Let’s Talk Leuven: Els Viaene (artist talk)

Let's Talk Leuven has been featuring numerous artists during (free) artist talks in Leuven since 2018. As part of the sound art festival Hear Here, Belgian artist Els Viaene will show a new installation entitled Figures of Thought. This work, realised with the support of Werktank and STUK, is an intimate viewing box with light, smoke and sound. Els Viaene takes the viewer/listener into a paradoxical story of presence and absence.

Light, smoke and sound are fleeting phenomena. We perceive them, but we cannot grasp them. They are simultaneously present and absent. This diorama by Els Viaene gives shape to exactly that fleeting part of reality, the ‘nothingness’. She creates an intimate play between those three fleeting phenomena, making the invisible visible. In this artist talk, Viaene will elaborate on this work and her research on making sound ‘visible’ in general.