Fit to print →

A trio of graphic designers and zine publishers have found their spiritual home in a renovated 1970s print shop in Anderlecht. I sat down with Peter de Roy, Axel Claes, and Thomas Billas to talk about their workspace, its role in the artistic community and its art-activist inspired beginnings.

The three met in a typically serendipitous Belgian fashion: though Dirk and Axel attended the same school, they only found each other while in Brussels working on How to Make it Without Ikea , Thomas’ collection of nifty DIY guides, and Dirk’s friend Peter completed the trio. Peter acknowledges the significance of Thomas’s book in bringing them together, calling it ‘the belly button of the world’. The ideas contained in the collection are observations on the practical applications possible with everyday objects, and the series will be made up of ten books, with number three on the way in March.

Photo by Joke de Wilde

Peter is the proud owner of three letterpress machines, one of which is a Heidelberg from the early 60s that he uses for finer projects. He’s also an avid collector, and has been building up an extensive array of type and symbols. “There are bigger collections”, he admits, “but this is a good working one. If you’re lucky”, he tells me, “you can find the beautiful old fonts on eBay for €50. The wood-type are especially collectible.” Downstairs is an enormous letterpress dating from the late 1950s that he found for next-to-nothing in England. Using his three letterpresses he creates vintage-inspired posters, notebooks, business cards, and invitations, for workshops, the Gillis press, and his own design company, Signbox. Peter has been teaching typography and graphic design at KASK for the past 16 years, and also works part-time as a graphic designer in Sint-Lukas in Brussels.

There are regular workshops upstairs, alongside Peter’s letterpresses and the Risograph printer. The workshops are attended by everyone from high-school students to housewives who come to learn how to typset and stencil. There are also frequent collaborations with Nova Cinema and Atelier Urban. Though these days they get requests from graphic design bureaus as well as individuals, in the early days, collaborations and clients were limited to schools or groups sharing similar interests to PTTL, the collective Axel helped found in the late nineties.

Photo by Joke de Wilde

PTTL – Plus-tôt Te laat – was founded in 1998 as a reaction to the treatment of unemployed artists by the Belgian government, and was originally based in an unemployment office in Sint-Joost. Axel talks about what it was like to be on the dole at the time: “Though today in Belgium the situation has changed, at that time there was no real help, advice, or even interaction at the unemployment offices – you just turned up to get your stamp from the local authorities. Whether it was a heated building or a van in a parking lot depended on the wealth of the commune in which you lived.” In Sint-Joost, the civil servants issued a pamphlet inviting artists to present their artwork in the offices, both as a way of brightening these dark buildings and giving them an opportunity to exhibit their work.

Photo by Joke de Wilde

Then came the infamous case of an unemployed woman whose self-published book sold a modest number of copies: she was singled out by the government for cheating the system, who then demanded reimbursement for her success. The government’s attitude was seen by Alex and others as an assault on free speech and inspired the formation of a national platform for artists, whose aim was to encourage a change in society’s attitude to artists.

Photo by Joke de Wilde

Peter talks about the fetishisation of print, and the increasing attention paid to minute aesthetic details. He uses old and new technologies in his work, such as the QR code, imagery we associate with ultra modern technology, painstakingly set by hand. The Risso machine itself is deeply symbolic, combining as it does processes previously confined to the sphere of the hand-crafted in an incredible digital machine. Peter calls it a ‘post-digital letterpress’. “These techniques have been around forever but only recently are they becoming hip – it used to be exclusively the territory of the posh bibliophile. The difference might be that now they mix styles.”

An interview with Wiels curator Devrim Bayar about her project Le Salon →

A firm favourite among followers of Brussels’ art scene, Le Salon has became the go-to website for original photo reportage, features and interviews on local and international contemporary art. Founder Devrim Bayar developed the project with graphic design kingpins Donuts and friends Virginie Devillez, Martin Laborde and Valerie Verhack. She has also spent the last six years as curator of Brussels’ leading contemporary art institution, Wiels, where she mans the gallery’s residency programme, alongside her role as art teacher at renowned city academy La Cambre. Le Salon’s success all comes down to a unique and knowledgeable take on art shows both in Brussels and abroad, all presented in a suitably stylistically-savvy format. As the website celebrates its first birthday, Bayar fills us in on the driving forces behind the project, some of Le Salon’s most important gigs, and her own influences as the project’s original creative force.

So, tell us about how Le Salon came about.

Le Salon is a combination of all my past experiences; my job as curator here at Wiels and my work at CODE Magazine. CODE started here in Brussels. When some friends finished their studies at La Cambre they felt that there was no real support available for the young local art scene, and thought it would be nice to have a free magazine that could present – in a very simple and attractive way – the works of young, local artists.

