Léonard Pongo & Marta Djourina
Artist talks and film screening
Friday 14 March, 10:00-12:30
at FOMU Cinema Lumière Antwerp
By invitation of the Photography Department and the research group Thinking Tools at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, two internationally renowned photographers will provide insight into their artistic practices and research. Marta Djourina and Léonard Pongo are both researchers at the Academy.
Artist talk by Marta Djourina
Join artist Marta Djourina (born in Sofia, lives and works in Berlin) for a presentation on her artistic practices and current research project, Fluid Touch.
Fluid Touch delves into the intimate relationship between touch and the photographic image. Djourina explores historical and contemporary photographic techniques, incorporating natural light phenomena—such as bioluminescence and sunlight—into unique analogue works. At the heart of Fluid Touch is a hands-on investigation of materials and photographic methods, with a particular focus on Kirlian photography. Working in the darkroom, Djourina examines how touch—both human and material—can be captured and visualized directly on photographic surfaces. By engaging with early scientific experiments in fluid photography, the project considers the tactile and energetic traces left behind in analogue images.
This presentation offers insights into Djourina’s evolving practice and her exploration of light, materiality, and touch in photography.
→ Marta Djourina’s solo exhibition Glowing Attraction is currently on view at the Haus am Kleist Park, Berlin.
Artist talk and film screening Tales from the Source by Léonard Pongo
Visual artist Léonard Pongo (born in Liege, lives between the DRC and Belgium) will screen his latest film Tales from the Source (2024, 39’), followed by a Q&A with the artist.
Tales from the Source offers a gaze on the landscapes of the Democratic Republic of Congo to translate a sense of its unfathomable power, diversity and knowledge. The scenery is presented as a character acting as a living entity and inhabited by the symbolism of Congolese traditions. The visual approach borrows techniques from multispectral imaging, resulting in an otherworldly experience with surreal lights and colour. Combined with an original musical composition by Bear Bones, Lay Low, we enter into a sensory dialogue with the landscape, an intelligent, ageless being in constant transformation that challenges our perception.
→ Tales from the Source is on view at Bozar Brussels, and is part of the current festival Moving Landscapes at Jeu de Paume, Paris.
(images at the top: left: Marta Djourina, Touch project, process / right: Léonard Pongo, still from Tales from the Source)
