Analogon

Coproduction 2021

A cybernetic performative installation based on the Zenne bassin.

© The Body Electric
© The Body Electric

The Body Electric is a collective formed in 2017 by Sibran Sampers (visual artist), Jürgen de Blonde (sound artist) and Kurt Vandendriessche (performance artist). They are a self defined neo-alchemist research group that aims to reinterpret the metaphysical and scientific intentions of alchemist practice - to study, dissolve, coagulate and form understanding - as a foundation for a new ontology, existential holistics, or simply to redefine the essence of and in the most primordial.

They conceive performative installations and installation-performances. During the residency in workspacebrussels they will develop their 5th opus, Analogon. Analogon is a scaled model of the Zenne bassin. It is a cybernetic device or feedback module designed to generate a micro landscape. It consists of a hydraulic system and a tabletop-container to retain sediment, acting as the canvas. Both grinds and substrates will be added to the system, which functions like a water clock or 'clepsydra'. For 1800 years, the only apparatus capable of accurately measuring time - until the pendulum was introduced in the 17th century - and the first cybernetic device ever conceived by humans.

Opus 5 : Analogon is a performative installation synthesizing the regulated flow of materials by means of electrolytical processes. This will enhance the formation of rocky sediment, generating a scale model of a plain. Small water currents carve through this base layer and weave an intricate pattern of erosion. The final imprint is intended to be an analogue of the Zenne landscape, Brussels’ root environment.

The audience will be able to follow the developments on a live stream, like a webcam watching a flock of nestlings hatching and grow. Kurt and Sibran would like to encourage people to communicate simple philosophical ideas, insights or references based on what they see happening, in order to share a more fundamental approach to the spectrum of thought these basic materials may provide as they move and shape. An invitation to observe and meditate in watching a simple physical process, the cycle of soil and water flowing, curdling and reshaping our geological environments. And to define the middle world, our anthropocentric stratosphere, through a fiction of matter, the analogon.

Research, creation & performance: Kurt Vandendriessche & Sibran Sampers (The Body Electric) — Scientific advice: Åsa Jerlhagen — Coproduction: workspacebrussels — Technical support: Kaaitheater

Residencies

15.03.2021 - 17.04.2021

workspacebrussels