.

ELIAS CAFMEYER ( Belgium, 1990)
Mainly working with sculptures and video installations, Elias Cafmeyer creates site-specific installations often in public space or inspired by the use of public space in the context of the city. He sees the city landscape as a metaphor for social construction and focusses on traces of urban development and forms of signage orchestrating mobility. His interventions deal with strategies such as inversion, juxtaposition and contrast, creating a sense of alienation. Apart from his video installations, Cafmeyer often uses raw, industrial material such as metal, untreated wood and concrete.

CARLOS AIRES

Portraits of Andre Breton (2023)

50 masks in paper & carton

Carlos Aires is in the process of crafting a video creation for next year's exhibition titled

‘The Last Interview with André Breton'

In September 2021, Carlos Aires orchestrated a unique séance within the very house of André Breton in Saint Cirq Lapopie. His intention was to initiate a series of unconventional posthumous interviews with this influential icon. This marked the inception of a research journey, which seeks to engage with, reflect upon, and challenge the enduring legacy that surrealism has bequeathed to new generations. This compelling work is slated for presentation in 2024 , aligning with the centenary celebration of the Surrealist Manifesto.

In a playful intervention this year, Aires ingeniously recreated the renowned 'Portrait of André Breton' masks, as captured by Man Ray in 1930. During the Parade event, he will share his creation with the audience by exhibiting 50 unique self-made masks.

CARLOS AIRES (ES, 1974)
He obtained a bachelor’s in fine arts at the University of Granada in Spain. Upon graduating in 1997, he moved to the Netherlands and completed his postgraduate studies at Fontys Academy (Tilburg, Netherlands), HISK (Antwerp, Belgium) and Ohio State University (Ohio, USA).
He has participated in numerous exhibitions in national and international institutions, such as: CAC (Malaga, Spain), MACBA (Barcelona, Spain), Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (USA), Imperial Belvedere Palace (Vienna, Austria), ARTIUM (Vitoria, Spain), Maison Particulière Art Center (Brussels, Belgium), MUSAC (Leon, Spain), BB6 Bucharest International Biennale for Contemporary Art (Bucharest, Romania), B.P.S. 22 (Charleroi, Belgium), 5th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki , Greece).

CEDRIC FARGUES

Poop Philosophy

2023

color print 29,7 x 42 cm

Cédric presents two collages in the garage of Radicale 1924

‘Poop Philosophy in 4 words : I hate french theory’ Cédric Fargues, Août 2023

CEDRIC FARGUES (France, 1988)
His work has been featured in several exhibitions at galleries and museums, including the New Galerie and the Queer Thoughts. The artist's first artwork to be offered at auction was Two works: Bébéfleurs 9; Bébéfleurs 16 at FauveParis in 2020.
Cédric continues his relaxed infiltration into the world of contemporary art. The Figeacois artist of Lotoise and Aveyron origins based in Figeac, megaphone of the movement henceforth called "cabécoucore", caught the internets with his nonchalance, easily rocking from his sleigh bed to lava lamps with Faurissonian influences, all crossed by post-internet farts far removed from the “sadness-no-future-it's-the-end-of-the-world” posture that has afflicted Figeac for years.

NICOLAS BOURTHOUMIEUX

Nicolas Bourthoumieux presents the sculpture Untitled (2023)

metal & crystal

Bourthoumieux is currently working on a project for next year's exhibition, which encompasses writing, video, photography, and sculpture. This project delves into the intriguing story of Michael Collins, the third astronaut of the Apollo 11 mission, the one who did not set foot on the Moon. Intertwining with the discovery of a fossilized child's footprint in the Pech Merle cave, located just a few kilometers from St Cirq. This captivating cave is adorned with prehistoric paintings that hold a particular fascination.
The outcome of this year's residency is a sculpture crafted from a crystal found in one of the caves within the vicinity of Saint Cirq Lapopie.

This sculpture ‘Untitled’ (2023) stands adjacent to his former artwork, which was exhibited last year during the public event titled 'Un autoportrait à la chaussette trouée' (2022). The previous piece was buried in the garden of Maison Routier.

NICOLAS BOURTHOUMIEUX (FR, 1985)
Originally from Toulouse, Nicolas Bourthoumieux has lived and worked in Brussels since his studies at La Cambre. A multidisciplinary artist whose work includes sculptures, installations, paintings, videos and photographs.
In his practice, Nicolas Bourthoumieux subtly materializes his astonishment of the world, nourished by essential serendipity. His poetic gestures occupy the space, refusing a negotiation with the architecture. His ensemble of works commonly reveals the strange, invisible transformation time may confer on things. Often recycling his own artworks, he sees objects as carrying a temporal charge from which ghosts may (re)appear.

