Author Archives: Joeri Verbesselt

“Without land, there is no cinema.” – Tikmū’ūn filmmaker Isael Maxakali. I warmly invite you to discover a diversity of contributing authors for the beautiful issue launched by Archivo Papers: Journal of Photography and Visual Culture on the theme of “Indigenous Gaze: Decolonising Visual Cultures.” As guest editors Roberto Romero and Polina Golovátina-Mora open the issue, “the screen is not a neutral space but deeply embedded in the colonial world structure that reproduces colonizing practices as much as it itself is colonized. The … Read More

The deep histories fragile memories research group and the Lieven Gevaert Research Centre for Photography, Art and Visual Culture are pleased to invite writer Syaman Rapongan of the Pacific island of Pongso no Tao to lead a collective reading of interspecies stories from his novel Eyes of the Sky. As an Indigenous writer-fisherman and in resistance to Taiwanese settler colonial operations, he explores ways fish teach Tao islanders to survive and share an oceanic environment. Doctoral researcher Joeri Verbesselt, neighbour to Rapongan during his stay … Read More

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 Martin Guinard. I argue that Latour took the curatorship invitation as an opportunity to propagate a simplified version of the … Read More

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 a snake was swimming straight at me. Quite scared, and wearing only my swimming shorts, I swiftly turned around and … Read More

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 the lecture I traced what we could learn from Butler’s vision (especially as expressed in her unfinished Earthseed-trilogy) when reflecting … Read More

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 box presentation of this solo performance took place on January 3 and 4, 2020, in Taipei for a selected audience. … Read More

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 in the fields of contemporary audiovisual arts and art history, Dystopian Optimism functions as a compass to navigate an iconological … Read More