This year’s Artefact Festival (STUK, Leuven, 15-24 February) has as its theme The Emergence of Things. It brings together some 20 artists who investigate the fundamental components or ‘elementary particles’ of media, technology and their production processes. These artists focus not on the content, but on the infrastructures and production standards of diverse media. They reveal a strong engagement in fathoming the depths of these microstructures, material attributes and mechanisms.

Artists Stefaan Quix and Ludo Engels have joined forces for an installation that crystallizes their dialectic thinking about the spatial aspects of sound art. The analogue interiors of medial and digital machines are deconstructed into their own antithesis: a glorious burst of bric-a-brac, a schizophrenic explosion of paraphernalia and found elements that defies both gravity and space.

In Ludo Engels’ installations, characteristics of the space in which the project is located always play an important role. His work is conceptual in the sense that he undermines our familiar manners of perception. He remains faithful to an intuitive working method. Stefaan Quix’s activities take place in between differing fields. In his post-minimal oeuvre, sound, colour, composition, space and mathematics are all interconnected.

For more info: Artefact Festival.

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