For the exhibition LODGERS curated by ARIA, artist, teacher and researcher Nico Dockx selected three artistic research PhD projects at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Geert Goiris, Mashid Mohadjerin and Vijai Patchineelam offer a fascinating insight into (part of) their research processes. Each artist conducts research into a different reality, which, during that process, gives rise to an alternative reality. In all three doctoral projects, the relationship between reality and perception on the one hand, and fiction and imagination on the other, plays an important role. With this presentation and programme, specifically devised for LODGERS, you can check for yourself whether art can offer a different perspective on your reality.
**Whiteout**
This collaboration between French artist and writer Marcelline Delbecq and Geert Goiris looks for an entry into speculative use of images. Both the text and images deal with transformations of perception and the mutability of familiar surroundings. How can words transform an image? What kind of narrative do images imply? What can a voice over/off unveil? What lays beyond the surface?
Evening event 10 May
The evening event will be screening of video-images and a live reading of a specially conceived text to accompany & question the images. In the exhibition after the event, the video will be presented with a recorded voice-over.
Programme
20:00: intro by Nico Dockx
20:15: projection video / live reading by Marcelline Delbecq
20:45: Q&A
**Lipstick & Gas Masks**
In her book Lipstick & Gas Masks, Mashid Mohadjerin explores the aftermath of a great uprising and the role women played in it. What is left behind when the press has left the scene and the cameras are turned to the next event. Disillusioned activists are left powerless among battered buildings and stained walls that silently testify to bloodshed and violence, to a once unthinkable rebellion and to those who lost their lives. Mundane and militant objects remain as evidence of dramatic events that have taken place. A selection of images from this artistic research project are installed at this exhibition.
Performance / poetry reading: 17 May, evening
**Samba Shiva**
ijai Patchineelam recently edited the photobook Samba Shiva: The Photographs of Sambasiva Rao Patchineelam. Published by Zum and Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo. In Samba Shiva, Vijai revisits the photographic archive of his father, a scientist who immigrated to Brazil at the end of the 1970s. The artist, initiator of the project, worked as an editor, while the authorship of the book remains and is credited to the scientist Sambasiva. This displacement of roles is part of a larger project that Vijai pursues in his doctoral research at the Royal Academy of Arts Antwerpen.
Collective reading: 3 May, evening
This collective reading will take place at a large table, going through the excess material gathered while making the book, such as color proofs, dummies to ensure structural quality, waste material of the offset printing, original prints of the slides taken by Sambasiva, artifacts such as the original Olivetti Valentine typewriter pictured in the book and reference material related to the project. All of these materials and artifacts will be presented in a table display for the time of the exhibition.