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. These works have been exhibited within the installation itself, which now forms a permanent part of the L’Escaut project space.
Untitled
Léonor Gomez and Artur Jules
7 October > 20 December 2024
If there’s a red box, there might be a red thread inside—like a map tracing a path from one point to another. We might as well call it Eigen Haard [‘its own fireplace’ or ‘its own chimney’].
Working across different sculptural scales, we create mirrored reflections of an environment that extends beyond the walls of the Scheldt.
We see the installation as a speculative map: a network of sculptures made from materials collected in the district, their forms inspired by surrounding architectural elements and street furniture.
By questioning what the Scheldt space is—and, more broadly, what the district is and has been—we seek to resonate with the environment, to capture the shifting perspectives that move through us as 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 discussion, this project examines the relationship between the work of the technician and that of the artist.
Rooted in both biographical and professional experience, the project emerges from a familiar reality: like many artists, I hold multiple jobs to support myself—artist, exhibition technician, video artist, and art teacher. In April 2024, I worked as a technician at L'Escaut, assisting in the construction of an ambitious exhibition: The Red Box, by Australian architect and artist Jan van Schaik and artist Olivia Lennon. The Red Box mirrored the exhibition space at L’Escaut, incorporating key elements of its architecture.
Later invited to contribute to the project as an artist rather than a technician, it felt natural to extend and question this work of mirroring from a new perspective. How do the roles of artist and technician speak to each other? In what ways do they intersect, diverge, and inform one another?
This project unfolds as a form of personal artistic research culminating in an exhibition and performance. It also invites technicians to present traces of their own processes and includes a round-table conversation on working conditions in the cultural field.
sHELLs
Lisa Hoffmann
17 February > 14 March 2025
This artistic research explores the intersection of ecology and economy through the phenomenon of Køkkenmødding — a geological formation resulting from the long-term accumulation and management of shellfish waste. These formations can be read as a form of unconscious, slow, collective architecture.
At the centre of the work is the shell, examined both biologically and symbolically. As a luxury item or a staple food, as shell money or as a collectible object, the shell embodies multiple and shifting ideas of value.
This spatial installation, incorporating video, responds to Jan van Schaik and Olivia Lennon’s intervention in the L’Escaut space. It reactivates the symmetry of their installation—while simultaneously disrupting it. The shells occupy and confront the space with their superficially symmetrical yet fundamentally irregular forms.
Hidden Movables
Marco Schröder
24 February > 21 March 2025
An installation based on emergent sound behaviour, created through the resonances of found materials and objects (readymades).
These objects are distributed throughout the space and connected to the architectural features of L’Escaut, as well as the interventions by Olivia Lennon and Jan van Schaik.
Within this environment, algorithmically generated signals are transmitted through various materials and surfaces, activating their resonant properties—the materials themselves becoming audible. This approach allows for multiple, unpredictable sonic events to emerge, without clear hierarchy or trajectory. Or perhaps with one?
Each object produces a unique sound, shaped by its physical components and the waveforms moving through it. As the sources of sound constantly shift, the resonant behaviours of the objects also change, giving rise to evolving acoustic patterns and combinations. The installation functions as a generative network that plays itself.
While Marco Schröder seeks algorithmic structures capable of yielding compelling sonic results, the focus remains on the exploration of material resonance. The algorithms animate the objects; the objects, in turn, give form to the otherwise immaterial code. The resulting composition—built from mathematical constants and generative processes—forms a feedback loop between algorithm and matter: an artificial ecology evolving in real time, never exactly repeating itself.
Mer Mur
Gérard Bethume
5 May > 30 May 2025
A collage can serve as the concept for a film—like a sketch or diagram forms the concept of an architecture.
These collages engage with the ideas of mirror, transposition, and structure, prompting questions rather than answers.
A play of words extends to sound, light, and colour. MER MUR (SEA WALL) forms a central theme—presented through a series of collages and accompanying texts.
The work observes the tension between horizontality (sea) and verticality (wall), invoking the symbolic vocabulary of the European Union. It includes illuminated letter-sculptures—resembling signage—and a composition in the style of bas-relief.
The installation also refers to Tromelin, the island of forgotten slaves, layering historical memory with poetic abstraction.
Here and there. Target and sky. Threshold and ground. Presence and absence. Value and worthlessness.
The work moves between binaries, allowing them to resonate, reflect, and collapse into one another.