How did you get involved with CODE?

It was back then I was a student studying art history in New York. When I returned, friends asked me to join their team as editor-in-chief. They were all artists and needed someone with experience in writing and editing, so I developed CODE with them over the next four or five years. Our openings and readings were filled with people, and there was strong support for the whole project. After five years of volunteer work, we began moving in different directions, getting tired of the effort involved in publishing a magazine and having no money to work with. We also didn’t want to sell too much advertising because we had a very strong idea of what we wanted and didn’t want. CODE still exists which is nice for us – some contributors took the project to Paris and have renamed the magazine CODE 2.O.

Did you also spot a gap in the market for Le Salon?

Yes, when CODE went to Paris this gap appeared again. I also realised that it was tricky for international artists coming to Brussels to get information about what was going on here. There are some good art newspapers and magazines, but they’re either entirely in Dutch or French. They’re also not freely distributed. From my own experience of working and browsing the Internet all day, it was the perfect place to document art and share information. It’s also much cheaper than printing a magazine.

And, of course, distribution…

Exactly. So, instead of creating a new kind of CODE, I decided to do something online with the possibility of doing projects. That’s how the idea of Le Salon was born.

How is curating online different from in a physical space?

I’m glad you refer to it as “curating”, because it really is a curated project, in the same way that a magazine is curated by an editor. Le Salon was an important name because it also refers to a physical space, a sense of gathering people together. We used a friend’s apartment in the Tour Albert, the highest neighbourhood in Brussels, to launch the website last year. Le Salon is about sharing experiences with other people, so we didn’t want to just make an announcement online. One of the problems with websites and magazines is that everyone works behind a computer and never gets a chance to actually meet and exchange ideas in real life.

Is the website’s name a comment on that?

The name was inspired by nineteenth-century Parisian salons, artists gathered to share what they do. At CODE Magazine the aim was to be mainstream; readable by large audiences. In contrast, the idea for Le Salon was to narrow down the readers to people who already have knowledge of art. It’s more intimate. It also gives us greater freedom to feature projects that are little bit more hybrid. There are classical reviews, but there are also artist projects.

Tell me about some of the projects.

We organised an exhibition for Brussels Art Days. Attention at that time of year is focused on the commercial part of the art scene – the galleries. We wanted to create an event with people working in the non-profit part, an incredibly active and important part of any art scene. We invited three groups, and gave them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted. We also invited a small Brussels-based group who distribute a lot of artist editions and fanzines to present a selection for people to buy during the show.

What websites inspire you?

In terms of content one is definitely Tim Barber’s Tiny Vices, a New York photographer. He uploads portfolios of his favourite artists. Because he’s good friends with hip artists like Ryan McGinley, Tiny Vices got a lot of attention. I also check Contemporary Art Daily – their selection is excellent. Unlike Le Salon it’s much more neutral as they get galleries to send them images, but this means that you can visit shows from your laptop.

In Le Salon you can display lots of different media within the same kind of structure – how did you develop that idea?

It took some time for me to develop the concept. I knew I couldn’t do it on my own, so I talked with Donuts, friends who are graphic designers. They’re known locally for their collaborations with artists – even though they also do projects for big companies like Delhaize, they do artist books and websites for galleries. They came up with the visual identity and layout of the website – they really understood what Le Salon could be visually. I wanted something that wasn’t too flashy and distracting, but allowed the reader to focus on what is written and shown. That’s why they came up with the idea of having a front cover like a newspaper. To me, it looks a little bit like the New York Times.

So the Inserts section was born, featuring those mad stereoscopic .gifs from Nicolas Bourthoumieux, a video by Benoit Plateus, and a lecture by Eric Thys on space and the soul.

We imagined it like an insert from a magazine. I worked on finding collaborators for the website. Most of them are very good friends, which is often the case when you work without money and in such a small city. I contacted my friend Virginie Devillez, an art historian who works at the Royal Fine Arts Museum in the archives. She has access to an incredible number of documents relating to the past of the local art scene, and an incredible knowledge of its history. We try to include things that are meaningful to what’s going on right now. There aren’t so many yet, but we’re working on it.

Many of your writers are artists and curators themselves – Rebecca Lamarche Vadel,Michaele Van den Abeele, Robert Suermondt, and Aline Bouvy to name a few. Anything for novices?

It’s people in art, but it’s not only for established artists. It’s definitely meaningful for people who have a certain knowledge or references in contemporary art. For others it might be a little bit obscure or complicated. Of course, we try to have a variety of contributions; texts that can be more theoretical or more analytical and then to have others like photo reportage that’s much easier to understand and perceive as an inexperienced.

