Vincent Meessen →( total items: 3 ) Vincent MeessenVincent Meessen (°1971) was born in Baltimore, but he lives and works in Brussels. He studied journalism and cultural policies, he was active as a social worker and photographer and postgraduated at the HISK (Higher Institute for Fine Arts) in Antwerp. His work develops mainly around the idea of "disputed spaces”- territory as a political issue. Once preferring photography as a medium, he now explores a multitude of media, including video. His work has been shown, among others, in artcentres STUK (Leuven), Netwerk (Aalst) and Muhka_Media (Antwerp) and at the Oberhausen International Film Festival, where he was awarded with the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen for N12°13.062‘/W001°32.619‘ Extended. He also published the photo book Qui-vive (La Lettre Volée, 2003) The Intruder Vincent Meessen: The Intruder Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. Meessens' 'document brut' records his actions in the busy streets of the African capital with a candid camera. Dressed and masked in a cotton tuft costume he silently moves between the crowds. The reactions soon follow: the white man as a strange, primitive apparition is faced with indifference, mockery and amazement. His use of Burkinabese 'white gold' as a garment turns the public space into a magnetic field, charged with poetry based on unspoken symbolical, political and economic meanings. N12°13.062'/ W 001°32.619' Extended V. Meessen: N12°13.062'/ W 001°32.619' The title of this video is a reference, through GPS coordinates, to a specific location in Africa, which is abstract at the same time. Two men wander through a deserted site in the middle of the desert, at first sight it's an archaeological ruin. As the images reveal more of the environment, it becomes clear that the construction was built by the twosome, hewn from the surrounding stone. It's like a denial of any conventional view of a city. To Meessen this residual space reflects an inverted image of a planned, urban surrounding. |