MetaWorld - Herentals Belgium
AwhiWorld have been collaborating with Belgian artist Daniël Vandersmissen / Dan Yapungku on a series of interrelated projects based on the notion of portals. This page documents this ongoing collaboration.
Daniël Vandersmissen / Dan Yapungku lives in Belgium-Europe. He creates installations and performances related to social themes and events. As an artist, he frequently alternates between making analogue and digital images: paintings, drawings, assemblages, photo (editations), installations, objects/assemblages, animations, videos and brochures.
Daniël is a key collaborator for AwhiWorld, and we previously worked with him during BIOS as he generated astounding VR landscapes in SANSAR, responding to the changes in our lab with his alternative reality formations.
IGECC – Illegal Global Earth Cleaning Company is a fictitious company under whose umbrella Dan places his art activities, with the meaning of the acronym changing according to the art project. It has at various times been called: International Global Earth Cleaning Company [2011, Ghent], InteractIve ongoing experiment in chaotic communications [2011, Ghent and Girona], InterGalactic rEcognized Cleaning Company” [2022, Zichem] For the MetaWorld-IGECC project in Herentals, the interpretation was “interactIv proGressive expEriment in Contextual communiCation” [2023, Herentals].
(Images in this post: Daniël Vandersmissen)
MetaWorld, curated by artist Daniël Vandersmissen / DanYapungku was an analogue and digital collaboration based around portals.
Kim converted Maggie’s images of plants and bioplastic experiments into portal like images that were then printed and projected by Dan in his exhibition alongside work by other artists including himself.
The expo took place in MetaWorld, an empty mall (Zandstraat 23) in Herentals Belgium during August/September of 2023.
In our own studio space in The Strand Arcade, a mall in Whangarei, we placed our copies of the portals. Conceptually connecting the regeneration projects across the globe.
The Three Portals were sent to a competition to design a flag for the New Horizons | Dieric Bouts Festival within SLAC Academy in Leuven, Belgium. The festival is a tribute to the medieval Leuven artist and innovator Dieric Bouts.
The design was chosen (in addition to two other designs) and hung on the main building of the Leuven art academy and cultural centre for the duration of the theme year.
In parallel, Daniël built a series of enclosed portal spaces in simple materials as connecting points between realities in a local church building (in Zichem, dating from the Middle Ages).
Another collaboration was as a performance on 6 December at SLAC Leuven (an art school in Belgium). Working with Maggie’s Three Acquaintances poem (a poem in three parts about three ghosts discovered during her morning walks), Dan converted it into an artificial voice and then played it during his 3-hour performance in his installation.
Also an expo at SLAC – academy for part-time art education, Dirk Boutslaan 60, Leuven, Belgium 29th and 30th June. Our Three Portals flag is on display and a print version of the portal we used for the Alternative Reality Gardening Lab
As of Feb 24, we are co-creating content for the app to be deployed across a range of contexts including exploration of a potential relationship between AR and VR content and triggers.
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