In your studio visit with Harold Ancart, you discuss his move to New York and choice to live in Brooklyn. Do you think Brussels could ever have the same mythology surrounding it that Brooklyn has?

At the moment Brussels definitely has a mythic quality. I also like the mongrel feel to the city. When you come from here you might not realise it because you can easily get bored in a city that’s small and rainy where people are always complaining. It can feel like the city doesn’t have big ambitions or is glamorous, which is true in a way – but at the same time it has a very long and very interesting history with art deco, art nouveau, and with music.

Brussels might be considered a work-in-progress whereas Berlin, for example, is definitely growing less and less rough around the edges…

More and more people in the art world are getting tired of Berlin. It’s beautiful and seducing and cool, but when you’re a professional artist, being cool and young is not your aim for the rest of your life. I hear more and more that instead of relocating to Berlin people are relocating to Brussels.

What are you working on at the moment?

We actually don’t have anything planned for the birthday – we’re all so busy. I want to do something very small with Le Salon, but at the moment since I’m curating a big show here at Wiels I don’t have the time to work on it. We all have full-time jobs – this is our hobby.

Errorism →

Errorism, a young Brussels duo made up of childhood friends Reuben Lambrecht and Quentin Materne, peddle a genre-bending blend of rhythms and harmonies born of the masterful manipulation of analogue synths and computers. The pair have slowly but steadily been building up their track record, notching up a remix for Belgian musical partners Sound of Stereoand spots on the decks at Museum Night Fever, Bruksellive, and Sioux. This mix they’ve put together is a jazzy slow-burner of well-constructed tempos that build on each other.

Artwork by Alex Deforce

How did you go about making this mix?

When we make a mix we always want to achieve something special, with a sort of theme. We searched for a long time for good tracks as well as tracks we already knew we liked. Old or new, it didn’t matter. Of course, it isn’t easy because there’s so much out there.

What mood were you in?

We didn’t think about it, we just felt it – it’s not like making music from scratch or making a track with feelings. In terms of mood, I guess we wouldn’t really say that it’s a happy mix – mostly we tried to use some loungey elements.

Can we talk about genres?

Kind of. It starts with arpeggio and psychedelic sounds that grow and grow. We don’t like to choose words or genres, but I think we ended up with something like a jazzy, deep house lounge. The tone is set by the second track from Floating Points.

Are there any stand-out tracks?

There are a few tracks that are really interesting, like the first by Jamie L. Like the mix itself, it’s a track that develops. When it starts you don’t know what to expect, then it gets harder. I thought it was amazing the first time I heard it when I was in a record store. It sets the tone for the mix.

Tell us about the exclusive track.

It’s “Scarlet” by Jazz Neversleeps, a Belgian DJ and producer from Brussels, though we think he lives in Germany now. He’s with Alex’s label, On-Point. On-Point are a group that are really shaping the sound of the city at the moment. We’ve got lots of love for Alex – he did the artwork for the mix.

Jazz is an excellent producer and very original. We like that he doesn’t stick to one genre – he produces a really wide range of music as well as hip-hop and down-tempo. His way of thinking is really out of the box, and he’s a great person to talk to because of his incredible musical knowledge.

It’s the same thing with Alex from On-Point – they both do what they do entirely for the love of the music. We’re also really inspired by the Onda Sonora DJ collective, who did an exclusive mix for The Word in May.

Any fights about what got in?

If any one of us isn’t entirely happy with a track, we leave it out. We have to give each other good reasons as to why a track works, which means that making a mix for us requires a very very long discussion. More than forty five minutes, actually. We need so much time because we’re trying to mix and match so many DJs, and we’re really trying to make it perfect – we’re very critical of ourselves.

Could you describe the mix using colours?

I definitely see blue in the introduction and the outro and maybe yellow in the middle, but Reuben is a bit colour-blind. He can’t really see the yellow there.

What are you working on at the moment?

We’re producing and finishing some tracks as well as getting ready to release an EP.

Tracklist

1. Jamie L – In The Bug (Havana Candy Mix)

2. Floating Points – Myrtle Avenue

3. Tornado Wallace – Whispering Twirl

4. Mass Prod – 72 Minutes Of Scrubs A Day

5. Fudge Fingas – Light in my life

6. Toby Tobias – One Night On Mare Street

7. Kink –  E79

8. JazzNeverSleeps – Scarlet

9. Two Armadillos – Hawthorne’s Theme

10. Gavin Sutherland – Untytled

Photographer Frieke Janssens takes your last shot before you die →

Frieke Janssens, the Bruges-born photographer famous for her hyper-stylised, distinct and sometimes controversial images, is setting out her stall as a portrait photographer with a twist. Her ‘customers’ pay over €1,000 for a final portrait – to be displayed on their tombstones.

