FORUM+ - Volume 30, Issue 1/2, 2023

How can we prevent ourselves from becoming too comfortable with adapting to human-constructed environments which seem to preclude open-ended exploration? Philip Lüschen researches his ambiguous relationship with public space and develops methods of ‘vagueing’ to explore possibilities for alternative experiences within rigidly scripted and rationalized urban environments.

The term disarming design has been moving through my practice as a description of a book, in the title of a design label, and a master’s programme. The words seemed poetic and nonconformist, but caused tensions, particularly in the context of Palestine, where the projects are undertaken. In this text, its interpretations and values are discussed as a critical self-reflection to carefully regard the political and ideological stance a title can imply.

N, The Madness of Reason by Peter Krüger premiered at the 2014 Berlinale. The press lauded the film as a poetic masterpiece. In 2015, the film was awarded an Ensor for best feature film, best musical score and best editing. Seven years later, Peter Krüger's doctorate on film and its poetics is complete. In his dissertation, he testifies about the thought processes that guided him during his trips to the Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal in order to make a film about the spirit of French encyclopaedist Raymond Borremans in West Africa.

The daily life of Aline Verstraten provides a starting point for her paintings, in which her partner often appears. In this way, she explores the relationship between the intimacy of her direct surroundings and the necessary distance she takes as a painter from the subject. In this article, she connects some experiences with and some thoughts about colours and layers with her two most recent paintings.

As an early projection device, the magic lantern was often used for colonial propaganda. For instance, to showcase and legitimize the ‘good works’ of the church in the colony. But lanterns were also used by missionaries in Africa to evangelize the local people and create a colonized mindset. This text is a reflection on the work process of Broken View, an essay film on colonial images from the Belgian Congo and the magic lantern. Through montage, collage, and assemblage the film examines and recontextualizes these images of the Belgian colonial past.

In this contribution, Katarina Antunovic examines the term “perversity”. She approaches the concept as a paradoxical synthesis: highly sensory and physical, but at the same time always invisible and elusive. In Flemish acting courses, the notion is all too often mentioned, always with a different interpretation and often unambiguously interpreted by students in a sexual manner, leaving its exact meaning undecided.

Skill acquisition entails a slow but permanent metamorphosis of the body and the self. In the arts, these transformations emerge during and through the act of performance, which can obscure the material and corporeal qualities of enskilment. By investigating the autobiography of the Kwakiutl shaman Quesalid and its interpretations from anthropology to critical performance theory, this paper will examine the relationships between performance and identity while showing how Quesalid’s model can inform contemporary artistic practice.