Night of the Experimental Film 2026

3x 16mm, cello, piano, percussion & reciters

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the passing of Lucien Goethals (1931 – 2006), one of Belgium’s most influential post-war composers and a pioneer of electronic music. He was a founding figure of the Institute for Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM) in Ghent, and a long-standing professor at KASK & Conservatorium. Goethals developed a highly personal and deeply moving musical language, always imbued with a melancholic undertone. For Vensters (Windows), he collaborated with experimental poet Jan van der Hoeven (1929 – 2014), who was part of the Vijfenvijftigers, the second generation of avant-garde poets in Flanders.

TRAILER

4x 16mm, and 35mm slide projection, four-channel soundscape

By Juan David González Monroy & Anja Dornieden (Ojoboca) and Martin Moolhuijsen (Labor Berlin)

Japanese experimental filmmaker Takahiko Iimura (1937 – 2022) travelled to the United States in 1966 as a fellow for the Harvard University International Seminar in Boston, where he met American composer Alvin Lucier (1931 – 2021). In New York, Iimura was struck by the proliferation of ​“Shelter” signs throughout the city that pointed to the basements of buildings, signaling the American will to survive during the Cold War and its attendant feeling of anxiety. Iimura imagined a shelter of the future, which he called Shelter 9999.

This multi-projection live performance was first staged in 1966. Alvin Lucier played electronic music and also used a large shell as an instrument. The performances took place in a variety of venues, including the Electric Circus in New York’s East Village, a church on the outskirts of Chicago and an auditorium in Tokyo. In certain iterations, their partners Akiko Iimura and Mary Lucier joined in the performance.

Sixty years later, Shelter 9999 is now being restaged – for the first time in Belgium, following its international revival at the European Media Art Festival (EMAF) in Germany and Back to the Future festival at WORM in Rotterdam.

TRAILER

Re-enactment by Julian Ross, 16mm projection

In the early 1960s, Takahiko Iimura began engaging in alternative modes of film projection, seeking surfaces other than the screen for his images, such as ceilings, balloons and bodies. He regarded these ​“film actions” as opportunities to communicate with his audience and, in the case of collaborative works, with other artists. In Screen Play, Iimura discovered the antithesis of the rigid fixed frame in the human skin. He projected his film Iro (Colors) (1962) onto the back of Takamatsu Jiro, one of Japan’s leading post-war artists. During the performance, Iimura cut a square hole in Takamatsu’s jacket so that the film was projected directly onto his naked back while he sat between the stage and the audience, reading a newspaper, apparently oblivious to the spectacle unfolding behind him. Soundtrack by Yasunao Tone (Group Ongaku, Fluxus).

4x 16mm installation in loop, bioplastic screens

In Silence, Song, Alex Schuurbiers films a community of women seaweed harvesters in South India and explores their relationship to the sea. The film was hand-developed with seaweeds harvested during the shoot, making the sea and the things that belong to it active collaborators. In this intuitive documentary, Schuurbiers reflects on the women’s rituals, daily struggles and self-determination, making space for their mother tongue whilst questioning her own position in determining which stories are told and translated. In the absence of a shared language, attention and active listening become an offering for exchange, focussing not on words but on water, which ​‘flows through and across difference’ (Neimanis).