Pandemonium

In researching Artificial Intelligence and connectionist models, the American scientist O.G. Selfridge designed a pattern-recognition machine. His model was an attempt to simulate the manner in which the human brain recognised patterns.

He gave his invention the name Pandemonium, in reference to the gathering place of all demons (also known as the capital of Hell). The programme was explained by Selfridge as consisting of a 'head demon' who listens to the 'shrieks' of 'lower demons'. These lower demons are specialised in shrieking, to express with what certainty they have recognised a pattern, for which they are specifically designed.

It is not known exactly why Selfridge gave this name (and the ideas associated therewith) to his brainchild. The reducing of demons to spineless, programmed entities is remarkable given how demons are mostly regarded as stubborn. In this Pandemonium there is, however, the question of a well-ordered structure. The specific nomenclature and connotation of Selfridge's programme run radically counter to the romanticised notion of diabolical rage and are closer in nature to the bureaucratic systematics of Auschwitz. Lower demons sit next to one another in expectation, addressing themselves to a more highly positioned upper demon. Once in awhile they exude a soporific, abrupt shriek, without intention or expression; nothing more than an utterance of the fact they have recognised that for which they are programmed.

This situation, and the way in which Selfridge writes about it, closely resembles the staging and characters in the films and photos of Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys. Whether it concerns a merciless master, his diverse accomplices, or the final victim, they are all programmed to react to a certain stimulus. The actors are positioned like models in something more evocative of an organigram than a staging. There is no empathy or alliance with their role or with the actions they perform. All of the figures find themselves in a state that can be described as constitutively autistic, whereby they have lost every interpretive possibility. As such, it is more accurate to speak of a bureaucratic implementation than of a dramatic performance. Although the characters interact with one another, they are, in essence, separate from one another. There is no empathy in the interaction.

And within this rigidly ordered system the characters don an archaic decorum that lends them a sort of authenticity or humanness. Just as the sterile and artificially intelligent simulation of Selfridge's programme is clothed in archaic concepts (demons, pandemonium), the attributes upon which De Gruyter and Thys's characters derive their status are stuck-on; fake beards, uniforms, masks, etc.

The specific space in which these figures are placed makes of them demons in a box. A De Gruyter and Thys interior reminds one of television sitcoms that are always filmed in the same setting and of which one explicitly feels a reticence. There reigns an oppressive 'indoors sensation' originating from the fact that one knows one can never leave this interior. The characters can step through the door but there is no outside. When one leaves the interior, one emerges in the structure of the organigram itself.

On the rare occasions that there is an outdoor scene in a De Gruyter and Thys film, it is noticeable how much this contrasts with the indoor scenes; they mostly present a natural landscape, without a living soul, and they exude an atmospheric light. The interior shots, however, always show the same harsh and austerely lit setting. Inside and outside are simply two dimensions that are no longer connected to one another, two categories that are exclusive. The characters implicated in these interior spaces are, in other words, interned.

In the film Der Schlamm von Branst (2008), which is included in this exhibition, the relationship between the inside and the unattainable outside world is most explicitly addressed. The Pandemonium here is a creative clay workshop, and the 'shrieks' of the lower demons are translated into the gazes the characters cast at each other and at their clay sculptures. Der Schlamm von Branst most strongly reveals the development of De Gruyter and Thys' oeuvre toward an art of the portrait. Actions are minimised in this film and the emphasis lays on the portrayal of the characters as well as the sculptures, in particular on their gaze.

From foolish awe, through a lost puppy look, to a frenetic, ecstatic stare; the gazes are thrown at one another, but ultimately appear to be directed at the clay sculptures. These sculptures are also portrayed, but their gazes do not communicate with those of their audience. The sculptures stand with internalised, reserved, or haughty postures, like idols disconnected from their creators. The participants in this workshop are prisoners overmastered by their own sculptures.

During the first half of the film one of the characters cries almost continuously, holding an un-worked block of clay clutched in her arms. By means of explicit post-synchronisation, the crying is attached to this character as an attribute. The voice, as the core of a person, is removed from the body and replaced by a mechanical prop. Since De Vloek (The Curse) in 1999, this method of post-synchronisation has been consistently applied in each film, and in their occasional performances – which once again flattens the characters and enhances the closed-in nature of the space.

An outdoor shot occurring halfway through the film shows a muddy riverbank. It is the mud of Branst (to which the title refers) that is processed into clay. The image is overexposed but still atmospheric, and is accompanied by 'doom' synthesizer music. The scene looks like an ethereal vision or an image from a dream. The shapeless mud as Source from which the sculptures are built receives a phantasmal aura; a sort of authenticity that the interned sculptors vainly seek.

Despite the healing power of free expression, the clay sculptures reveal hidden traumas, unfulfilled wishes, and frustrations. The workshop has become a sort of Pandora's Box. The sculptures are no longer willing objects. They have become autonomous and dominate the situation, as if having applied a 'divide and rule' strategy.

The Frigate (2007) is also primarily a filmed portrait. Here too we find the same emphasis on the gaze. In this film though, nearly everyone has the same aggressive paranoid expression; on the one hand, obscenely directed at the female character/victim, on the other hand, fixated on the miniature frigate of the film's title. With most of the male characters the gaze comes not from the eye, but remains suspended (staring). Contrarily, the female character possesses an empty gaze directed downwards. One of the characters stares through a video camera. He sits so close to his subject that the camera cannot be anything other than an extension of a blind stare.

