workshop

Lilia Mestre & Bruno De Wachter “An image says more than a thousand words, so why writing?”

1-5 February 2016 / a.pass

touch photo

“An image says more than a thousand words, so why writing?” There are a thousand objections possible to that cliché. “Tell that to the blind man” is the one we would like to pick. What words start to echo in your mind when you close the visual input? And which words would you choose to replace an image being taken away? Ah, you might object, ah, but writing is not about describing images, it is all about sharing thoughts. If somebody is making movements, the spectator will make the same movements but without moving. If someone has written down a line of thoughts, the reader will walk the same line of thoughts but without writing. “Writing is what you do to share your inner self with the outside world” is the romantic version of that vision. This can be a good reason indeed, but you can only write about your inner world through the detour of the outside, otherwise nobody would understand a word. Otherwise, you would not even have a word. And can the opposite not be just as good a motivation? Writing to assimilate the outside world – the unknown, the impersonal – and make it your own?

Biography

Lilia Mestre (1968) is a Portuguese performing artist living and working in Brussels. In her work she uses choreographic tools to research the social body. She gives special attention to the agency of all things and has been working in assemblages, scores and inter-subjective set ups.
Actually she’s involved in two research projects: ‘And what about Virtuosity?’ with Edurne Rubio, Shila Anaraki and Frederik Croene supported by the Flemish government which developed in the art project “The container” 2016/17 in the Academy Kunstbrug in Gent. And ‘Choreographic figures -deviation from the line’ initiated by Nikolaus Gansterer and supported by the University of Vienna and Peek.
Since 2006 she is dramaturge and/or curator for projects in Bains Connective Art Laboratory in Brussels. Currently she is program co-curator at a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies in Brussels).

Bruno De Wachter (° Antwerp, 1972)  Lives in Brussels. Works half-time as a technical copywriter and half-time on his own writing and walking projects. Published essays, translation and prose in the Flemish literature magazine Yang and its successor nY. Started to write prose inspired by long distance walking and is gradually evolving towards fiction. Has a special interest in the combinations of text and photography, in the crossroad between fiction writing at science, and in writing as a way to relate to the landscape.