Door het bestaan heen
(Passing through existence)
About the project
We emerged, dazed and hungry, from the Covid winter, and Liesbeth led us out into the woodland around Loonbeek to gather soul food. We went innocently, without a plan, wanting only to know what it feels like today, in this place, at the interface between natural and human worlds, when bare skin touches wet bark. Trees are no more indifferent to us than we are to them.
These images employ the shared vocabulary of sensation – warmth, roughness, moisture, pressure, weight – to explore the alleged human-tree boundary. Where do I end and you begin, forest? Skin, root, leaf, hair and breath touch, tangle and intermingle. Can I leave myself behind and become you? And can you become me? Intimately, tenderly, we approach one another, naked and vulnerable, hoping to capture a glimpse of something invisible.
The exhibition
We have spent more than a year investigating the symbiotic relationship between nature and man.
Now we’re delighted to present our project as part of the 2022 Huldenberg arts route.
On Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 May, the photographs we made in the course of the year will be exhibited in the charming church of St Anthony in Loonbeek.
And on Sunday 15 May you can come with us into the Margijsbos for a live performance, to experience the blurred boundary between nature and man in real time...
Click on the button below to preview the project photographs, including some that we are unable to show in the exhibition.
How you can support the project
Please visit the exhibition and come to the live performance. Entry is free and no reservation is needed. Practical details are below.
You can also purchase an exhibition print, regular prints of any of the project photographs, and sets of postcards, or simply make a donation. To do so, please go to our crowd-funding page by clicking the button below. We really appreciate your support.
Practical information
Exhibition: 14 and 15 May 2022, from 14.00 to 18.00, St. Antonius Church, Sint-Jansbergsesteenweeg 37, 3040 Loonbeek
Live performance: 15 May at 16.00, Castle Van Der Vorst, Sint-Jansbergsesteenweeg 24, 3040 Huldenberg
Entry free, no reservation required
Contact
Email: liesbeth.vanloo@gmail.com
Phone: 0032 (0)495 37 29 66
About us
This is a collaborative project. We are:
Liesbeth Van Loo, based in Loonbeek, operates at the intersection of art and social change. She has worked with refugees in a theatre of the oppressed and has employed artistic tools in workshops for social change. She is currently developing a performance with dancers and the trees around Loonbeek, while writing a novel about magical nature. For this project she has pursued sometimes impossible ideas up trees, through bushes and into the tattoo parlour of the forest.
Dave Boussé is a Leuven-based performer and creator with an emphasis on dance and acrobatics. In past projects he mainly focused on writing and performing theatre, and has increasingly moved towards the exploration of atmospheric imagery and words as a means of eliciting impressions and emotions. In this current project he tries to blend his desire to connect to the beauty of nature with a masochistic determination to get in touch with her rougher, colder and sometimes meaner side.
Simon Blackley is a Brussels-based photographer with a professional practice centred on portraiture and event photography. (This is his website.) He likes looking at people. His work has been shown in Brussels, Liège and Tunis by the Association des Démocrates Tunisiens au Benelux. It has also been exhibited by Astellas Pharma Inc. and Gemeenschapscentrum Ten Noey, and has featured on the cover of Forbes magazine. In the present project he has honed his lens-changing skills in the branches of trees, thigh-deep in mud, and under sustained attack by Loonbeek's mosquitoes.