Welcome to the site of the deep histories fragile memories artistic research cluster embedded in Intermedia (LUCA School of Arts, Brussels).
Research of the members of dhfm engages with the recuperation of marginalised histories, with ecologies and situated enquiries, with experimental writing, listening, and the shaping of new narratives. This website announces dhfm publications, events and news, and the Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist (dhfm/K. Verlag).
Background image: Ernst Haeckel, via Wikipedia.org
Recent posts
Fieldguide Gatherings / South Africa
In April deep histories fragile memories are organizing two sets of Gatherings in South Africa in collaboration with the authors of the Fieldguides.
Unruly Procession of Contraceptive Plants / taking shape in the Braem pavilion
photo Tom Cornille Middelheim Museum / Reading the Landscape
Read more Unruly Procession of Contraceptive Plants / taking shape in the Braem pavilion
Artist Research Project / Reading the Landscape / Middelheim Museum
The Artistic Research Project is a new program of the Middelheim Museum in which artists are invited to embed their research in the Museum.
Read more Artist Research Project / Reading the Landscape / Middelheim Museum
Lost in the gallery: Ips typographus in contemporary art.
(wip) This post collects artists that are working with Ips typographus: overwhelmingly with its tunnel patterns. It accompanies a chapter-in-progress of Alexandra Crouwers’ thesis.
Read more Lost in the gallery: Ips typographus in contemporary art.
Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings Recap Day 2 Part 2
A review by An-Katrien Callebaut
CHAPTER 4: GATHERING / WHISPERS OF WIND
Read more Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings Recap Day 2 Part 2
Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings Recap Day 2 Part 1
A review by An-Katrien Callebaut
CHAPTER 3: GATHERING / AMBULATORY LIBARIES
Read more Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings Recap Day 2 Part 1
Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings Recap Day 1 Part 2
A review by An-Katrien Callebaut
CHAPTER 2: SYMPOSIUM/ROOTED ENCOUNTERS – AFTERNOON SESSION
Read more Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings Recap Day 1 Part 2
Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings Recap Day 1 Part 1
A review by An-Katrien Callebaut
CHAPTER 1: SYMPOSIUM/ROOTED ENCOUNTERS – MORNING SESSION
Read more Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings Recap Day 1 Part 1
Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings
Symposium and Fieldguide Gathering / Nov 8 & 9 / Deep Histories Fragile Memories research group organizes a symposium on pluralist entanglements of artistic thinking with other research ecologies and considers art’s potential for making a stand within current challenges. Thinking along with philosophies of plant biology, with feminist critiques of biotechnology, colonialism, and science, with histories of plants out…
Read more Rooted Encounters / Fields, Forests and Other Imaginings
Exhibition / Smaller Worlds. Diorama in contemporary art.
Alexandra Crouwers shows ‘The White Hide (v)’ in Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest (Hungary) as part of the group show ‘Smaller Worlds. Diorama in Contemporary art’. October 14 – January 15, 2023.
Read more Exhibition / Smaller Worlds. Diorama in contemporary art.
Conference / The Listening Academy
The Listening Academy was held from August 29 – September 4, 2022 at the experimental contemporary art and music space Iklectik in London. The Academy was organised by Lucia Farinati, curator, researcher and writer, co-author of The Force of Listening (2017) and Brandon LaBelle, artist, writer and theorist, author of Acoustic Justice: Listening, Performativity, and the Work of Reorientation (2021).…
Day of Encounters: Constructed Histories, Conflicted Memories
A day of encounters, presentations and screenings on the historic & contemporary entanglements b/w architecture urban history & colonialism While debates about the conflicted heritage of colonialism have gained momentum worldwide, this conference day confronts the fields of architectural history, art, film and heritage studies with the difficult question of the memorialization of colonial sites and architectures in both Belgium…
Read more Day of Encounters: Constructed Histories, Conflicted Memories
Artist Talk / (un)common values / National Bank of Belgium / 25/08/2022
Artist Talk connected to the exhibition (un)common values at National Bank of Belgium https://www.nbb.be/en/articles/uncommon-values-contemporary-art-collection-national-bank-belgium-celebrating-its-50th More information: www.nbb-expo.be
Read more Artist Talk / (un)common values / National Bank of Belgium / 25/08/2022
Prize / SAR Prize for Excellent Exposition 2021
Alexandra Crouwers’ Research Catalog exposition, as part of the peer reviewed VIS Nordic journal for artistic research was awarded 2nd place of the SAR Prize 2021.
Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist
An ambulatory library of ten chapbooks that mark a return from Cape Town to Angola. Volumes 1-3 (2022) mark the first leg, from a shrine on Signal Hill to a village in the Kamiesberg, Namaqualand. The guides are Nadia Kamies, Rachel O’Donnell, Joshua Cohen and Johanna Lot. Volumes 4-6 (2023) will narrate the second leg of the return through Namibia from Walvis Bay to Rundu. Volumes…
Performance / Breathing Barks
Breathing Barks took place on June 16th 2022, in the context of the blurred edges festival in Hamburg/Germany.
Exhibition / NGMI. Solo Alexandra Crouwers
Opening Saturday, June 11 and running until September 11: NGMI, a solo show by Alexandra Crouwers in De.Groen, Arnhem. NGMI stands for ‘not going to make it’.
The Return
We are picking a path northwards, along sandy tracks and mountain passes. This is an expedition to be sure. It ghosts an earlier, weightier, expedition that marched out of the Fort of Good Hope with flocks of sheep, herds of oxen, riding horses and donkeys, with wagons, light carts that carried one boat and two field canons, and a calash.…
Learning with the Garden; Learning from the Land
Friday June 3, 2022: As a part of the symposium Learning with the Garden; Learning from the Land, Renée Turner and Tara Page will be talking together about the pedagogies of place.
Publication / De Letterzetter
De letterzetter. 51°24’49.8″N 5°39’19.9”E
Alexandra Crouwers. A visual essay for Forum+ magazine for research and arts. vol. 29 nr. 2, pp. 24-29, May 2022.
Gather, a Rehearsal
A Reading with the Bodies in the medicinal garden of ‘t Gasthuys. On March 25 the Bodies gathered at the ancient medicinal garden of the museum ‘t Gasthuys, Aalst, for a reading-as-rehearsal of Rachel O’Donnell’s essay Apacina: a Contemporary Herbal and Ambiguous Tale, soon to be published in the series Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist. Readers were Pieternel Vermoortel, Brunilda Pali, Vanessa Müller,…
Cement and Sacraments
A talk by architectural historian Ellen Rowley on Friday May 20th, introduced by the Department of Ultimology. This talk is part of research by Fiona Hallinan on the coming into being of Ultimology, or the study of endings, and the development of a film that looks closely at a rupture, the demolition of a Dublin church.Friday May 20th 18:00 BrusselsFor more…
Open air permanent art installation / ⓘ
On May 11, 2022, a small gathering took place to celebrate the permanent installation of a research related artistic information panel on The Plot.
Exhibition Cripur Cripour
Cripur Cripour is a nonperformance on migraine and voice, wavering between interactive opera and installation art. Through personal narratives and intimate vocal sounds, singer and sound-artist Mariske Broeckmeyer guides the audience into the blackened scenery of the migraine lands. When this neurological syndrome rages at full force, a throbbing headache and an all-consuming nausea reduce the migraineur to an immobile…
Publication / WAGMI: an awkward dance of art and crypto
By Alexandra Crouwers. On collecting digital art in the NFT space. Published in HART art magazine issue #222, March 2022.
Read more Publication / WAGMI: an awkward dance of art and crypto
Exhibition / A Hysterie
A Hysterie of Guiné Weed and Sorrow Seed, a duet across the Atlantic. Audio installation, cloths of The Company Ghosts, Song Sheet. Exhibition Ninguém teria acreditado, Pinacoteca, Sao Paulo. 04/12/21-04/03/22. Read more
Exhibition / Ninguém teria acreditado / Pinacoteca Brazil / Dhaenens, Morris & Broeckmeyer
The exhibition is a second, larger, iteration of No One Would Have Believed, that ran at Netwerk Aalst a year ago. The exhibition recuperates the historical work of Brazilian-Belgian artist Alvim Corrêa with special attention bestowed on his renowned illustrations of HG Wells’ War of the Worlds. The curators, Fernanda Pitta and Laurens Dhaenens invited ten contemporary artists to respond…
Read more Exhibition / Ninguém teria acreditado / Pinacoteca Brazil / Dhaenens, Morris & Broeckmeyer
Notes / Inventory of Memories
Introduction/first notes into the PhD research project: ‘The Forest Echoes Back’
Publication / British Experimental Women’s Fiction, 1945—1975
Slipping Through the Labels Our edited collection, featuring work on writers including Storm Jameson, Stevie Smith, Rosamund Lehmann, Anna Kavan, Elizabeth Bowen, Eva Figes, Eva Tucker, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Brigid Brophy, Ann Quin, Christine Brooke-Rose, Shelagh Delaney and Buchi Emecheta, is now out! Description: This book scrutinizes a range of relatively overlooked post-WWII British women writers who sought to demonstrate that…
Read more Publication / British Experimental Women’s Fiction, 1945—1975
Publication / You and I Don’t Curate on the Same Planet
On template exhibitions and opportunistic art For the ‘Experiences’-section of the academic journal Image[&]Narrative I published an essay on my experience of the Taipei Biennial 2020 “You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet” in the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan. This text explores a mental visit through the contemporary arts exhibition star curated by Bruno Latour and…
Read more Publication / You and I Don’t Curate on the Same Planet
Publication / The Plot, The Compositor, and Mourning/Mistakes
A peer reviewed publication, as part of VIS Nordic Journal for Artistic Research issue #6, Contagion by Alexandra Crouwers. October 19, 2021.