NIENKE BAECKELANDT

Nienke Baeckelandt presents her installation, Tasteless III (2023)

Baekelandt explores the boundary between the solid and liquid state of objects. To do so, she uses glass, ice and epoxy, among other materials. The transparency creates an alienating image: objects are stripped of their meaning and become invisible in space and time. By ‘melting and solidifying’ banal objects such as plates, forks, knives but also luxury products, she questions both our society and our place as individuals in it.

NIENKE BAECKELANDT (BE, 1989)
The work of Nienke Baeckelandt derives from a persistent urge to experiment with different materials and media. Hereby she always seeks out the tension between intuition and control.
Her images are often the result of “concentrations or intensities” of a certain moment. In her most recent work, she explores the boundaries of what the viewer notices or, on the contrary, what (s)he passes by. Seeing, appearing, disappearing.

STÉPHANIE LAGARDE

Afternoon Quote #2 (2023)

embroidered textile

At the center of the Radicale 1924 project stands the presence of a life-long connected resident with the village from her childhood.

From an interview we made in April 2022, one such quote is displayed here. The power of her words resonates with the artist’s research into the place of love in our society, undermined by inequalities (social, racial and gender) and structures of domination at work at any political scale.

This quote, already present at the 2022 edition of Parade in the form of a short video, has become the common thread of an ongoing research and creation for the 2024 event, of which the textile piece here is a reduced-scale sketch/experiment.

STEPHANIE LAGARDE (FR, 1982)
Based in Paris, her work focuses on the occupation of space and memory, researching strategies performed to maintain and challenge control over actual and virtual territories.
Echoing ancient mnemonic techniques, Lagarde assembles conflictual narratives out of sound, image and text from real and virtual, old and new, historical and fictional sources.
She exhibited in venues such as Plato Ostrava, Czech Republic; Kunstmuseum Bonn, Germany; Frei_raum Q21 MuseumsQuartier Vienna, Austria; Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia; Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany; Center for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne, Australia; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France. Her videos have been shown in festivals such as IFFR (Rotterdam), BISFF (Beijing), Berlin Atonal, Videonale (Bonn), Transmediale (Berlin), EMAF (Osnabrück), DOKLeipzig, Kasseler Dokfest, KFFK (Koln), November Festival ( London). She won the Grand Prize at BIEFF 2019 (Bucharest) and the International competition award of Short Waves Festival 2019 (Poznan, Poland).

GUILLAUME BIJL

Guillaume Bijl presents Ensor in Oostende (2000)

Rediscovering History: Guillaume Bijl's Captivating Homage to James Ensor

“As a young Belgian artist, I was already greatly intrigued by the artwork of James Ensor. I was also confronted with several documentary films about him at an early stage, which were shown in the museum of Ostend. As an extension of my series of fictive 'cultural tourism' installations, I created a 'fictitious' documentary about James Ensor in the year 2000.
On one hand, this film serves as a historical 'trompe l'oeil', delving into the myth; on the other hand, it represents an imaginary 'homage' from one artist to another. » Guillaume Bijl, 2004

GUILLAUME BIJL (BE, 1946)
Guillaume Bijl is known for his large-scale installations and visual realism. Since the late 70s, Bijl created realistic decors using found objects. In doing this, he had a pioneering role in the resurgence of the ready-made.
Bijl shows the audience various aspects of our western ‘civilisation’ and consumer society. Using extreme stereotypes, he creates a sort of ‘archeology of our time’ in a tragi-comedic, alienating way.
His participation will be a great opportunity to reflect on his practice in light of a Surrealist strand that continues to reverberate into today’s art practices.

PIETER VAN DER SCHAAF

Pieter van der Schaaf introduces Night Lights (2023).

Pieter van der Schaaf takes current building industry standards and transforms them into a veritable playground. To do so, he intervenes in existing environments, where he deploys a practice of in situ detour by means of installation and sculpture. He modifies the appearance, uses and movements of various elements, such as cables, pipes, electrical equipment and other everyday household appliances. For Parade 2023, nightlights made from dinette toys will inhabit the Nightshop space.

PIETER VAN DER SCHAAF ( NL, 1984)
Working mainly with installation and sculpture. He graduated from Academie Minerva in Groningen (NL) in 2010 and studied at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco/Oakland (USA) in 2009. In 2016 and 2017 Pieter was a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (NL).
His work has been shown at the Fondation Ricard in Paris, the 63rd Salon de Montrouge, at Occidental Temporary in Villejuif, Nest in Den Haag and the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht.
He had solo shows at Espace d’art Contemporain du Théâtre de Privas, and Glassbox and Galerie Jeune Création in Paris. Forthcoming, he will show new work for the occasion of his solo show at B32 in Maastricht (NL) end 2021.

JACK DAVEY

Jack Davey presents Dirty Room (2023)

Working primarily as a sculptor engaged with textiles, Davey has explored digital media. sound and collage as part of his larger installations.Through his work, Jack attempts to capture energies and emotions within a solid structure and asks how one might imbue those qualities into an inanimate object.

