Ronse

Abstract

Ronse is the first part of a diptych, a visual essay on film shot alongside the school board chalk drawings of Dutch visual artist Bart Lodewijks. Ronse sets out with a superimposition of images. Lodewijks’ technique – chalk drawings on architecture – is repeated in the aesthetic of Desmet: urban images over urban images, structure over structure, text over text. Before and after: we see drawings without chalk and chalk without drawings. Fractals; we see the city as a framework, the frames of the city. We see passages, the travelling shot shows the filmmaker as a passer-by. We see exteriors and interiors, flowers and heads: what is around the work is part of the work. Frames come and go; a wall, an alley, a truck create as many frameworks. Passers-by create the work as they wipe it out: they walk over, alongside and across. Distance by commitment; merely walking by, you are already in the middle.