Read more Publication / The Plot, The Compositor, and Mourning/Mistakes
Research Talk / Fiona Hallinan
Fiona Hallinan gives a talk on the form of the radio essay guided by ‘Inside the Department of Ultimology’ a radio essay she co-created with curator Kate Strain / Research in the Arts class. 19/10/21. In this presentation Hallinan will explore the form of the radio essay, beginning with her experience in co-creating this work for the Irish national broadcaster…
Symposium / Sliding Together
Symposium on the occasion of the defence of Maria Gil Ulldemolin’s doctoral thesis Collapse: A Warburgian Autotheory of Impacted Interiorities and Folding Bodies / UHasselt / Sept 16 With Barbara Baert, Edith Dekyndt, Hannah Van Hove, Wendy Morris and Mia You in the morning and Maria Gil Ulldemolins in the afternoon.
Publication / Fieldguides for a Preternaturalist
Suspended between the mundane and the miraculous. The Fieldguides are an upcoming publication series of single-essay chapbooks. They are a deep histories fragile memories collaboration with the Berlin publisher K Verlag, kunsthal Netwerk Aalst, and LUCA. The fieldguides are funded in the first year as a start-up project by LUCAbreakout. The first three issues will appear in 2022. Fieldguides for…
ⓘ / information panels
In July & August, five information panels on my research are on view in the Park Brialmont in Antwerp, Berchem.
The Unreal: first notes on Non-Fungible Tokens
This is a repost of a short article on theappealoftheunreal.com, describing my first steps into the crypto-art world.
The Astronaut Metaphor
The Astronaut Metaphor is a three year programme of Netwerk Aalst in which a group of artists, curators, writers and researchers are invited to reflect on forms of governance whilst simultaneously infiltrating Netwerk Aalst’s programme and institutional model. The participants in the programme, the Bodies, are: Nick Aikens, Bianca Baldi, Jeremiah Day, Laurens Dhaenens, Dora Garcia, Agnieszka Gratza, Vanessa Joan…
Meeting / dhfm
Deep histories fragile memories meeting on the occasion of the No One Would Have Believed exhibition at Netwerk Aalst 26/02/21 Our expanded research cluster met for the first time this year, in part virtually, in part in person. Anja Veirman joined via zoom from Ghent, Renée Turner from Rotterdam, Hannah Van Hove and Laurens Dhaenens from Brussels. Alexandra Crouwers, Mariske…
Funding / Multi-stakeholder Grant
Multispecies justice and repair: Forging epistemic encounters between Belgium and South Africa. Researchers Belgium: dr. Wendy Morris (KU Leuven, Luca) & dr. Brunilda Pali (KU Leuven). Researchers South Africa: dr. Clifford Shearing (UCT), Dr. Annette Hübshle (UCT), Ashleigh Dore (Endangered Wildlife Trust). The research project aims at conducting collaborative research between Belgium and South Africa on the topics of multispecies…
The seeds of Wild Carrot / contraceptive
Small packages of wild carrot seed (Daucus carota) were included in one of the letters of the Lost Volumes. Each package contains one teaspoon of wild carrot seed, the amount a woman would need to chew as a ‘morning after’ contraceptive. There are numerous historical references to wild carrot seed as an anti-fertility agent. In works in the Hippocratic Corpus,…
Writing / Lost Volumes
At the edge of a field in West Flanders is a strange construction. A box of sorts, a brown, corrugated iron cabin with a steeply sloping roof that faces across fields towards a narrow channel of river. The construction has but a single window, vertical, two fists wide, that runs up the entire front face of it. From the field…
5 Minute presentation The Postresearch Condition
The 2021 EARN/NWO Smart Culture Conference took place January 26 – 30, 2021. It was organized in collaboration with HKU University of the Arts Utrecht, NWO (Dutch Research Council), and BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht. For the Value round table workshop (co-organized by Luca School of Arts Brussels) I was asked to prepare a 5 minute presentation on the…
Publication / Impulsive Incantations – Voicing Migraine / JAR
This article by Mariske Broeckmeyer is published in the latest edition of the peer reviewed Journal for Artistic Research. When migraine arrives, not only the body suffers. The voice too is impacted by a condition that introduces itself with such great force. As a migraine-suffering singer I notice these changes and become fascinated by the aesthetics of a failing voice…
Read more Publication / Impulsive Incantations – Voicing Migraine / JAR