This is investigated through material experimentation, theoretical research and themes such as sexual frustration and desire, anger, behaviour, human anatomy, the subconscious, memory and hidden messages. Fundamentally, Jack aims to dissect, analyse and re-build these elements to create a sculptural language. A consciousness held within an object.

During his residency in Ticino, Switzerland (May 2022), Jack embarked on creating a collection entirely fashioned from parcel paper. This endeavor culminated in two interactive, full-scale installations aptly named 'Dirty Room'. These installations were complemented by drawings, painted collages, and video.
In Saint Cirq Lapopie, Jack is extending this concept, fashioning an entire body of work exclusively from parcel paper. This artistic endeavor unfolds within an ancient cobblestone house, supplemented by drawings and sound elements.

JACK DAVEY (UK, 1990)
Jack Davey Lives and works in London
Working primarily as a sculptor engaged with textiles, Davey has explored digital media. sound and collage as part of his larger installations.
Through his work, Jack attempts to capture energies and emotions within a solid structure and asks how one might imbue those qualities into an inanimate object.
This is investigated through material experimentation, theoretical research and themes such as sexual frustration and desire, anger, behaviour, human anatomy, the subconscious, memory and hidden messages. Fundamentally, Jack aims to dissect, analyse and re-build these elements to create a new sculptural language. A consciousness held within an object.
During a month-long residency in Ticino, Switzerland (May 2022), Jack developed a body of work made entirely out of parcel paper. Culminating in two full-sized, interactive installations entitled Dirty Room. The installations were supplemented by drawings, painted collage and video.
Expanding on this, Jack recently celebrated the opening of his latest solo exhibition In Bulge at Casstl Antwerp, Belgium (November - December 2022). An exhibition refining the concepts, materiality and questions of impermanence examined during this period. This was fused with Jack’s endeavour to freeze energy and imbue objects with immoveable certainty and consciousness.

RIA PACQUÉE

For the third edition of Parade, Ria Pacquée performed BRRRRRRton (2023)

‘Moi’, was the poem by Ria Pacquée presented in 2021, introducing herself to the village, signaling the character and tastes of the artist. This year, the artist tells a story about Breton in her performance. Pacquée’s words draw from the life and writing relative to Breton while her voice attributes new meaning through unique cadence and anaphora.

RIA PACQUÉE (BE, 1954)
Ria had her international breakthrough in the 1980s with her performance series featuring characters she created – ‘Madame’ and ‘It’. Infiltrating reality by means of these two personae, she carried out an artistic investigation of the thin dividing line between the fictional and the actual.
In more recent work she has tended to concentrate on photographic and video productions, in which the experiences gained as a performance artist still play an important role.

SIMONA STOIA

Comfort II (2023)

automatic painting with golden oil paint on paper

Simona Stoia, invited last year to Saint-Cirq-Lapopie remembers the village’s vivid light and presents Comfort II (2023). This automatic drawing with a nod to the ongoing 'Surrealism and Alchemy' exhibition at Maison André Breton. Like a spiritual journey, this work channels that essence. Gold, an alchemical metal, transforms - glowing under direct light, yet casting intriguing shadows in its absence or from another angle. This piece thrives solely on direct illumination and the viewer's perspective.

SIMONA MIHAELA STOIA ( ROU, 1982)
is a contemporary Romanian-Belgian painter, who lives and works in Belgium
Her paintings are characterised by a threefold application of the paint: in the thinly applied, sometimes atmospheric, here and there released background, in the modeling of volumes that evoke the image of body parts, animals or plants, and in the moments where the paintings become more abstract and finally become mere paint and paint strip.
Playing with these three approaches, she weaves and kneads paintings that are simultaneously sensual, mysterious, compact, open, complex and bold. Here too we encounter, thematically speaking, darkness and playfulness, here too we meet an artist who thinks visibly with paint and painting techniques. The most specific thing about Stoias paintings, however, is something else, namely her ability to create paintings that take place in completely different color registers. Her paintings often have a dominant color sphere (e.g. emerald, carmine, yellow or pink) that on a closer look breaks up into countless harmonious colors that are not different values of the same tone, but individually touched, autonomous tones, which she can 'see' beforehand . Hans Theys, 2020

Coach Hantrax

intervention in a private garden of the village with a public view

9 minutes 43 seconds

Hantrax has composed a contemporary round dance, drawing from 18th-century classical music traditions. This choreographic piece is a seamless loop, perpetually cycling and lasting precisely 9 minutes and 43 seconds. Participants embark on a sensorial journey, guided by Coach Hantrax's instructions. This dance, an abstract polonaise, transcends convention to engage the physical and imaginative realms in harmonious play.

