the wasp and the weather – prologue – archival exhibition
This exhibition of archival documents encompasses a presentation of historical documents from two, at first sight, very different sources. We see pages from different issues of the Rzoezie magazine (from the period 1990-2000) in which we can read reflections on the racist and discriminating climate in and around Mechelen. These fragments are in dialogue with documentation of a series of works (from the period 1986-1994) by the Belgian artist Hugo Roelandt (°1950 †2015).
Roelandt’s works and work proposals ‘Exhibition of a space’ (1986), ‘Circulation’ (1985), ‘Light grid’ (1994) or ‘Western or Museum of Man, Nature and Science’ (1986) take our daily, immediate environment as a residual form that is artistically “de-naturalized”.
Both types of documents – each in their own way – make a call to an inquiry of their immediate surroundings. At the same time, the juxtaposition in this archival exhibition points out to an interstice between artistic social practices and activist social practices in the Flemish historical context: a vast, unreflected and unresearched, missing terrain. A ghostly, acoustic space appears in this rift. It is here that the poems of Rzoezie resonate.
The archival exhibition was made possible thanks to Lydia Van Loock, Marc Holthof, Evi Bert and the team of Hugo Roelandt Research Project at M HKA, Antwerp; Kim Robensyn, Pascale Welvaert and the team of Amsab – Institute for Social History, Ghent; Sahd Jabbalah, Mohamed Ouamari and Rudi Possemiers of Regional Open Youth Centre Mechelen.
