1/10

Die aap van Bloemfontein, 2014

duration 23 minutes
single channel projection, color, sound, Afrikaans spoken, English subtitles

Der Schlamm von Branst, 2008

20 minutes
colour video, sound

The video follows a group of shut-away hobbyists who, under the leadership of a tyrant, submit to ongoing work on their miserable creations. The occasional grunting represents the alienation and powerlessness of these human pawns. They are played by nonprofessional actors, extended family members and even people culled from a local pub, whom the filmmakers place in banal but claustrophobic spaces with almost all indication of time and place effaced.

Het Spinnewiel, 2002

27 minutes
colour video, sound

In Het Spinnewiel, the three figures Ryan, Christoffel and Babi appear rather inanimate and clumsily puppet-like, an impression enhanced still by the ridiculously ‘uncanny’ effect of the badly synchronized voice-over: they seem nothing more than stodgy, endearingly powerless ventriloquist’s dummies in a fittingly puppet-like wooden interior, invoking stifling memories of a childhood led in the oppressively petty-minded décor of la Flandre profonde . Endowed with telekinetic powers, Babi starts to unleash the eerie force of magic on the dead objects that populate the small, enclosed space, starting with the clothes of the clueless twin brothers Christoffel and Ryan; in the course of this spellbinding orgy of dancing chairs and household appliances, one object eventually lands on the head of one of the twins, momentarily transforming him into a mock-image of the golem-like figure we came across in Parallellogram. Before they are mysteriously returned to their original positions, the chairs and spinning wheel for a very short time during this ‘upheaval of things’ seem to lord it over this musty, dank microcosm and, temporarily animated, turn against their petty masters.

Ten Weyngaert, 2007

26 minutes
colour video, sound

Adopting the name and setting of a Brussels Community Center that was built as a utopian space (but is now frequented by troubled people and remains isolated from the city’s public life), the action of Ten Weyngaert is transposed into a world ruled by a spider where robots act as intermediaries between the minute monarch and a motley cast of dysfunctional archetypes. The unfolding action becomes an allegory of human behaviour under social and psychological ‘pressure.’

Het Geel van Gent, 2005

10 minutes
colour video, mute

In Het Geel van Gent the artists themselves are playing a couple so obsessed with one another that they spend all their time on mutual irritations or totally senseless discussions, such as whether it would be a good idea in the future to ban all criminals to another planet. The dialogues are read by a single, monotone voice from the soundtrack, with no synchronization with the gestures of the actors, who move their hands, arms and heads as if they were being manipulated by strings, like marionettes.

Parallellogram, 2000

20 minutes
colour video, sound

In Parallellogram, things are revealed to have gone skew-whiff, but still believe themselves to be normal. A family of four is laid bare. In a cramped environment, that of their mental space, the characters slip into each other. Their words and gestures slip and slide, out of sync with what is intended and desired. The result is a geometric shape that seems to be an unstable rectangle. It is an ‘oblique’ tale about the difficulty of speaking and being heard.

The Deserter, 1997

18 minutes
colour video, sound

A man is found prone and wounded in the forest, cannot (or will not) communicate in any way, is institutionalized, and eventually starves himself to death rather than assimilate to the “normal” world.

The Bomb, 1995

5 minutes
colour video, sound

The brief video depicts an aging man ritually and clumsily assembling a bomb in his garage – a task that involves a toy tank, stuffed toys, copper piping, and, seemingly, flour – before exploding it in the woods and laying out the charred remains like prizes.

Mime in the Video Studio, 1988

5 minutes
black-and-white video, sound

This black-and-white student video is a five-minute essay in calculated grotesquerie sound-tracked with Europop. It features Thys, spindly in his underwear, performing amateurish mimes and manipulating items belonging to the ex-priest who ran the school’s video studio.