Frieke Janssens’ new project, Your Last Shot, is inspired by the same style of 1930s static portraiture that drives much of her work. Born in Bruges, the 32-year-old studied at Sint-Lukas in Brussels and is perhaps best known for her controversial series of hyper-stylised portraits of children smoking. Your Last Shot is her latest enterprise, a collaboration between photographer and subject, with Janssens creating ‘final’ portraits to be displayed on her clients’ tombstones which, rather than being melancholic, are tranquil moments immortalised in porcelain. Citing Sofia Coppola as an influence, Janssen’s style is distinctive in texture and palette. At a funeral she attended during the summer, Janssen got to thinking about the importance of one’s final portrait as “the last image people have of you, the one that they keep”. The influence of August Sander, a German photographer who documented the human experience of the Weimar Republic and who is perhaps the most important portrait artist of the twentieth century, is just as evident here as it is throughout the rest of Janssens’ work. Janssens agrees with the label of ‘surreal’ photographer – her child smokers pictured in distinctive clothing reflective particular lifestyles draw at once upon caricatures while exposing them as such, allowing for duality of perspective.

How’s the project going so far? Many takers?

I’ve only shot five people, but me and my gallery will probably organise shooting days the first Sunday of each month.

How did you meet your clients?

I meet them on the shooting day, but I don’t like the word ‘clients’ – I think ‘portrayed’ is a better word.

Do you think the project is morbid?

I don’t think it’s morbid – my intention is to immortalise people.

You say that you don’t want death to be a taboo, what do you mean by that?

Death is still a taboo in Belgium in my opinion, because people try to stay as far away as possible from it, and many don’t know how to act when somebody dies.

Some people might call it vain to be concerned about a photograph of yourself after you’re dead. Is this photograph for the people themselves or the people they’ve left behind?

I don’t think it’s vain – it’s more about pride. And hey, we all want to look good in a picture, don’t we? The picture is for both the one’s left behind and for the person who’s died; they can enjoy the portrait itself and he or she can be certain about the last image they leave people with.

Would you consider turning it into an exhibition?

I’m thinking about collecting them in a book, so that the people will be made even more immortal.

How limited is the project? How many people will you do before you start doing something else?

It’s more a statement, but I couldn’t make sense of it if I didn’t offer the shoots for real, that’s one reason why it’s limited. Let’s say for the moment it’s limited until I have a full book.

Photographer Vincent Delbrouck’s solo show Autofiction in Bienne →

Born in Brussels and currently residing in the rolling Belgian countryside, Delbrouck has reflected that he’s more at home in the tropics, which is clear from the subjects that have cropped up in his past work. Delbrouck’s photography is filtered through an intimate search for identity, capturing chaotic and human moments that he conceives of as fully conscious moments.

Tell us about this new series at PhotoforumPasquArt in Bienne , “Autofiction”, a selection of the photos of your travels around Cuba and Nepal.

Autofiction can refer to many different things, but for me it ‘s the search for identity, expressed not so much within the photographs themselves but as the steps between each piece. It is not strictly meant as nostalgic or retrospective. This is what is far more interesting. My first mood – during the Havana series – was quite nervous. The Cuba material was more mixed, as opposed to the work from Nepal that I consider to be much more filtered, refined, distilled. Autofiction is also related, for me, to self-healing. The contemplative feeling from Nepal is one of complete freedom, a ‘being there’ mixed with this present moment. I link this dream-like state to happiness. It is comparable to the deadly risks one takes to do or achieve something worthwhile. In that moment, you are able to forget who you are. Like with my new project, Wilderness, it’s about losing oneself to something larger.

How would you describe your creative process when embarking on a project?

I prefer the idea and attitude of what I call the ‘non-project’. It involves empathy and curiosity, in that I begin my work with no agenda or preconceptions, on an entirely blank page. I do not box off projects after completing them, but continue working with material in an organic way. Because of this, the pictures cannot be separated. My connection with Cuba, in particular, is still evolving.

Are you happy with how ‘Autofiction’ has turned out?