SIMON MASSCHELEIN

Simon Masschelein presents Spring Branch Lathe (2023)

Masschelein’s poetic creations emerge from the fusion of joints. Cold and warm materials intertwine, a choreography of stacked and balanced exercises. (Hans Theys)

In anticipation of the upcoming public event, Simon has fashioned a lathe that he will personally manipulate during the occasion. This symbolic gesture draws a poignant parallel to the vanishing craftsmanship within the village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. Masschelein’s work melds material and mechanism, granting vivacity to objects, inviting them to breathe within spaces —an homage to mechanics' unspoken eloquence.

From medieval echoes springs innovation: a spring-pull lathe, mirroring the tension of a bow, conjuring perfection from wood. Nature's touch manifests as a local tree near the Maison Andre Breton, a bent branch’s tension woven into his craft—a kinetic collaboration of nature and the machine’s very essence. A nut from the tree is shaken to the ground and further enriches the tale. Masschelein's artistry, a fusion of memory and innovation, nature and craft, resonates with whispers of a village's heritage.

SIMON MASSCHELEIN (BE, 1994)
Simon Masschelein’s sculptural thinking starts from the joint. He fabricates hinged sculptures. How did he come to this? At a time, he was surrounded by pieces of wood, never longer than one and a half meter, nicely shaped, and this was a starting point to envision higher sculptures, resembling ramshackle stacked totem poles. So he started looking for ways to connect these elements, initially similar to ways protheses are connected to the body, then morphing them into hinges. One sculpture has been conceptualized from a knee, another from the way a femur fits the pelvis. One sculpture, made out of forty kilos of sculpted alabaster, is held upright by a tensioned cable self-riveted to an iron ball which is clamped in a bracket. A strange, two-piece figure on two wobbly feet giving shape to a modest contrapposto, sometimes folds forward. A tree trunk is chiseled into a spiral column, then hollowed out, halved and reconnected by a wooden link. For me, the beauty of Masschelein’s art is the way he adapts wood, stone and metal and combines these elements into new shapes. No assemblages, no old stuff, but powerful new work with a hardly hidden tenderness. ( text Hans Theys)

YI ZHANG

Yi Zhang presents Through gaze (2023)

What has transformed the view from this window? Curtains act as the veils that carve private and public space. The curtain becomes a palimpsest of stories whispered by hair's delicate threads. An enigma of access—us and others, who treads close, who is allowed to touch our hair ? The curtain was crafted in 2023 in Xuchang, a Chinese city famous for making wigs. Zhang worked for 20 days in a wig factory, herself, alongside 40 female co-workers or ‘sisters’, as they affectionately called one another. Sister Li in particular was instrumental in the fabrication of this curtain which stretches to the machine’s limits. Seen through a patriarchal lens, the length of hair becomes intertwined with binary and rigid beauty standards.

Simultaneously, hair, a conduit of mystic traditions across culture. The artist ponders what occurs when her co-workers were putting these magical touches on the hair day in and day out. What kind of spells are in effect ? What witchcraft lingers in each strand ?

YI ZHANG (BE/ROC, 1996)
Yi Zhang is born in Wuhan and studied painting in Guangzhou.
In 2016, an Erasmus exchange brought her to Antwerp for six months. In 2019 she returned to Belgium to continue her practice in visual art.
In 2019 she returned to Belgium for a master's degree in visual arts. That same year she won the Stockman's Art Book Prize and showed drawings in Inbox, M HKA.
Today she lives in Amsterdam,where she was offered a six-month residency. In China, Zhang worked with different media: video, photography, drawing, sculptural installations and oil paintings on canvas. In one canvas we recognize the shape of a saucer and glued volumes that were given an extra shadow by means of paint. Her current works are about love and sharing love.

SIHAM MEHAIMZI

One Shot (2023)

poetry performance

Upon arriving in St. Cirq Lapopie in 2019, Siham embarked on an extensive exploration of surrealist women—their invisibility, objectification, and resistance against the patriarchal gaze. She also delved into the concept of androgyny as a transformative identity for women. This journey led to her initial text publication centered around the androgynous figure, materializing in the collection "Variations Androgynes" (Marsa Ed. 2019). During her Radicale residency in 2021 "l’ob-j’ai" was born.

Covering realms from women's bodies to the earth and concepts, "l’ob-j’ai" unveiled this politics of dominance.

Driven by her role as a psychologist and encounters with Corinne Sombrun's self-induced trance, Siham's quest extended to the psychologist's place and role—both institutionally and independently.

Siham reevaluates these dynamics of domination through a "One Shot" recorded spoken voice. From a smartphone, unaltered and unfiltered, she assumes roles of patient, psychologist, and commentator of her inner thoughts. This artistic approach leaves room for vocal improvisation, intertwined with a seemingly motionless figure in space adorned with a donkey mask—an inquiry into "who am I."

