CHARNECA & MEMÓRIA

filip van dingenen

The artist Filip Van Dingenen, inspired by the ‘Vers Brussel' poem Charneca & Memória by the Portuguese Paulo Teixeira, built this oak bridge over the Molenbeek in the Ganshoren marshes.

The poem can be read in three languages on the bridge. It also has a telescope mounted on it, so that the walker-reader can zoom in on the landscape, nature and the social housing blocks that rise up above the crowns of the trees in this natural area.

‘Reading Teixeira's poem is like walking through a landscape. A journey from the city to the countryside, from present to past and back. The poem starts at the Koekelberg Basilica - God's empty warehouse - and ends in a pool. Just like the poem, my artistic intervention makes the viewer-reader the leading character in the landscape. The bridge is a meeting place where poem, imagination and view are combined.'

Filip Van Dingenen

activities

In November 2006 the poet Paulo Teixeira and artist Filip Van Dingenen visited Ganshoren together. They were both struck by the transition from city to countryside and the presence of the past in today's stories. Teixeira wrote the poem 'Drasland en Herinnering' (Marshland and Memory), which Van Dingenen incorporated into a news scroller, in addition to a video installation on the local custom of the St Martin Procession. On top of that, Van Dingenen constructed an oak bridge over the Molenbeek. Poetry workshops were also organised for pupils of Dutch-and French-language primary schools on the theme of ‘at home / at home in Ganshoren'. The results were shown at De Zeyp Community Centre.

the artist

Filip Van Dingenen creates videos and installations, puts on performances and is involved in international research. With the help of several media, he was already creating parallel worlds, somewhere between fiction and reality, in his very first experiments. His projects Zoonation and Bobby's Heaven are founded on an intense fascination with zoos, which he sees as some kind of utopian place. He was commissioned by 30CC to coordinate the Snorkelzone project, for which he went to the Leuven neighbourhood of Sint-Geertrui-Valkerij to make a work of public art with the residents. At the request of the Wiels centre for contemporary art he delved into the history of the building and the borough of Forest.