Frank Theys
Night Fever
10 September - 20 November 2011

Frank Theys (b. 1963, Brussels) is a philosopher, artist and filmmaker. His work has been honoured with several international awards and is among the collections at MOMA (New York), MuHKA (Antwerp), SMAK (Ghent) and Centre National de la Cinematography (Paris).

In Netwerk he presents the new film installation Night Fever, a portrait of a character with an anxiety disorder. The installation is a free variation on Kafka's The Cave. The work depicts a man trapped in his own house, his own world, where he cultivates his fear uncertain begging for help. Image, sound, editing and layout are constructed in a way to bring this disturbing experience and identity over the public as vividly as possible, to allow them to literally crawl within the head of the character. To achieve this, the artist explores the consequences of editing techniques applied to a multi-screen setup.

The film Night Fever was produced by M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp), VAF (Flemish Audiovisual Fund, Brussels) and Netwerk / centre for contemporary art, Aalst.

Image: Frank Theys, Nachtkoorts, 2011, videostill

Nikolaas Demoen
L'inconnu
10 September - 20 November 2011

Nikolaas Demoen (°1965) lives and works in Ghent. He is active as an artist, teaches at St. Lukas Antwerp and makes books. He has exhibited, among others, in Brussels (SECONDroom) and Beaufort 2006.

For the solo exhibition L'inconnu, he creates an installation with projections of films and drawings that offer intriguing responses to the modernist visual language. Via drawings and prints one sees photographs, objects, films and installations that explore the interaction between form, body and meaning. On the border between irony and poetry he seeks to give the ideals of abstract art a breath of new life through a figurative approach. The person who hides behind the mask is a nod to je est un autre by poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Image: Nikolaas Demoen 'Je est un autre' 3 action, 2010

SoundImageCulture
Poetics of Observation
10 September - 20 November 2011

Created in 2007, SoundImageCulture is a Brussels-based workspace proposing a yearly nine-month programme for artists, filmmakers and social scientists to develop artistic projects operating in the intersection between anthropology, documentary and audiovisual art. This exhibition presents a selective survey of the work produced during the first five editions of the programme, although just like at SIC, the emphasis will not be on the "results" but first and foremost on the engaged creative and reflexive process itself. Bringing the participants to interrogate – formally and ethically - their relation both to their audience and to their subject, SIC raises a question fundamental to all documentary practice: how to represent the other?

Image: © Charles Fairbanks

More information: www.netwerk-art.be - www.soundimageculture.org