Argos Centre for Audiovisual Arts
Argos' collections contain around 4,000 video works and over 3,800 print titles, books and catalogues. The centre also houses exhibition spaces and a media studio. Brussels, Belgium from 2009-2010.
Research & development
Argos Platform research outlines:
1. Platform as а harvesting instrument for archiving network. Digital content publishing tools
2. Network navigation, mapping tools and content filtering. Content annotation. Artist’ archive.
3. Archival instruments. Open source, CC and copyright.
4. Participation and dissemination schemes.
5. Reproducible models.
Developed projects:
1. Collaboration with EYE Dutch Film Institute, Amsterdam.
Projects Instant Cinema and The Scene Machine, sharing collections. Planned presentation at FARO Conference in November 2010.
2. Brussels Art School Association / BRAINS /, Brussels
Proposal for a new association to share Argos Collections within one platform using Kaltura video publishing services.
3. Collaboration is open for schools, teachers, lecturers and researchers. Artists – teachers panel.
4. Argos research site.
Held educational and learning resources for researchers, universities and general audiences. Place for art critics and researchers to publish their research works online.
5. DCA “Digital Libraries”. Enhancing access to media art content aggregated for Europeana, supported by the European Commission.
The Centre
Throughout the past three decades, 🅐🅡🅖🅞🅢 has gained special expertise in the field of audiovisual archiving and preservation, in the initiation and accommodation of unique audiovisual research projects, and in supporting a broad range of artistic and discursive practices.
Organised a myriad of programmes, among them exhibitions, screenings, festivals, workshops, seminars, and conversations, both in and outside ᵃʳᵍᵒˢ, locally as well as (inter)nationally.
Collaborations
Play Video
Monday: Firework
Tuesday: Illuminations
Wednesday: Revolution
Video for Angel Vergara exhibition at Argos Centre for Audiovisual Arts, Brussels, Belgium 2010
Exhibition concentrates on history, and more especially on the early days of the Belgian monarchy and its cultural, social-political and economic context.
The title of the exhibition derives from an anonymous poster that circulated in Brussels in the days preceding the Belgian Revolution in 1830 – a slogan-like message that appeared to be announcing a show of some sort. Vergara makes use of this historical ‘reality’ for a reflection in which historical facts intersect with fictional elements and personal thoughts. The exhibition circuit is conceived as a whole, even though it is divided into three chapters, and the artist called it ‘an anti-painting of history’.
This is precisely why we see such historical figures as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Leopold I and the painters Gustaaf Wappers and Antoine Wiertz, in addition to contemporary figures. While questioning Belgian cultural identity, Vergara employs the accepted national ‘history’ as a launch pad for an exposition in the form of a dialogue with today’s Europe.
That means this exhibition is not by any means an instructive circuit, rather a subjective topography. Vergara’s mental exercise on autonomy, the sense of community and personal freedom – on the genesis and existence of an identity and a nation – is related to the artist’s position in society.
In Angel Vergara’s work, objects often make way for current political affairs, the economic situation and events in society. His work is based on everyday life, into which he then injects his art. It is precisely in this intermediate space that Vergara (1958) puts incisive and often playful questions about both ‘the world’ and ‘the art world’.
The Host with the Most
Camera and editing for Adam Leech exhibition at Netwerk Centre for Contemporary Art, Aalst, Belgium 2010.
In the videos Blanket Apology and Standard Triangulation Adam Leech focuses on rhetoric and diversionary tactics, but also upon slips of the tongue and jumps of contradictory thinking.
Blanket Apology 2010, 5’ loop
Blanket Apology, a video in which the artist orchestrates a tightly shot public confessional scene, forms the second part of the Speech Bubble trilogy. It is a dialogue between a woman and a man about over-mediasized confessions. As in the first part of the Speech Bubble trilogy, Leech focuses on the ambiguity of public apology.
Standard Triangulation 2010, 16’ loop
Presented in an ingenious mise-en-scene, he introduces in the video Standard Triangulation, the concept of triangulation. Such a “trialogue” can describe social, as well as legal, governmental or family situations better than a dialogue.
A jazz singer is shown. While she performs jazz standards, she’s distracted by something off screen. The artist examines in the video the process of vision and inability to grasp what the person actually sees. In this way he calls upon curiosity and the desire to look at the other.
Hindu Blues 2010, 1’ loop
Hindu Blues brings into view the loss of spiritual control in an absurd way. In the Hindu faith the tilaka – a red dot on the forehead – symbolizes the third eye associated with multiple gods and the idea of meditation and spiritual enlightenment. In the past only gods, priests, ascetics and worshippers wear a tilaka. Now it is an ordinary practice for Hindus and is regarded as a beauty mark. In the video a naughty goddess plays with the tilaka of a woman who does everything she can to set her tilaka back in the right place.