Practice Sharing
Society for Artistic Research Special Interest Group: Language-based Artistic Research. The new Special Interest Group: Language-based Artistic Research has been launched with an online presentation of expanded approaches to language-based practice within the field of artistic research. Over 70 individuals and collaborations are included in this first ‘sharing’: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/835089/1021562 The intent has been to reflect on how language-based artistic research is…
The Taste of Sea Snakes
The greatest coincidence happened. I enjoyed my first free dive in the ocean surrounding Pongso no Tao – also known as Orchid Island or Lanyu. I tried to relax my body for the final breath-up, executed a duck dive and started finning towards the bottom of the sea while holding my breath. Then, startingly, at ten meters deep, I saw…
Lecture / Dystopian Optimism, or that glint of water through the trees
In the context of an academic exchange with the National Dong Hwa University in Hualien (Taiwan), I gave a talk on November 12, 2020. It was exciting to exchange ideas with professor Jen-yi Hsu and the English Literature students, most of whom were following a dystopian literature class focused on the wonderful science fiction writings by Octavia E. Butler. During…
Read more Lecture / Dystopian Optimism, or that glint of water through the trees
Publication / The Compositor Composing
Publication. The Compositor. Edition of 12 + 2 HC, signed and numbered. 12″ 180 grams black vinyl record, recto: 33rpm/45rpm audio, verso: engraving. Sewn felt sleeve, 60×60 folded poster, 30×30 inlay.
The Plot.
The Plot. An introduction, including a first intervention. Featuring Ips typographus, commemorative plaques, tunnel-reading, and a kapvlakte.
Publication / Forum+
In the latest edition of the artistic research journal Forum+ three dhfm members, Hannah Van Hove, Joeri Verbesselt and Mariske Broeckmeyer, publish their writings. Hannah Van Hove: In vijf reflecties verkent Hannah Van Hove, vanuit haar eigen schrijf- en onderzoekservaringen, wat het betekent om in het onderzoeksproces de ‘ik’, meestal ogenschijnlijk weggecijferd in academische teksten, te benadrukken. Een centrale vraag…
Essay /// Handtassen van jeansbroeken.
Cultureel ondernemerschap of artistieke dienstverlening? Deze analyse van de perceptie van de kunsten door de Nederlandse en Vlaamse overheden werd gepubliceerd op de website van Etcetera, tijdschrift voor podiumkunsten.
No One Would Have Believed
Announcement / Exhibition by Wendy Morris and Runo Lagomarsino / Curated by Laurens Dhaenens and Fernanda Pitta / Netwerk Aalst 14.11.2020 – 13.02.2021 This is the announcement for an upcoming exhibition at Netwerk Aalst. Three deep histories fragile memories members are involved. Laurens Dhaenens is co-curating, and Mariske Broeckmeyer and Wendy Morris are together composing an Audio-Eerie for the exhibition.…
Music /// Botanical Bodies / Kaap
Botanical Bodies herwerkt de muziek van Hildegard von Bingen in een gedurfde en eigentijdse geest. Deze visionaire, genezer, botanicus, feministe en componist uit de 12e eeuw creëerde fascinerende werken met vocale muziek terwijl ze werd gekweld door migraine.Dit lichamelijke lijden werd beschouwd als de bron van haar hemelse inspiratie.Samen met violist Hendrike Scharmann brengt zangeres Mariske Broeckmeyer eengroep muzikanten samen…
Conference / Ethnographic Returns
Anja Veirman was selected to present her research project “Experimental ethnographic participative methods as forms of collective knowledge production. Senufo mud cloth production and the making of new narratives” at The Ethnographic Returns Conference of The Museum of World Culture in Gothenburg/School of Global Studies University of Gothenburg in June. The video she made in lieu of the live presentation…
Launch of new site : midwif
Midwif is a new blog, a sub-blog of dhfm, that connects an international cluster of artists, writers and researchers around the figure of midwif as a knot at the centre of an entanglement of ideas around women’s medicinal plant knowledge and practices, and histories of their attempts at reproductive autonomy. The context of this collaborative investigation is the ongoing artistic research project…
Mistakes: the artist talk
Wednesday, April 29, 2020 anno covidi, I was supposed to give a talk over lunch at the end of my two months involvement in Residency Unlimited. This, of course, took place in another universe.