A nod to surrealist women like Unica Zurn, Léonora Carrington, and Nadjma's protagonist resonates—a tribute to their psychiatric hospital stays, their stories narrated through intimate journals. These narrative forms, unrecognized as literature during the surrealist era, now stand acknowledged as genuine literary masterpieces. The evolution of Siham's exploration of dominations continues through performances. It's in the kitchen in the house of Madame Cohen, where she resided for a year that Siham presents her vocal installation titled One Shot (2023).

SIHAM MEHAIMZI (FR, 1988)
Siham Mehaimzi was born in 1988 in Agen to Moroccan immigrant parents descended from a Sahrawi tribe. Siham grew up in the south of France where she began writing at the age of 10. After graduating in psychoanalytic clinical psychology, it was at the university during the "temporary art projects" that she met the poet Serge Pey who discovered her work and the program at the poetry cellar in Toulouse. Beside him, she takes part in the poetry march in homage to Antonio Machado who appears in the documentary film "the letterbox of the cemetery". Formed by the “Theater 2 Act” company, Siham aspires to the orality of poetry through which vibrates her ancestral memory, her mother’s exile and feminist issues.
Siham was published in an anthology of poets in the journal Mange Monde, edited by Rafael de Surtis, then in the Revue A, transcultural review, literature action, published by Marsa and in the journal Méninge. And in the GLAD magazine! on gender, language and sexuality.

IDRIS SEVENANS

The Floating Archive (2022)

video

Created July 14 , 2022 in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie on the occasion of the inauguration of the Nightshop Radicale 1924. The AARS archives, represented by Idris Sevenans and Hans Theys, photocopied the initial copies of the

Cadavre Exquis. First cold press

(An anthology of the work of Hans Theys - established, prefaced, and annotated by Laurence Petrone)

This year, we are proud to present the video 'The Floating Archive' also created on Bastille Day in Saint Cirq Lapopie.

IDRIS SEVENANS (BE, 1991)
Working on sculptures, films, exhibitions, unwanted advertising and books (including 'Stoppen met Lezen' and 'De Computer', about Marcel van Maele), Idris runs a shop of remarkable products (the unrealistic initiative Troebel Neyntje) and founded his own school : AARS (Antwerp Artist Run School).
The twentieth-century philosopher Hans Theys (Bangladesh, 1936) described the ubiquitous centipede Sevenans as "a flawless bullshit detector" and also as "something already done in the 1960s, only fresher". He himself got stuck in the 1960s, so he should know.
Living in a world where we are incessantly bombarded with patronizing precepts, ugly images and ludicrous gossip that should lead us to consume senseless, useless, tasteless, colorless and ambiguous things that we do not need, so in that world, we greet with joy the aikido-like way in which Sevenans floors this ineradicable nonsense with a spiral movement. - Carla Van Campenhout, February 2020

WIM WAUMAN

Live intervention by Wim Wauman with Kubb Game, Drawing and Sculpture

Wim Wauman practices the 'flying craft of AirCrafts', creating, writing, telling, and playing in collaboration with artist friends and designers. His work explores 'enchantment and the Spell' visually and narratively, documented through compositions, photos, artworks, and publications. Today, his central narrative revolves around an 'alchemical marriage' (or 'twinning') between 'Saint-Cirq-Lafolie' and 'Rrumpelmonde', a heritage village in Flanders. This is the birthplace of the famous cartographer Gerard Mercator (1512), where window swallows fly around beautiful towers and sundials, and where 'the miller's daughter' of the tide mill houses 'the Melusine'.

His collection of meaningful objects is displayed on a folding table, recounting the story of local heritage and his own artistic journey: his multidisciplinary creation discourse of 'Blauwhaus' ('Blue House'). Based on intuitive resonance, the artist offers alternative perspectives on artistic exploration and develops a contemporary, conceptual, and imaginative myth rich in materials, characters, references, and symbolism.

WIM WAUMAN (BE, 1976)
Wim Wauman plays and experiments with photography, language, materials, objects and narration. He is known for his quirky compositions featuring ‘inspirational objects’ photographed in elaborate wooden settings. Around 2015, he started to compose figurative and abstract work with fine wood veneer and gradually formed an exclusive collection of personalized tables, cabinets, stools, and distinct props functioning as ‘infrastructural’ or ‘conversation’ pieces (including vintage blankets and found artefacts).
In December 2019 Wauman obtained a ‘PhD in the arts’ degree at the University of Antwerp (ARIA) with a poetic and artistic exploration on notions of craftsmanship, making and thinking. His conclusion involved the temporary transformation of a ‘neglected provincial castle’ into a semi-pastoral research centre designed to collaborate with fellow artists and to induce an artistic state of flow (Blauwhaus, Waasmunster, 2019). There he gained interest in re-imagining local histories and singularities to ‘enchant’ and ‘heal’ his surroundings through a strategic combination of visual (and experiential) stimuli, multidisciplinary interventions, discursive gatherings, and public events ‘powered by #AirCrafts’: an imaginative '(witch)craft' involving ritual, seduction, fabulation, narration and wordplay.
Nowadays Wauman amusingly combines aspects of conceptual and visual arts with marquetry techniques, decorative and illustrative design, scenography, visionary writing, and storytelling. He regularly publishes booklets on his research, idiosyncratic fabulations and artistic ‘Blauwhaus’ collaborations. His work has been acquired by museums such as FotoMuseum (Antwerp) and Victoria and Albert Museum (London) or by the Flemish Community (M HKA, Antwerp).

