Try out of “The Recognition Machine” a collaboration with Antje van Wichelen
part of working title festival at workspacebrussels
30/11, 1 & 2/12/2018 – 12:00 > 18:00
free entrance
With The Recognition Machine Antje Van Wichelen translates her years of research into photographic archives from the colonial era into an artistic-political installation. The machine looks like an ordinary Photomaton but uses the photograph of the spectator as the starting point for a search through the archives that Van Wichelen collected and edited.
Contemporary algorithms link the pixels of the new photograph to an anthropometric photograph of someone from the nineteenth century. The installation confronts the viewer with the uncomfortable reality of Belgium’s violent colonial past but is also an invitation to actively search for the historical context of the image, and to report on that both factual and personal search.
ANTJE VAN WICHELEN is a visual artist who has been working for years with experimental 16mm film techniques from the nineteenth century to unlock and edit colonial, mostly photographic, material. Her project 21C/19C _ Procedures for Anthropometric Image Reversal investigates the collective memory of colonial classification systems. Until June 2019 she is artist in residence at the Rautenstrauch – Joest Museum in Cologne, where she will also exhibit her work. Van Wichelen is a member of LABO BxL and founder of the Greyzone Zebra Collective.
By: Antje Van Wichelen & SICV (Michael Murtaugh, Nicolas Malevé & Ellef Prestsæter) – Assistance: Brenda Bikoko – Based on the archives of: Wereldculturen (NL), Tropisch Instituut (BE), Pitt Rivers Museum (UK), Quai Branly (FR), Rautenstrauch Joest Museum / Kulturen der Welt Köln (DE), KMMA (BE) – Co-production: nadine, workspacebrussels – Supported by: Constant vzw, LaboBXL, the Flemish Community Commission (VGC), Maite Morren and the Community of Elsene