Memory of a Brick Clamp

In the framework of 'Le Paysage Ménagé'

by Ciel Grommen en Maximiliaan Royakkers

Film by Jonathan De Maeyer

 

At the artists' request, Jonathan De Maeyer documented the cycle of building and tearing down the brick clamp. The slowly building photographic film tells the story of the 'brick clamp' from his own perspective. The oven invites you to observe with him the soil, its surroundings, its neighbours and its contents. The film was made in the framework of 'Le Paysage Ménagé'.

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The unique location of C-mine in the former Winterslag coal mine provides for often unexpected encounters. Since the heavy industry left that place, its infrastructure was transformed into a heritage site and taken over by more benevolent, cultural industry. At the same time, large parts of the landscape were reclaimed by nature and have since been indwelled by pioneering vegetation and unique insects. Here is where a shepherd and his stock, truck drivers, botanists and geologists, local inhabitants and artists cross paths. In this context Ciel Grommen and Maximiliaan Royakkers propose both a physical and a figurative platform for dialogue and an opportunity for making new alliances between those unlikely neighbours.

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Le Paysage Ménagé is a proposal, an open invitation to imagine new ways of being in the landscape and making connections with and within it. The project coincides with JESTER’s move to the new location at C-mine, Genk, and it prefigures future developments on the site. 

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The first piece to furnish the C-mine site is a brick daybed– a unique meeting place where during the day meals and stories are shared and at nights animals and plants take over. Inspired by the Chinese ‘kang’ bed and the Russian ‘pechka’ stove, the platform can be heated up from the inside, emanating warmth and aura of hospitality.

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(text: Alicja Melzaka)

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16’01”, color

link on request: jonathandemaeyer@hotmail.com

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