Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven is presenting her book, Veerkracht Thuis! (“Elasticity at Home!”), to students and the public at KASK & Conservatory in Ghent. She taught here from 1991 until 2016. During these years, she assisted many students. First as a lecturer in the 3D department, later as part of a discussion and reflection platform for a group of master’s students she led. This platform focused on avant-garde trends in visual culture and texts on art and being an artist through the ages. After a while, she also started sharing her own artist reflections. She decided to systematise this loose collection of concepts written down between 1976 and 2019. This with the intention of compiling them and making them available for free to a younger generation. In 2021, her then intern Maxim Preaux took the initiative to bundle this collection in the form of a book. Preaux added his own choice of drawings and collages from the same period from AMVK's image archive. The whole thing is now published as a book, in part by AMVK, but also in the form of a Track Report edition that was handed out as a New Year's gift to the students of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp.
AMVK refers to the book as “a vade mecum”, a handbook or reference book in which specialised information is presented in the form of an overview. Such concepts as ‘Thermodynamic’, ‘Waves of Activation’, ‘Rules of Thumb’, ‘Marginalia’ and ‘Scarce’, for example, are organised in five chapters: ‘Boundary Conditions’, ‘Integral is Extended’, ‘The Required Particular’, ‘The Outer Contour’ and ‘The Values of the Constants’.
Given AMVK’s wish for this work to be amply available for art students and other interested parties, BOEKS – affiliated with KASK & Conservatory – has taken the initiative of giving the publication an identity of its own and making it available online, on their website. To mark its publication, it will also be highlighted for a month in the BOEKS gallery. In collaboration with Walter Siemons of S&S Gallery in Antwerp, an additional selection of AMVK’s printed material will also be on view in the Kunstenbibliotheek cellarium. For the book presentation, segments from the work will be read aloud by four of AMVK’s former students. Sharon Van Overmeiren, Julie De Kezel, Johanna Van Overmeir and Maxim Preaux make their own selections from the reflections of their former mentor.
BOEKS offers us a taste with the following excerpt:
“I think it is enough to initiate a new creative system. The rest is for others to do. My task is not to strip one element to the bone. My strength lies in surface connections and, uncontrollably, sometimes in the middle and lower connections. For it is only the surface that endures my controlled inputs. The result is a direct consequence of an intuitive emphasis on waves of influence. (05-11-83)”
AMVK herself summarises the book as follows:
“Elasticity at Home! takes you along in the spiritual development of a twenty-four to sixty-eight year old artist. I initially started collecting these notes in the form of a conversation, using questions and answers, an interaction between my various ‘selves’ who made these notes in the margins of an artistic practice. On reflection, I thought it would be more convenient to use the 96 words that formed the basis of my HeadNurse project (1995-2015) as a guide to structure these reflections. As a HeadNurse*, for ten years I drew parallels between the creative principle as it appears in writings on alchemy, and the forces that determine the outlook and movements in our society. I selected words from professional literature on knowledge representation, Artificial Intelligence and thermodynamic forces, and connected them with terms from books on space travel, cosmetics, and nursing manuals.
* Shortly after the advent of consumer computers, I gave myself the name HeadNurse as a female counterpart of Big Brother, also having her in mind as Dr Nietzsche’s assistant.”
With thanks to Walter Siemons for his collaboration in selecting and assembling the printed matter. Siemons is also preparing a presentation and publication for 2024, bringing together all kinds of printed material by AMVK at the S&S Gallery (check the website for more information).
We also extend our thanks to Igepa for sponsoring the poster paper.
Exhibition views © Sam De Buysere
Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven is presenting her book, Veerkracht Thuis! (“Elasticity at Home!”), to students and the public at KASK & Conservatory in Ghent. She taught here from 1991 until 2016. During these years, she assisted many students. First as a lecturer in the 3D department, later as part of a discussion and reflection platform for a group of master’s students she led. This platform focused on avant-garde trends in visual culture and texts on art and being an artist through the ages. After a while, she also started sharing her own artist reflections. She decided to systematise this loose collection of concepts written down between 1976 and 2019. This with the intention of compiling them and making them available for free to a younger generation. In 2021, her then intern Maxim Preaux took the initiative to bundle this collection in the form of a book. Preaux added his own choice of drawings and collages from the same period from AMVK's image archive. The whole thing is now published as a book, in part by AMVK, but also in the form of a Track Report edition that was handed out as a New Year's gift to the students of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp.
AMVK refers to the book as “a vade mecum”, a handbook or reference book in which specialised information is presented in the form of an overview. Such concepts as ‘Thermodynamic’, ‘Waves of Activation’, ‘Rules of Thumb’, ‘Marginalia’ and ‘Scarce’, for example, are organised in five chapters: ‘Boundary Conditions’, ‘Integral is Extended’, ‘The Required Particular’, ‘The Outer Contour’ and ‘The Values of the Constants’.
Given AMVK’s wish for this work to be amply available for art students and other interested parties, BOEKS – affiliated with KASK & Conservatory – has taken the initiative of giving the publication an identity of its own and making it available online, on their website. To mark its publication, it will also be highlighted for a month in the BOEKS gallery. In collaboration with Walter Siemons of S&S Gallery in Antwerp, an additional selection of AMVK’s printed material will also be on view in the Kunstenbibliotheek cellarium. For the book presentation, segments from the work will be read aloud by four of AMVK’s former students. Sharon Van Overmeiren, Julie De Kezel, Johanna Van Overmeir and Maxim Preaux make their own selections from the reflections of their former mentor.
BOEKS offers us a taste with the following excerpt:
“I think it is enough to initiate a new creative system. The rest is for others to do. My task is not to strip one element to the bone. My strength lies in surface connections and, uncontrollably, sometimes in the middle and lower connections. For it is only the surface that endures my controlled inputs. The result is a direct consequence of an intuitive emphasis on waves of influence. (05-11-83)”
AMVK herself summarises the book as follows:
“Elasticity at Home! takes you along in the spiritual development of a twenty-four to sixty-eight year old artist. I initially started collecting these notes in the form of a conversation, using questions and answers, an interaction between my various ‘selves’ who made these notes in the margins of an artistic practice. On reflection, I thought it would be more convenient to use the 96 words that formed the basis of my HeadNurse project (1995-2015) as a guide to structure these reflections. As a HeadNurse*, for ten years I drew parallels between the creative principle as it appears in writings on alchemy, and the forces that determine the outlook and movements in our society. I selected words from professional literature on knowledge representation, Artificial Intelligence and thermodynamic forces, and connected them with terms from books on space travel, cosmetics, and nursing manuals.
* Shortly after the advent of consumer computers, I gave myself the name HeadNurse as a female counterpart of Big Brother, also having her in mind as Dr Nietzsche’s assistant.”
With thanks to Walter Siemons for his collaboration in selecting and assembling the printed matter. Siemons is also preparing a presentation and publication for 2024, bringing together all kinds of printed material by AMVK at the S&S Gallery (check the website for more information).
We also extend our thanks to Igepa for sponsoring the poster paper.
Exhibition views © Sam De Buysere