GEORGES ADÉAGBO

United (2023)

installation

André Breton et la vie d’André Breton was presented last year by Adéagbo. During a walk, Georges collected lost or abandoned objects. These objects were integrated into his installation displayed in front of the church in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. This year, the concept of collecting objects in the village is revisited to create a new work in collaboration with Béatrice Pereyt-Vignals, at Galerie Roger Dérieux in Saint Cirq Lapopie.

GEORGES ADÉAGBO (BN, 1942)
A conceptual artist who has developed his own style of using found objects since the early 1970s in Cotonou, Benin. During his walks, he collects lost or discarded objects that tell something about the society he visits and incorporates them into his installations. Adéagbo enriches his palette with sculptures and traditional masks from Benin to present the culture of his country wherever he is invited to exhibit. For each installation, he commissions paintings and wood panels from Beninese artisans, thus linking the local and the global. As a result, episodes from his personal past intersect with unusual interpretations of supposedly objective historical studies, mainstream pop culture is juxtaposed with canonized high culture, and the mundane is confronted with the profound in his work. Adéagbo avoids overly obvious interpretations of his work: ambiguity and entrapment are integral to his strategy of provocation. Adéagbo's works can be found in important collections such as: Centre Pompidou-Paris, Museum Ludwig Cologne, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, Toyota City Museum, KIASMA Helsinki, Moderna Museum Stockholm and the Contemporary Art Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany.

JOLIJN BAECKELANDT

Fiction / Non Fiction (2023)

card board glasses & postcard size paintings

Corentin Canesson, artist residency at Maisons Daura in Saint Cirq Lapopie, invited Jolijn Baekelandt to join in

his exhibition ‘L’amour Fou’ , presented by La Maison des arts Georges et Claude Pompidou (MAGCP)

For that occasion Baeckelandt presented a multiple that is composed of a self-made cardboard pair of glasses, with tape serving as a binding agent between the individual parts. The lenses are made of red and green plexiglass onto which "Fiction/ Non Fiction" has been silk screened. For the 'Parade, Public event,’ Baeckelandt presents a multiple that is composed of a self-made cardboard pair of glasses, with tape serving as a binding agent between the individual parts. The lenses are made of red and green plexiglass onto which "fiction// non-fiction" has been silk screened.

In this work, the sunglasses are used as a metaphor. When the sun shines, everything becomes vague ,flattened and blurry because it disrupts our vision. The sunglasses ensure that sunlight is filtered, providing us with a clear view of things. In this multiple, the viewer receives false promises, the assurance of perceiving the world clearly, of providing an answer. What's right or wrong, what's real or unreal... in contrast to the original purpose of this object, the multiple becomes completely devoid of utility. It no longer holds any purposes. Instead it brings a kind of confusion.

In addition to this multiple, 120 postcard-sized paintings are presented, composed of collages made from collected postcards from Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, combined with her own polaroid pictures. The process of creating these postcards is layered, involving an intermediate phase of repeated scanning and printing, followed by her artistic response. Layer after layer, the memory and the clear view fades and these artistic responses take over. The gaze becomes blurred.

For Baeckelandt, value lies precisely in the tension field in between. Where reality and the marvelous, wrong and right, conscious and unconscious,... come together. The place where the two opposites meet.

‘Just as love brings us confusion, painting and creating art generate a similar confusion that cannot be seen clear.’

JOLIJN BAECKELANDT (BE, 1993)
Jolijn Baeckelandt is born in Ostend, works and lives in Antwerp. Jolijn is a visual artist who works with drawing, painting and site specific situations.
Jolijn Baeckelandt generates a simulation with common figures, objects and imagery related to our daily life, these are skinned from their chastity. The depicted figures and objects appear to be exhausted, and run down. They seem to be out of balance, indecisive, uncomfortable and it looks like they are constantly on/up to something. To take what they can get in a state of madness. Subjected to repetition they manifest themselves on the canvas. Through the use of common, everyday information we collect ,through our shared routines, a system of characters and symbols developed as an iconography and lexicon.
Elements derived from high and low culture are accumulated with elements from her own personal experience and perspective(s). Influences from street art, pop culture, subcultural phenomena and animated cartoons are merged by approaching them in an equal and humorous manner. With a sensitive awareness a universe is constructed in which the personal-, the ordinary- and fictional sphere come together to dance. The helpless man amongst the masses is depicted with mild and critical mockery.

