Image Entanglements
Beeldverwikkelingen
21 October 2025, 16:00-22:15
Cultuurcentrum Hasselt (CCHA)
Kunstlaan 5, 3500 Hasselt, Belgium
Visual artist Toon Leën presents a programme of four consecutive lecture performances that playfully reflect on the power of images. With a keen eye for compelling comparisons, Leën explores a series of curious relations between images from diverse contexts and periods.
Image Entanglements addresses images as social agents and looks beyond high and low divisions between art, religion, politics and social media to question the extent to which we are actually in charge of the images we use and produce.
16:00-16:45
A Big Basket of Apples
Een grote mand met appels
Language: English
This lecture takes a closer look at Paul Cézanne's work and the reasons why it is often associated with an "objective" mode of seeing the world. It tells the story of the colourblind painter Sarah Bal and her artistic struggles, while reflecting on the notion of the "innocent eye."
17:00-18:00
Hommage aan een afwezige pony
Homage to an Absent Pony
Language: Dutch with English subtitles
Exploring what it means to be an empathic spectator, this lecture draws on examples from the fine arts, religion and politics, and cites works by Harun Farocki and Rabih Mroué, to compare the different ways in which spectators visually express their empathy for certain images and their "inhabitants."
19:00-20:15
Homage to the Dash
Hommage aan de gedachtestreep
Language: English with Dutch subtitles
This lecture performance focuses on interruption as a stylistic device, exemplified by the dash. It develops an iconography of coups d'état using the failed coup in the Soviet Union in 1991 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021 as key examples.
20:45-22:15
The Irresistible Image and the Sceptical Gaze
Het onweerstaanbare beeld en de sceptische blik
Language: English with Dutch subtitles
Based on an investigation of the iconography of Saint Christopher, this lecture performance explores the notion of the "irresistible image" in relation to the politics of authoritarianism. It compares artistic strategies of ambiguity and deception with anti-democratic disinformation campaigns, and asks how the "unreliable" artwork can renegotiate its critical potential with regard to the unreliable images that flourish in the digital infrastructures of our time.
Toon Leën is a visual artist based in Berlin. His work moves between painting, video, and lecture performance. Recent projects include the concert lecture Correspondances mystérieuses, in collaboration with pianist Lucas Blondeel (2019-2021) and the lecture performances Personally, I'm Most Interested in the Shapes and Colours (2015) and The Case of the Ridiculous Curator (2018-2019). His work is represented by Fred&Ferry Gallery in Antwerp.
More information:
