In your own time, tingalong, tingalong, Who’s been here since I’ve been gone? is a sculptural body that turns with the wind atop a monumental tower behind Brussels-South station. This copper weathervane by Laure Prouvost oversees an illuminated sign suggesting that you too can let yourself be carried away by the elements and be more in tune with the directions they are guiding you towards. Trains directly altered our experience of time by introducing synchronised clocks in the stations, which replaced the different local times. Considering the parallel histories of the Industrial Revolution and women’s emancipation movements in the nineteenth century, Prouvost wonders how one can substitute the forces of control that regulate the way we move in the world with softer, more intimate and unpredictable currents. Floating among the clouds, her visionary oracle is a harbinger of a world that privileges multiple viewpoints.
The talk 1060 Pitch #1 Time & Motion with Laure Prouvost and curator Caroline Dumalin took place on 27 11 2022. More info.
Laure Prouvost (°1978, Au Courantduvent) works with videos, installations, sculptures, and performances. She frequently plays with language to unlock the audience’s imagination, skewing fiction and reality as she confounds conventional verbal and visual associations. Laure Prouvost lives in Brussels and also works between Antwerp and London.
The art trail Endless Express is spread over different destinations along the railway line between Ostend and Eupen. Taking the public sculpture Esprit ouvert by Tapta as a symbolic point of departure, seven artists were invited to present new works around the stations and tracks. With the train as a unifying element, they explore the networked histories embedded in this landscape and entangled with this line. With new works by Che Go Eun, Inas Halabi, Flaka Haliti, Chloé Malcotti, Sophie Nys, Marina Pinsky and Laure Prouvost.
The Ostend-Eupen railway line is the longest in Belgium, traversing its three official language regions in about three hours—from the royal seaside resort in the west to the industrial river valley in the east, with the capital of Brussels in the centre. The train—introduced shortly after Belgium was founded in 1830—speaks in a broader way of industrialisation, the promise of progress, and how these forces have transformed this country.
The artists included in this exhibition are all based in Belgium or its neighbouring countries. Some imagine the train as a mythical creature re-enchanting the world, others question the notion of thinking in a straight line, as well as labour and its rhythms, or playfully disrupt the clockwork time that helped shape the society of speed we live in today.
Curator: Caroline Dumalin
