Jim Bollansée

Performance, 23 September 2005, at Zoersel, Seppenshuis. Avens are relics from prehistoric times (3000 BC). They are natural cavities in the limestone soil that have been washed out by water. The early inhabitants used those cavities as a quarry from which they extracted the clay for their pottery. When the clay ran out or had become too difficult to reach these caverns were used as depositories for food. Usually an AVEN was connected to an underground vein of water. I saw AVENS like this in Cambous, Languedoc. They date from 3000 BC. "I think they’re wonderful. Time and time again it surprises me that as soon as I perform a work existing in my head, it begins to lead a life of its own. During the try-out I discovered that an AVEN could also be the crater of a blue meteor fallen from Sirius into our garden or just as likely a hole in the ground caused by the impact of a poisonous gas bomb."

Video performance, 2003. At nightfall, the fire smoulders, the artist stirs it up. It begins to sputter and spark, waking up petrified life. The sounds of the day quiet down, songbirds, the ice-cream cart, peacocks, a barking dog… Only the woman keeps on humming after the silence of the night has fallen.

Video performance, 2001. Video installation at CC Strombeek in X, Highway to reflection, 2011, curated by Luc Binst and Luk Lambrecht.

Video performance, 2004, created in Le Pouget, France.

Video performance, 2002.

Video performance, 2001, filmed in Calossa d’En Sarria, Spain.

Single channel video projection, 2005. "It’s rather cold today." Grandad goes for a hiking tour with his grandsons. Nine days earlier they buried his wife, grandma: at that time too these 3 men walked like this next to each other, behind her coffin. They pass a long wall in an old oak wood until they reach the open field again. The spectator can tune in to their conversation. The old man has a lot of memories; the young men look ahead. It is obvious that their patterns of life are different but they complement each other, their lives are interwoven. Their connection and friendship are conveyed by the humour and lightness of their conversation. They each have their own pace; they don’t walk synchronously; none of them sets the rhythm, the dynamics occur naturally through their kinship. That ancient chemistry holds these three men together as allies, surrounded by an invisible magnetic field, as they journey through the forest.

Video installation, 2006, at M HKA Antwerpen 2007 “Lonely at the Top”, curators Dieter Roestraete & Grant Watson. The title of Marie Julia Bollansée’s work refers to an old Etruscan city near Rome. Tarquinia was the most important of the twelve cities of the Etruscan League and is now an archaeological site primarily known for its necropolis – an underground cemetery containing more than six thousand tombs, many of which are decorated with splendid colourful murals. However, of this partially macabre history hardly a trace can be found in Bollansée’s “Tarquinia”, a three-part projection in which a festively laid table with an ever changing line-up of guests is the central point – a picture which is loosely based on Tarquinia’s ancient wall paintings. Although associations with the iconographic tradition of the Last Supper are brought to mind, “Tarquinia” definitely plays on a different emotional register – that of a festive beginning rather than that of a majestic fatal ending.