HANS DEMEULENAERE & SAMYRA MOUMOUH

The Artist's Chair (2023)

wood copper and iron

The Artist’s Chair is presented in the main room on the first floor of Maisons Daura, Résidence Internationales d’Artistes/MAGCP

Inspired by a piece of furniture from André Breton's collection, they have adopted the design language of this chair: a circle as an armrest and a square as a seat. However, they go beyond mere replication; they have shaped these elements uniquely, resulting in two chairs engaging in a conversation. The result is an analogy in which past and present merge into a contemporary work of art. The 'plinth,' a green particleboard, forms the perfect backdrop for these furniture/sculptures, which are now mainly an artistic interpretation with a wink to the design of the 'chair.'
The sculptural element emerges in the dialogue between the two chairs. Its uniqueness lies in the abstraction of the circle and the square. Nevertheless, it remains a harmonious representation of two chairs at its core.

SAMYRA MOUMOUH (Belgium, 1983)
Formally trained as filmmaker and architectural designer, mainly works in the field of contemporary art. Her practice consists of designing exhibitions; developing a design concept and foresee the technical assistance for the realization of art.
She was (2011-2018) the (inter) national assistant of Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven [AMVK] and also works irregularly for and with other artists such as Hans Demeulenaere and Chantal Yzermans.
Samyra creates scenography for dance and theater, designs site specific furniture for artist studio's events, as well as the interior of commercial and private spaces.
Item description

FRAN VAN COPPENOLLE

Untitled (2023)

Sculpture

‘Everything starts with the discovery of wonder. It can be the lemon in my tea, a building, a hazelnut tree that I consciously see in bloom for the first time. But it can also be a physical discovery, like how two pipes fit on a piece of wood, or how to fold a certain piece of linoleum. Often, these things happen by accident. Over the years, I've become very skilled at provoking chance. Making space for whatever might happen. After this initial step, I proceed with a creative adrenaline to create a similar object that mirrors this sense of wonder. It won't be about the idea of the lemon or the building. It's more about trying to recreate the impulse I felt at that moment. The work is only finished when it suddenly resonates with the same intensity.

In that meantime between the beginning and the end, it's a game of action and reaction. Like a child, completely immersed in the moment. With only thoughts of how to solve the 'problems' created by his playful hands. In this process, there's no view of the result or the audience; it's a continuous movement that keeps going until I'm struck for 30 seconds by what already exists. That's when I have finished the sculpture. And leave it to the next phase of the outside world!’ -Fran Van Coppenolle

Coppenolle prefers to create a “universe” with her installations and sculptures rather than individual pieces. She embraces the dynamism that inanimate objects may possess as well as the way such works interact with the space occupied.

Fran Van Coppenolle, 1998 (BE)
Fran is a sculptor who graduated from the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts in 2020.
She grew up in the agricultural world, surrounded by ancestral objects that-her grandfather and father- and later she collected, forklifts and various agricultural machines that she handles with grace, ease and lightness.
Her studio is located on her family's -retired-farm in -the west Flanders-, a large estate with meadows, fields, a pond, -trees, animals- and stables. Welcome to Ludwigshaven, the place where Fran, harvests her own living world.
Fran Van Coppenolle creates sculptures based on shapes and objects that she observes. She welds metal, carves wood, welds, bends and creates surprising volumes with found pieces of textile. Her sculptures evoke flowers, butterflies, birds and flying machines, not by intention, but as a result of a work of duplication to arrive at sculptural forms.
At the same time, she seeks subtle asymmetries that seem to bring these delicate sculptural apparitions to life. Fran's works take on an extra dimension because they are figurative and unrecognizable. They allow for a multitude of possible interpretations. Surprisingly fresh materials are put under tension, tightened, braided, harnessed, tied together until they begin to form intangible, incomprehensible and captivating objects.
Beautiful creations that throw breathing spaces into the world without asking anyone's permission.
(text Sabrina Brachot)

MAARTEN ENGHEIN & KIM WEY

Thank God I’m a Real Artist (2023)

performance

Artists Maarten Enghein and Kim Wey come together in a display of taking social media culture outdoors. Maarten Enghein will perform a Kim Wey autograph session. Wey the “real artist” is not present and hires a stand-in to graciously bless her fans with the sacred experience of witnessing them sign posters – because, clearly, nothing says genuine connection like a perfectly filtered and autographed poster. Thank god she’s still famous.

Maarten’s work comes from a broad interest in solid systems and finding interspace and making perforations. From electronics to ecosystems, from socio political structures to parking lots, literature to traffic, the Art market to football leagues, .... they study and observe the way every component interacts and is related and deconstruct them into new situations, actions and visual imagery that look for a discomforting shift in everyday reality.

