Emmanuel van der Auwera's A Thousand Pictures of Nothing was selected by Àngels Miralda as "one of the 5 exhibitions to see in Brussels this Fall".
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You can still visit the exhibition until December 16th, 2023. More info here
Harlan Levey Projects presents a solo exhibition of Belgian artist Emmanuel van der Auwera titled A Thousand Pictures of Nothing. Upon entering their space, multiple backs of screens first greet viewers, revealing a technological materiality rather than a televised image. Cables and microchips lie strewn on the floor, leading to the verso of scratched screens displaying images of the January 6 US Capitol attack. The piece is a reflection on how the media influences our perspective of reality and the infrastructure necessary for it to do so. It serves as a relevant example which is concurrently producing judicial decisions in the United States - demonstrating how social media, news broadcasts, and the pervasiveness of moving images and digital technology have created the need for society to rewrite its social and legal codes.
The video White Cloud is played in a loop in its own space. Created using AI digital imaging technologies, it is a dystopian view of the future of humanity. The film follows characters around mining cities in China from which rare minerals are extracted for mysterious purposes. The glitches of AI in which the patterns of fish, human hands, and moving water become eerie and strange gives the impression of overall toxicity throughout each scene. In one segment, a contaminated lake gurgles and boils in surreal scenery of devastated landscapes that have been the source of wealth for tech and weapons industry at the expense of the health of local populations and workers - unlicensed companies send workers without hazard protection into the cancerous lake for larger profits. Underlying this are eerie scenes of love and intimacy against backdrops of industrial chimneys and perfectly gridded cities - a cautionary tale about the loss of individuality and the dystopia to come at the hands of big-data predictability.