On Longing: a dioramic residency
In March and April I’m connected to Residency Unlimited in Brooklyn New York, focusing on the diorama’s at the AMNH.
Tableau Vivant 2019-2020
Wan-Lun Yu and Joeri Verbesselt, in collaboration with Mei-Ning Huang After summer residencies in P.A.R.T.S. and GC Nohva (through VGC) in Brussels, we moved with the Tableau Vivant-project to Taiwan.In December 2019 we prepared for the presentation of this ongoing research and performance project about the depictions of the female figure and nature in Western Art History. The 50-minutes black…
Hortus+Herbarium
A stone’s throw from the site of last year’s Fantastic Encounter with the Matriarchal Ginkgo is ‘t Gasthuys, the city museum of Aalst, and an enclosed garden that was once the medicinal garden of this ancient hospital. Replanted as a medicinal garden a few years back by Bart Backaert, this garden is now to become a Nicholas Culpeper Garden of…
A conversation
In HART Magazine’s 200th issue: a conversation between Alexandra Crouwers and HART editor Pieter Vermeulen.
Lab North
Lab North soon houses the LUCA Intermedia research unit, including the dhfm research group.
The Three Motions of Loom
The exhibition ‘The Three Motions of Loom’ opened Sunday, December 15 at the Antwerp Art Pavilion (next to the MAS Museum) in Antwerp. It’s running until February 16 2020. Jeroen Olyslaegers read from his novel-in-progress ‘Wildevrouw’, which was the starting point for the project. Publisher Demian presented a limited edition. Zaaltekst (in Dutch) ??? ????? ??????? ?? ??????????????? ?????????, ???…
Keynote: Hilde Van Gelder at AHM Conference
Hilde Van Gelder is keynote speaker at ‘Memory, Word and Image: W.G. Sebald’s artistic legacies’ AHM Conference 12-14 December 2019 in Amsterdam.
Reading the Curtain and The Three Motions of Loom
Traces 2: a mini-publication, first print 10 copies and Reading the Curtain. Dhfm-meeting at museum Vleeshuis, November 19 2019.
theappealoftheunreal.com research blog
Announcing my research blog at www.theappealoftheunreal.com. Posts may appear both there and here, at the dhfm blog.
Impulsive Incantations
The migraine patient lives a nomadic life. In an almost ritualistic way she trudges between two worlds – a ceremonial procession that goes back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Health unavoidably induces sickness and only sickness will lead her back to health. She oscillates, fluctuates, pendulates and is therefore fated to live in constant adaptation to an ever-changing state of wellbeing.
Is it lovely yet?
in the archives of Christine Brooke-Rose, Anna Kavan, Ann Quin and Muriel Spark 1. It is the summer of 2014 and I’m at the Olin Library at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. I am researching three novelists for my PhD. One of them, Ann Quin, doesn’t have her own archive. I locate papers of hers, scattered around, in the…
Botanical Bodies, on the political and ritual meaning of plants
An afternoon with international guests around the work of Wendy Morris. Saturday, 12.10.2019 12:30 – 22:00h. Zwartzusterstraat 17, Aalst & Netwerk Aalst.
Read more Botanical Bodies, on the political and ritual meaning of plants
Dystopian Optimism
Our future imagination suffers from an impasse between technological optimism and dystopian visions of the end of humankind. ‘Dystopian Optimism’ counters globally interconnected precariousness as the condition of our time. It recognizes dystopia as a societal reality and proposes to complement it with optimism: a fiction that enables one to project a different future on oneself or the world. Embedded…
process/1
Mariske Broeckmeyer preparing her audio work for Travelogue of the Wandering Womb. Alias exhibition. Netwerk Aalst.
The Suitcase
Made of brown leather, monogrammed with the initials L.J.M. and dating from the 1930s, the suitcase was found under the bed of Muriel Leyson at the time of her death in Johannesburg in the 1970s. Tightly packed inside were almost a thousand letters spanning a period of ninety years. Muriel Leyson had been a surrogate mother to my father, stepping…
Random Forests
On the application of machine learning and AI to enhance or restore natural environments: a project by artist/researcher Theun Karelse / FoAM.
The Photoautotrophs
A short story by Alexandra Crouwers, written in 2012.
Through that which is seen: Dioramas and the Appeal of the Unreal
Through that which is seen: Dioramas and the Appeal of the Unreal. Abstract research phd in arts in animation Leuven University / LUCA School of Arts Brussels by Alexandra Crouwers. Promotor: Wendy Morris.
Read more Through that which is seen: Dioramas and the Appeal of the Unreal