The exhibitions Urgent Conversations: Athens–Antwerp and Urgent Conversations: Antwerp – Athens are a collaboration between EMST and M HKA, a theoretical and visual dialogue, based on works from the collections of both museums, which includes more than 70 works structured in 22 topics.   

28.04.2017 - 07.01.2018        

M HKA, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen - Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerpen

EMST, National Museum of Contemporary Art - Kallirrois Avenue & Amvr. Frantzi Str., Athens 11743

Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven / AMVK

(c)image: AMVK
Video , 00:14:30
computer animation

"In this computer-animation Van Kerckhoven links together portrait paintings she made between 1987 and 1990 of 54 people that visited her unexpectedly. These people are acquaintances, friends and relatives.  She linked each person chronologically to some words of the poem “Die Loreley” of Heinrich Heine (1797-1856). Melancholy, fate and inevitability of seduction and doom. Sailors, attracted by the enchanting singing of the wind through the Loreley, a riff in the Rhine, reck their ships in trance against it. The Loreley-movie is a morphing of 54 faces, divided in 6 strophes.  The soundtrack evokes a barge bobbing up and down, in the water."

"At the centre of a social universe, the abstract, which manifests itself as a symbol, tends to manifest itself in the shape of a figure. This happens in a complex way, fragmented. Look at the ancient gods." 

− AMVK


Sound, images and editing: AMVK

Producer: Club Moral