Yes, at first I had six pieces that progressed perfectly. I then chose four very quickly – they were ones that dealt with the earthiness and promiscuity of Cuba. The pictures from Nepal were slightly more difficult to choose between. Because that journey was more about interiority and spirituality, I didn’t use any photos of my son or girlfriend. This series wasn’t really about family, but more focused on my own spirituality and an organic type of empathy, with the subject matter often being trees or stones. I am influenced more by what’s outside rather than working from within. Instead of working in terms of ‘projects’ I see my creative pattern as being based more on ‘energy’ – an intuitive approach I cannot entirely understand or explain. It’s related to my understanding of the connection between mind and body. It is similarly mysterious and organic in nature.

You mention on your website your interest in “collecting the illusions” you see as “forms and rhythms”.

In putting together exhibitions I am very attentive to form and colour. I want to create a narrative in the same way that we model life on stories. I really dislike the attempt often made to separate humans from animals. It’s part of that inane and mechanical Cartesian division between mind and body. I see human bodies as being one unified piece with many connections. I approach photography a little like meditation, particularly the installation stages. The Cuban photos that are all small and colourful, on the other hand, require an intuitive focus.

You’re also working on a book with graphic designer Nicholas Gottlund called “Some Windy Trees”. Is the creative process very different from putting together an exhibition?

Not really. It’s not easy asking someone to look at your work, even if you share the same aesthetic. It’s as personal as getting someone to read a chapter of your novel. I’m still waiting for the book to be published in the States. Because it’s a brief collection of a few trees, it has to be completely perfect.

Snap happy Elisabeth Ouni’s Polaroid tales →

We caught up with photographer, digital media consultant, and whopper-tune aficionado Elisabeth Ouni at the opening of her first exhibition, A Polaroid Story.

How did you decide which images made it into the exhibition?

A lot of tough decisions needed to be made in the coordination of the exhibition. As there was no sponsor, the show is a complete love project, making everything very limited budget-wise. I decided to keep the exhibition very tight (only 21 or 22 pieces) by putting together a series of portraits that I was 100% happy with. I made one huge blow-up of Pharrell Williams, I think it’s something like one-metre-and-a-half by one metre 80cm. He’s a very important figure for me as he was the first Polaroid I took.

The Polaroid is a very evocative form. How did you get into it?

I bought a Polaroid camera for €1 in 2009, the last year that they brought out film. I experimented with it, taking pictures of friends and a series of kites. The blog is always a bit of a struggle. To take a Polaroid you need an intimate moment. It’s not made for moving objects, or else it gets blurry. It’s difficult getting artists alone and then to sit still. It takes three to four minutes to stand for a Polaroid. When an artist passes by you need to have a prepared pitch to grab their attention. That’s the skill: grabbing their attention without being too pushy. As well as two different poses, I have to get an exhibit, so, someone else taking a picture of me taking the Polaroid. It all has to happen very quickly. I always prepare what I’m going to say. Some photographers have all the right elements; an appointment, a stylist, and the right lighting, but I have to work with what’s given to me, which often isn’t much. I try to premeditate what I think the artist might think is fun. There’s a certain vibe you need to transcend. My blog is about that A to Z experience. A real fan loves that. My vocabulary can often be a bit limited, because I try to tell it how it is, and so it’s not high-brow, it’s for everybody. I just tell stories. I don’t want dirt, I just want to tell my readers what happened and how it was possible or how it failed. The Polaroid is, for me, the proof of a moment that I have with an artist. And that’s golden.

Do you see yourself as an artist?

I see myself as a creative content producer. My day job is as a digital media consultant, creating content for brands in fashion and music. The blog is my first digital project that came out really big. I see it as an expression of pop culture and of different moments I’ve had, rather than ‘art’. And, of course, a lot of hard work. The blog gets bigger and richer because of the number of artists it features. Though I don’t control light or make HD images, I do think the concept is original. I haven’t seen it done in this type of way. The journey is what makes it interesting. I’m just a storyteller who’s good at creating original content. The blog has helped me get lots of other jobs – people now ask me about creating other collections because they like my Polaroids and stories.

Were you more of a perfectionist when it came to the exhibition?

I’m a huge perfectionist, making the blog quite difficult. For the exhibition I had control over the environment so I decided to keep it very clean and not too busy. I have lots of content – lots of Polaroids and stuff I’ve been collecting – but I couldn’t display the Polaroids without glass and framing, and having them all there would have made the space too busy. I decided to have a display table for the little Polaroids, so that they’re still there.

What’s next?

Depending on whether other countries are interested, I’m working towards a much bigger project – perhaps doing a mini road-tour of London, Paris, and Berlin. I want to get a broader audience and take the blog to a more international level. I want to do it Tim Burton-style – put together all my video material, all the Polaroids, all the exhibits. I’ve been thinking of getting a guest curator to do each exhibition in each city.