But it’s also a little spooky. There is a reason we tend not to wander into dark, empty, unmarked buildings in urban areas – or, frankly, anywhere else. Even if we’re intrinsically drawn to what is just beyond our reach, we’re more convinced of the benefits of remaining safe and secure – and in the light of day. So when the Contour map leads you down an out-of-the-way street into the ground-floor room of a 17th-century house, in which you cannot see your hand in front of your face, you might feel the slightest bit hesitant. But just follow the light. Art of the moving image always features light, whether dim or flickering or brightly white. Follow the light and keep your eyes open.
No one would deny that Mechelen is one of Flanders’ most beautiful cities, with more Unesco-protected architecture than anywhere else in the country. Its cathedral is suitably majestic, its square a dreamy wonder of mixed architecture. But it was a hole in the ground that drew the attention of visual artists from Canada and the US.
Also known for its archaeological findings, particularly in Sint- Rombout’s cathedral, the researchers of Mechelen are now working on the square outside the city’s cultural centre. Two skeletons had been half unearthed, their empty eye sockets staring at you through the chain-link fence.
Considering the sometimes unnerving atmosphere of Contour on any a normal day, this was that beloved Belgian surrealism we take in stride, but which proved over the top for artists not used to seeing something like this in the middle of New York.
Which isn’t to say they weren’t delighted – they were, treating the archaeological dig with the same combination of joy and reverence normally reserved for each other’s installations.
The sight was particularly relevant for Canadians Luis Jacob and Noam Gonick, whose installation “Wildflowers of Manitoba” (pictured on cover) was located not 100 metres away inside a small room on the top floor of the cultural centre. They utilise a human skull in the 2007 installation, but it was always a fake. Not in Mechelen. The Contour folk found them a real skull dug up in decades past, and it sits proudly under the steel grid dome that encompasses the installation.
The skull connects “Wildflowers of Manitoba” to Flanders, but so does the live actor – the only one at this Contour. He lies across a mattress, reading or daydreaming, listening to a record on the turntable, burning incense, “mellowing out”, as they would have said in the 1970s. It’s a decade evoked in both the objects and the dream-like images onscreen above, which is footage of the artists and their friends frolicking communelike in the Canadian wilds. It’s like a view into a room made of idealism and peace. Soul train Contour is a parcours, and you’re confronted with it even before you buy your ticket, in the Nekkerspoel train station. Nekkerspoel was originally built to get the upper-class into the centre of town with as little walking as possible. Although it’s twice as close to the city’s centre, most people get off at the much larger Mechelen station, making Nekkerspoel a bit of a forgotten place. It’s a memorable and unexpected location for Renaissance man Dennis Tyfus, an Antwerpenaar who dabbles in video art, photography, music, publishing and radio. The multiple screens of his “Gargles from Ipanema” look at you as you make your way down the stairs and down the hallway to the outside. A woman dances in a tropical paradise to the song of the title, while Tyfus’ psychedelic patterns make up her background. Its elevator music suggests how we are subliminally affected by sound, and its exotic vision is one far, far away from urban Flanders. Beyond reason Music is central this year to Contour, which sports the title Sound and Vision: Beyond Reason. “I’m interested in the way information can be communicated through the body. It seems to me that rock music is a field in which one can readily see that happen,” says Contour curator Anthony Kiendl.
The Canadian is the director of the Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art in Winnipeg and teaches architecture at the University of Manitoba. He’s also very interested, he says, “in the viewer’s experience. Through popular music, we have some of our most important shared experiences.” He stresses that just because pop and rock music is a thread throughout the works it doesn’t “make them flippant or unimportant. Art has a potentially revolutionary role in society – opening up possibilities socially and experientially. People can have a moment of experience where it changes how they see the world.”
This experience, he describes as “intuitive”, as “beyond reason”.
Contour has been scaled back this year to 10 locations in a compact route. Two years ago, it took all day to see everything at Contour; this year it’s three leisurely hours. Brussels-based curator Katerina Gregos raised the bar in 2009 in terms of quality, and Kiendl has risen to that challenge for this fifth edition of Contour, pulling in some of the West’s most interesting video artists.
In a space down a long alley behind Mechelen’s famous Toy Museum, is a stage holding “Promoting a More Just, Verdant and Harmonious Resolution” by American artist collective Postcommodity. Watch where you step as you view the idyllic images of happy families and fields of flowers because land mines blast loud rock music into your ears, a reflection of the US military’s use of the music to make soldiers more aggressive.
Over in the theatre of Sint-Rombout’s College, you’ll immediately recognise Elvis Presley’s “Jailhouse Rock”. Sit down to watch a drawing happen before your eyes of a pen following the precise movements of Elvis’ hands during a live performance of the song. French artist Pierre Bismuth, whose invisible hand is drawing the pattern, shows us an image created by the movement of the body.
Later, as you enter the 19th-century Festival Hall, originally part of a girls’ school, you’re given a device to listen to (in Dutch, English or French). Step inside a dark ballroom and take your place at various stations to learn how closely related humans and plants really are and how plants are affected by – and in fact make – music.
Biology is again broached by Flemish artist Edith Dekyndt – who has the enviable status of being staged in two locations – in “Myodesopsies”. Climb the stairs to the first floor of the house from 1648 that is now home to the Flemish Rheumatism Association to see…a completely blank screen. But if you keep staring, you’ll eventually get those spots that float before your eyes – generally when your eyes are closed. Those are myodesopsies, and the theory is that you develop them on your retinas while still in the womb. “It’s your history,” Dekyndt says.
Dekyndt brings out one of Contour’s most fascinating ideas: Your own body creates the images that you see.
For Kiendl, one of Contour’s most profound moments is in the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. Here is the only older work in the show: Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville’s “Dreamachine” from 1960s Britain. A cylinder with holes cut in it rotates on a turntable, flashing light like a strobe. Enter a wooden cage and sit in front of it with your eyes closed. “The invention of the Dreamachine happened when Gysin was riding a tram, and it was going past a row of trees, and the light was flashing really quickly, and he closed his eyes and still saw it,” explains Kiendl. Gysin and Sommerville were friends with beat generation writer William Burroughs, and together they explored the worlds of hallucinogenics and the possibilities of future technologies. “It was very important to me that the piece was in the chapel because it indicates this kind of transcendence or out-of-body experience, notes Kiendl.
Before Contour, Kiendl had never visited Belgium, but he began two years ago to scout locations with the Contour staff. A prolific curator, he has seen art parcours in varying locations but “loves the extent to which architecture is part of their vision in Mechelen,” he says. “What’s unique here are the kinds of buildings that are available and their proximity to each other. It’s very special.”
Until 30 October
Across Mechelen
www.contour2011.be
Flanders Today is a 
11°C / 26°C