The dark miniature ship is nevertheless the hub of all power relations. Immediately and suddenly the ship appears, emerging from an inner darkness. Like a sort of black star that absorbs every look and hypnotizes its viewers. The way in which all the characters move obsessively round this miniature ship, and the dark appearance of the ship itself, are in a way reminiscent of the meteorite that is stored in the Kaäba in Mecca; a dark stone originating from the universe, wrapped in a black cube, toward which an entire religious world is directed. Both enjoy the same untouchable status.

If the characters in Der Schlamm von Branst are under the influence of the clay sculptures, in The Frigate it is as if the different characters follow commands that they have received from the miniature ship.

Behind alternating positions of power, of which the female character is always the (sexual) victim, the frigate apparently seems to be stabbing the ultimate master manipulator.

Halfway through the film is a mesmerizing scene in which detailed shots of the model ship merge into one another by way of geometrical patterns, accompanied by dramatic, atonal organ music. And the film ends with a similar scene in which the hypnotic geometry seems to have won over the characters.

In The Frigate as in Der Schlamm von Branst, even if the objects are not performing as receivers, the characters are most certainly transmitters. A hierarchy is clearly assigned to the characters by the objects. In this way, the ship and the sculptures seem identical to the aforementioned organigram; they are its extensions.

More than with the clay sculptures, it is clear with the miniature frigate that in this context it's more accurate to talk about Things than about objects. The Thing is that which no longer symbolizes anything and where in most cases any attempt at understanding is thwarted. The Thing is still closest of all to the monstrous, with which it shares the inability to be allocated an actual name. The Thing can take on the form of a miniature ship as well as a clay sculpture, but that's only form. Like in the horror film The Thing (John Carpenter) in which a small, shapeless something, like a meteorite that has fallen from outer space, is then is able to take on any form. The frigate and the clay sculptures represent nothing; they just are, and their being is mandatory. Their attitude is imperative.

Also imperative in this exhibition is the way the sculptures from Der Schlamm von Branst are presented. For this, the original floor of the exhibition halls was covered with vinyl identical to that used in the foyer of the gallery and in other parts of the bank building. Large volumes, covered with the same vinyl, appear to be extensions of the building and serve as bases for the clay sculptures. In this exposition it is not the shape of the objects that come into their own but their status as Thing. The arrangement here is one of imperative.

In addition, the exhibition halls of Culturgest have now been rebuilt in such a way that the six originally separate rooms are re-divided into two parallel new routes, in each of which three rooms spill over into one another in a stepped fashion. Throughout the entire exhibition, the descending space and the bases – like extensions of the building, together with the resonance of the amorphous screeching and imposing organ music used in the films, reinforces the idea of a systematic internment.

To be found in the first spaces are, respectively, the sculptures from Der Schlamm von Branst and the photos of the model ship from The Frigate. The photos show front, rear and side views of the miniature ship, and are taken with a flash, which fully flattens the black ship. The darkness from which the frigate appeared is the body of the ship itself; a black hole. The photos show the frigate as the formless Thing at which the eye stares blindly.

Neither the clay sculptures exhibited nor the photos can be considered purely as props from, or references to, the films. In the work of De Gruyter and Thys, Things always appear more self-conscious (and independent) than humans. The blank characters/actors possibly more aptly fulfill the role of props on loan than the objects themselves.

As is emblematic of the entire oeuvre of De Gruyter & Thys, their films basically know no dramatic structure and a catharsis or conclusion is never present. At the end of the film nothing crucial has changed. The oppressiveness of this continuity is best translated in their vision of the end of the world: everyone goes home, sits down and waits. It is unspectacular but literally overwhelming and final. Pandemonium Internatum finalis.

Michael Van den Abeele

A Prior nr 11, Dieter Roelstraete ponders the work of Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys, 2005
A Prior nr 11, work on paper by Jos De Gruyter and Harald Thys, 2005 (16 p.)       
Decennium, art in Belgium over the 10 last years, 2003
Googlebook 1, De Singel, Antwerp
Harald Thys and Jos De Gruyter, Antwerp, Middelheim Museum.
Kunst Nu, interview with Harald Thys about Domus Kartonus, 2002
Pica en Flandes, Barcelona 1997
SEMAINE, magazine dedicated to De Gruyter and Thys, 2005
TV avant-garde, ICC 1992
Jan Florizoone, 'Goedige monsters van Harald Thys', in: De Standaard, 23 Novembre 2000
Luk Lambrecht, 'De Brave spoken van Harald Thys', in: De Morgen, 29 Novembre 2000
Jan Florizoone, 'Un monde de carton', in: De Standaard, April 2002
Domus Kartonus, 'Potjeslatijn?', in: NRC handelsblad, May 2002
Véronique Depiesse, 'Chaperon rouge', in: l'art même, 2003
Christine Jamart, 'Coconutour', in: l'art même, 2003
Coconutour, artpress, 2003
Olivier Michelon, 'Les révoltes du "Bounty"', in: le journal des arts, 2003
Lars Kwakkenbos, 'Drama's van de stad', in: De Standaard, 2003
Nathalie Stefanov, 'Interview with Harald Thys and Jos De Gruyter', in: Magazine of the college of fine arts of Tourcoing, 2004