I started listening to a lot of composers who were pioneers in electronic music

Tell us, what do you do in life?

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I am a visual artist and performance maker. I used to collect a lot of remnants of objects and imagine new futures and narratives for them in installations, video and prints.  

Nowadays I mainly play and work together with Melissa Mabesoone in the collective called buren. Together we create rather surreal worlds in which every element or thing can transform into something else. We mix and match (his/her and our own) stories into new ones while highlighting certain social issues, and human and non-human relations. To do so, we use text, music, light, many objects and our bodies. I always thought of myself as a solo artist, but things turned out quite differently!

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I used to collect a lot of remnants of objects and imagine new futures and narratives for them

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Recently I collaborated on SUN-SET, a performance by Ezra Veldhuis and Bosse Provoost, and I have a slumbering curatorial/programming practice. I programmed for Jong Werk and created a separate program with more experimental work at Theater Aan Zee in Ostend. During the first lockdown, I started creating projects in the house where I live in Ghent with everyone living in the building, under the name of this play. Elien Ronse came up with The Broken Heart Hotel where we hosted people with broken hearts for one night. With Roger Fähndrich, Marijke De Roover and Geert Belpaeme we played broken love songs in broken English in The Broken Heart Band. This year I started teaching at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent in the Mixed Media department.

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What do you like best about your place?

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I enjoy finding myself in between many different places, projects and people's creative energies. I like being on the train and letting my thoughts drift through the landscape, and connecting to a place by riding my folding bike from station to station. This in-between space challenges me to be flexible and at the same time stay true to some of my own ideas and feelings. I guess that as we make up things and the world, we are being made up by them.

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What kind of music are you listening to at the moment?

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In the aftermath of recording buren's COMPUTER\_SONG, I started looking into the history of computer-made music, the first computer voice, and the evolution of sequencing and editing software. I started listening to a lot of composers who were pioneers in electronic music such as Daphne Oram, Laurie Spiegel, Delia Derbyshire, Eliane Radigue, Suzanne Ciani, and many more. It is interesting to hear all the different approaches and styles that emerged from each individual composer, their specific artistic relationship with the computer, and also the difficulties they faced being a woman in a highly male-dominated environment.

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What’s the first record you bought?

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My father used to be a New Wave musician and has great taste in music, so we had a quite large music collection at home that my sister and I loved to listen to. If we bought records, it would be 'family' records. We didn't consider them as personal belongings. I think that one of the first records I bought when I left the house was a Sun Ra record. 'India' was my favourite track.

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What’s your favourite pastime?

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Swimming in the sea

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Any guilty pleasures?

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Biting my nails

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If you could be famous, what kind of celebrity would you be?

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A boring one. I recently dreamt I was Madonna who fled to Ronse on black stiletto heels to go for a walk. But I would like to be more like Jane Fonda: have a long, fun and diverse career, grow really old and use my energy and privilege to be an activist.

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Who do you wanna give credit to?

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I would like to give credit to my sister Mira because she can hold a mirror for me and give great unsolicited advice. She is a great and intelligent artist working with textiles and clay and everyone should know about it!