THE RED BOX
A collaboration by Olivia Lennon and Jan van Schaik
Intermission
Since April 2024, Lennon, van Schaik, and L’Escaut have invited a series of artists to create works in response to their installation. The works created by these artists have been exhibited within the installation — now a permanent part of the L’Escaut project space.
Untitled
Léonor Gomez and Artur Jules
7 October > 20 December 2024
If theres a red box, there could be a red thread inside, like a map going from one point to another. We might as well call it Eigen Haard‘ [’its own fireplace’ or “its own chimney”].
Different sculptural scales, mirrors of an environment that extends beyond the walls of the Scheldt.
We see the installation we want to create as a speculative map, made up of sculptures fusing materials collected in the district, and whose forms are inspired by the surrounding architectural elements and street furniture.
By questioning what the Scheldt space is, and more broadly what the district is, and its past history, we are trying to resonate with this environment, to capture the changing perspectives that run through us when we explore a building"
Travailleur-euse culturel-le
Darren Roshier
6 January > 31 January 2025
A research and artistic production project exploring the notion of cultural work. Through an exhibition, a performance and the organisation of a round table, this project looks at the link between the work of the technician and that of the artist.
The project is rooted in a reality that is both biographical and professional. Like many artists, I hold down several jobs in order to support myself: artist, exhibition technician, video artist and art teacher. In April 2024, I worked as a technician at L'Escaut to set up an exhibition that was ambitious in terms of construction: The Red Box, by Australian architect and artist Jan van Schaik and artist Olivia Lennon. The Red Box mirrors the exhibition space at L'Escaut, incorporating key elements of its architecture.
Invited to take part in the project, this time as an artist rather than a technician, the idea of pursuing and questioning the work around the mirror in a different way seemed obvious to me. Between artist and technician, how do these two activities respond to and feed off each other?
The project takes the form of personal artistic research culminating in an exhibition and a performance. It also includes inviting technicians to present traces of their work process, as well as a round-table discussion on working conditions.
sHELLs
Lisa Hoffmann
17 February > 14 March 2025
This artistic research highlights the link between ecology and economy based on a phenomenon called Køkkenmødding. This geological formation is the result of a long-term process of managing shellfish waste, and can be seen as a form of unconscious, slow, collective architecture. At the centre, the shell, studied in its biological and symbolic dimensions, becomes the main protagonist of the work. As a luxury product or a staple food, as shell money and as an object of various forms of collections, they embody different ideas of value.
This spatial installation with videos refers to Jan van Schaik and Olivia Lennon's intervention in the space of L'Escaut. It revives its symmetry, while at the same time breaking it. The shells occupy the space and confront it with their superficially symmetrical but irregular shapes.
Hidden Movables
Marco Schröder
24 February > 21 March 2025
An installation based on emergent sound behavior, created through the resonances of found materials and objects (readymades). These objects are distributed and connected to the spatial features of L’Escaut and the architectural interventions by Olivia Lennon and Jan van Schaik.
In this space, algorithmically generated signals are distributed across various materials and surfaces, exploring their resonant properties. The materials themselves become audible. Through this approach, multiple and unpredictable sounds emerge, following no apparent hierarchy or trajectory. Or do they?
Each object produces a different sound depending on its components and the waveforms traveling through it. As the sound sources constantly change, the resonant objects also shift their behavior, creating unexpected acoustic patterns and combinations. The installation functions like a generative network playing itself.
Although Marco Schröder strives to find algorithmic recipes that yield memorable results, the key aspect remains the research and exploration of material resonances. The sounds generated by the algorithms animate the objects, while the objects give form to the otherwise immaterial algorithms. The goal is to create a composition based on mathematical constants and generative processes, establishing a feedback loop between code and physical bodies. An artificial ecology evolving in real-time, never truly repeating itself.
Mer Mur
Gérard Bethume
5 May > 30 May 2025
A collage on its own can become the concept of a film like a sketch or diagram, the concept of an architecture. Collages in which the notions of Mirror, transposition and structuring incite questions.
The play of words, to sound, to light, to colour. "MER MUR" (SEA WALL) a few collages relating to it, as well as some texts.
An observation of horizontality (sea) and verticality (wall).
Symbols of E.U.
Letter-sculptures (illuminated sign-like boxes) A bas-relief-type composition.
Refers to Tromelin (the island of forgotten slaves),
"Here" and "There", Target and Sky, Threshold and
Ground, Presence and Absence, Value and Worthlessness.