Trying to disconnect conventions by transforming solid state stereotypes and behavioral patterns in unexpected performative actions, translating in endless transmutations, transporting the untransported, they question the incidental surprises as a moment supreme in which competitive talking could be seen as a banal form of the macrosystems they attend.
Emerging as a product of the Internet era, particularly during the Kardashian Decade, Kim Wey draws dynamic inspiration from Western pop culture. Her installations and performances ingeniously interlace the classical canon with the modern landscape of self-expression synonymous with social media culture.

In anticipation of next year's Radicale 1924 exhibition, Kim Wey's involvement in 'Parade, the public event' this year takes center stage as she crafts her distinctive poster...

Kim Wey (BE, 1997)
Kim Wey is based in Antwerp. Her work mainly focuses on its satirical response to the questionable art market. With the alter ego 'Kim Wey' as her main subject, her art practice mainly focuses on installations and in-situ work to point out the distinctions between what is perceived as 'celebrated' and 'thriving' art versus the position of the unfruitful and unavailing arts-practitioner and thereby experimenting with the boundary between self promotion and self indulgence.
MAARTEN ENGHIEN (BE)
(they/them)
Their work goes out from a broad intrest in solid systems and finding interspace and making perforations. From electronics to ecosystems, from sociopolitical structures to parking lots, literature to traffic, the Art market to football leagues, .... they study and observe the way every component interacts and is related and deconstruct them into new situations, actions and visual imagery that look for a discomforting shift in the everyday reality.
Trying to disconnect conventions by transforming solid state stereotypes and behavioral patterns in unexpected performative actions, translating in endless transmutations, transporting the untransported, they question the incidental surprises as a moment supreme in which competitive talking could be seen as a banal form of the macrosystems they attend.
They want to do a shoutout to w_wh_at*, where they did an internship as a multidisciplinary object, working with a lot of metafictional plastic players which put education on the map of systems that connect their practice. “Thank you for co-assessing and co-operating in the interspace”.

LUC DELEU

Propositions for Saint-Cirq-Lapopie (2023)

Operating as an architect, visionary, urbanist (global planner), and artist, his 'Propositions for Saint-Cirq-Lapopie' offers critical, sociological, and ecological alternatives. This project develops the concept of thought-provoking and utopian propositions for the village of Saint Cirq Lapopie.

LUC DELEU (BE, 1944)
After they settled in house “Les Nénuphars”, in the prestigious Cogels Osylei in Antwerp, Belgium in May 1968, Luc Deleu and his wife Laurette Gillemot founded T.O.P. office, a studio for urbanism and architecture in 1970.
The starting point, motivation and goal of the studio was questioning architecture and urban design, their position and duty in a global society. This generated the necessity to think about why and how to run an architect studio and how to direct it towards a truly independent and autonomous development with the use of a large set of media.
So, T.O.P. office was set up with the very conviction that it would be better to reduce the spatial impact of building and to build less. Convinced that future developments in communication media would enable a reborn nomadic life, the first ideas were to come with work that emphasizes mobility versus the immobilism of real estate and to contradict the exclusive privilege of the building as living and job accommodation.
On many occasions - apart from being an independent research team developing an autonomous format for urban research by design – T.O.P office participated in the debate on urban planning and architecture, and therefore maybe ended up in a certain niche.

HANTRAX

This year final musical intervention on the highest platform of the village will be presented by Hantrax, Belgian composer and pianist. His music in spirit is experimental, taking seemingly incompatible influences and mixing them into his self-invented musical language.

HAN SWOLFS (BE, 1984)

Hantrax is the alias of Antwerp based composer, performer, and pianist Han Swolfs (1984). Renowned for his live electronic performances and imaginative piano stage productions, his shows are kinetic, atmospheric, hypnotic, and cinematic. A multi-faceted musician who is both enigmatic and kind. Hantrax traverses music categories with whimsical ease from classical to jazz to experimental electronic music.
As a composer, his music in spirit is experimental, taking seemingly incompatible influences and mixing them into his self-invented musical language. He breaks the rules of genres, cross-pollinating styles at will into his oeuvre of dark ‘undanceable’ dance music. His ingeniously crafted compositions reimagine standard forms. Old and new technology is an integral part of his process, exploring the possibilities of analogue and digital systems, music machines and recording systems. Dubbed the illustrious prince of the Antwerp underground, Hantrax creates transformative music championed by connoisseurs and barbarians alike.
His collection, which includes his piano compositions and his electronic work, is available on Palermo Records, Ekster label, Roulette Records, Jack playmobil, and Jheri tracks. Off stage, Hantrax can be found hosting a modernist music program called Klankmeanders with his father, Hendrik Van Geel, on Radio Central and can be heard on his radio show titled Headroom on the Word Radio, that exposes innovative music of all categories.
Working at the intersection of the arts, Hantrax has been involved in numerous creative collaborations and productions. Highlights include work with visual artists Anne-mie van Kerckhoven, Pieterjan Ginckels and Arocha – Schraenen, as well as performances for the theater company Abattoir Fermé and for the classical orchestra of Michiel De Malsche as a soloist.