Terre Thaemlitz - Interstices

18.06.2021 - 01.08.2021
venue:
Van Wassenhove House
Brakelstraat 50
9830 Sint-Martens-Latem

Terre Thaemlitz - Interstices
Friday, Saturday and Sunday 14:00 —18:00

A presentation by the artist, public speaker and DJ Terre Thaemlitz at the iconic brutalist Van Wassenhove House

Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens presents Interstices by the artist, public speaker and DJ Terre Thaemlitz. Originally produced in 2000–2003, the specially reconfigured installation at Woning Van Wassenhove (by architect Juliaan Lampens) includes video, sound and text.

For the audio composition Homeward.004 from the Interstices album, Thaemlitz selected, deleted and repeated individual frames in an audio waveform – a method she calls ‘framing’. Primary passages are also removed; most commonly deleted are vocals, figuratively silencing the dominant discourse within popular music in order to hear interstitial sounds.

In the Interstices video, Thaemlitz adapts music, text and images from his CD Interstices into a montage that candidly investigates the interstices between genders, sexual orientations, and other identity constructs. Intersexual birth, surgical gender reassignment, sex acts, and transsexual job opportunities are among the topics processed through filters of private and public expectation.

Terre Thaemlitz
Terre Thaemlitz (born 1968, based in Kawasaki, Japan) is an award-winning multimedia producer, writer, public speaker, educator, audio remixer, DJ and owner of the Comatonse Recordings record label. Her work combines a critical look at identity politics – including gender, sexuality, class, linguistics, ethnicity and race – with an ongoing analysis of the socio-economics of commercial media production.

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House Van Wassenhove is a house designed by architect Juliaan Lampens and was built between 1972 and 1974. Bachelor Albert Van Wassenhove, a teacher with a passion for contemporary art and architecture commissioned the house. Juliaan Lampens designed exclusively for Albert Van Wassenhove a house of concrete, wood and glass in which all living areas overlap: no separate rooms, but one open space. The warmth of the wood and the ever-changing play of incident light shatter the massiveness of the concrete. Basic geometric shapes structure the interior: the sleeping area is a circle, the kitchen a triangle and the office space is a square. But the house is more than just a game of shapes and lines as it manages to redefine our experience of living.

After the death of Albert Van Wassenhove in 2012 the house was bequeathed to the University of Ghent, who in turn gave it on a long-term loan to the museum Dhondt-Dhaenens in Deurle. The house was renovated in 2015 thanks to the support of Philippe and Miene Gillion.

JULIAAN LAMPENS
Juliaan Lampens (1926 - 2019) was mainly active in East Flanders. In the early years of his career he drew more traditional designs, but after the Brussels Expo58 his ideals changed decisively. From then onwards he developed totally new architectural ideas and with the design of his own home he resolutely disconnected from the architectural forms of the past.

He focused on concrete architecture and developed a very personal style. His new approach to building and living linked Lampens to the architecture of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe, but there are also similarities with Japanese and Scandinavian architecture. Juliaan Lampens also designed several pieces of furniture, including his iconic stool. House Van Wassenhove, together with the Chapel of Kerselare (Oudenaarde, 1966) and House Vandenhaute - Kiebooms (Zingem, 1967), are considered to be his absolute masterpieces.