http://www.mac-s.be

http://www.desingel.be/

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WIELS

Oh how I love those big, white art museum spaces. Just the thought of walking along these quiet, usually almost completely empty rooms makes me excited to visit one. If you are in Brussels one day and you enjoy contemporary art, I recommend you to visit Wiels. Besides, from the top of the building you can get a nice view over the city.

WIELS, Contemporary Art Centre

Avenue Van Volxemlaan 354

1190 Brussels

http://www.wiels.org/

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new life: part one

I got several questions from people asking me what I am exactly doing/studying here in the UK, so in this post I am going to clear this up. Furthermore I want to write about the beginning of my experience of living alone in a new country.

I am currently sitting on a chair at my desk in my room in my flat in block two. My room is the middle one of the top floor with the best view on the clouds. I like having my own space. Living with flatmates is something completely new and it has been a great experience so far. I thought I would miss the cosiness of family dinner in particularly, but luckily we all cook and eat on the same time, so we are never alone. And the cooking part! It's going well! The only things I cooked for myself in Belgium were... eggs and pancakes. Luckily it got much more variated now.

I thought the transition from 'never having lived/cooked/washed alone' to 'hello I have to do everything myself now' would be a complete adaptation, but it wasn't that much of a big deal, as I was settled in my new life very quickly. I am not really homesick and I definitely don't miss my old life... I do get strange feelings when friends or family come and visit me during the weekends and then suddenly when they leave I am left alone again.

Back to my first writing intention: explaining you what I am studying here! So, I am doing a foundation diploma in art and design. It is pre-degree university and a one-year course. The course has three stages. Right now I am in stage one, which is "rotating" through different art areas. Every week I am sitting in another studio, learning and experiencing a different art and design discipline. I already did fashion and textiles, visual communication and fine art. Right now I am in the middle of photo media and afterwards there is only one more left, 3D. The main focus in all these rotations is "experiment!". The tutors want you to look outside the box. And as I am in art school, everything is more focused on the art aspect of the medium. In fashion and textiles we did not literally sew, but we manipulated fabric and experimented with it while working on the mannequin, in photomedia we don't take photographs but we make "photograms" (cameraless photography!) in the darkroom.

After these rotation weeks I will have to choose one of the art areas to specialize in for the rest of the year. Then we will sew or take photographs and get to know all the technical details. It's called stage two. The last months of the year we have to develop and realise a personal major project, which is stage three. This last stage looks the most exciting thing of the year. Having the time to do something you completely choose yourself and in the art medium you love most.

This year should help me making up my mind. Do I want to study something creative? If so, what specific art medium? Or am I going to do something completely different?

And as my tutor told us the other day: "every single human being should do a foundation course in their life!", I completely agree. It makes you much more open minded. It gives you the chance to try out new stuff. I usually stick to photography and film, but now I have to try out new art mediums and I am pretty sure these will help me expand my vision on photography as well.

If you have any more questions, you can always leave a comment or e-mail me.

music

music

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dad in london

my dad came to london, it was sunny all week-end, our meeting place was a cute bookstore in marylebone, we went to london frieze on saturday, then it was sunday, at breakfast i took a picture of a man smoking something, we walked through hyde park to go to serpentine gallery, we were one of the last visitors of the pavilion, we passed through shoreditch to go to the whitechapel gallery, I wanted to take a picture of the beautiful work of Penone but I wasn't allowed so I decided to go outside and take a picture behind the entrance, and then our paths split once again and we had to say goodbye in the metro.

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music

Germany photo diary II

(if you haven't read my previous Germany photo diary post, scroll down a bit!)

The fun part about Documenta is that the exhibition takes place on different locations. Just like the Orangerie (the building in the back), with the beautiful garden in front of it.

Paul Chan

This house is called "the Huguenot House".

It stood empty since the 1970s. Artist Theaster Gates wanted to inject life into the abandoned house: his plan was to make the forgotten house useful again. A team of artists are restoring and reactivating the place. If you want to know more about this amazing project, you should definitely google and/or follow their daily report on their tumblr.

I always like the atmosphere of abandoned buildings, so discovering this house was like a little paradise to me.

Another beautiful place was an old factory hall near the railway station. I realized how much I would love to live in such open space. (a loft in a big city = big dream)

Beautiful building in Kassel