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Bioscopic Books

24.04–
13.06’21
Mums Cards e1605112799248
Art Cinema OFFoff
Lange Steenstraat 14
B-9000 Gent
Reserve your time slot for the exhibition by clicking on 'Order' above.

In the spring of 2021, Art Cinema OFFoff will screen several films alongside the Art Book Fair and the exhibition Bioscopic Books. In these films, the relationship between what can be said/​written and what can be shown/​exhibited is explored.

Films have often gazed at books, but books have been staring right back at them. The Bioscopic Books’ exhibition brings together artist’s books from past and present that relate implicitly or explicitly to the medium of film. It is no coincidence that the artist’s book emancipated itself as an autonomous art object shortly after the emergence of cinema. Whereas painting and photography envied film for its moving images and narrative power, the artist’s book fully embraced its cinematic potential. The artist book experimented with new possibilities to generate form and meaning sequentially, not only in words, but also and especially through images. In turn, filmmakers discovered that various combinations of images and complex camera movements are possible on and between the pages of a book. 

In Kunsthal Gent, over 60 books, which have been carefully selected by experts on photo and artist’s books, will be exhibited. Moreover, Tine Guns, Sophie Nys and Nicolas Provost will create three new artist’s books especially for the exhibition. Three films by these same artists will be shown in the exhibition space to wrap up the dialogue between film and book.

Opening exhibition: 24 April, 20:00 / Opening hours for the exhibition: Weekends: 11:00 – 18:00

Bioscopic Books is a collaboration between LUCA School of Arts, Kunsthal Gent & Art Cinema OFFoff.
Concept: Tine Guns, Inge Ketelers & Isolde Vanhee


Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Do Not Disturb

US • 1945 • 19' • colour • 16mm
Moholy-Nagy directed this film with a group of his hipster students at the Institute of Design in Chicago, influenced by industrial design and advertising. A noirish atmosphere permeates the stylishly abstract scenery, full of saturated colours, lighting gels, split screens, prisms, and myriad other tricks spill out onto the screen, done with the panache and enthusiasm for which he was well-known. 

Marcel Mariën

L’imitation du cinéma

BE • 1959 • 35' • b&w • 16mm
Today, Easter of this holy Year, Here, in the basilica of Notre-Dame in Paris, I accuse the Universal Catholic Church of the mortal hijacking of our living energies to the profit of an empty heaven; I accuse the Catholic Church of piracy; I accuse the Catholic Church of having infected the world with its mortuary morality, of being the canker sore on this decomposed western civilization. Verily I say unto thee; God is dead. We puke up the agonizing insipidness of your prayers, because your prayers have so generously manured the battlefields of our Europe. Go forth into the tragic and exultant desert of this land where God is dead, and run your naked hands through the earth again, your proud hands, your hands free of prayer. Today, Easter of this holy Year, Here, in the basilica of Notre-Dame in Paris, we proclaim the death of the Christ-God in order that Man might live at last. - Marcel Mariën
Marcel MARIEN Imitation du cinema 6

Luke Fowler

Mum’s Cards

GB • 2018 • 9' • colour • digital
My mother is a sociologist – she came to Glasgow from the south of England in the 1960’s to work within the Politics Department of Glasgow University. After a few years, the sociologists broke away and formed their own department, where she taught until she retired. Although the university advocated and furnished her with her own personal computer, she still used index cards to make notes on the books and articles that she read. Now that she no longer has an office, her house is filled with shoeboxes and filing cabinets containing these cards. My mother was absent on the day that I shot this film; the interview and sounds were recorded at a later date. – Luke Fowler

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Do Not Disturb

US • 1945 • 19' • colour • 16mm

Marcel Mariën

L’imitation du cinéma

BE • 1959 • 35' • b&w • 16mm

Luke Fowler

Mum’s Cards

GB • 2018 • 9' • colour • digital