Lieven Segers

Text by An Leemans

Curator Lieven Segers

A week ago I went to Brussels for the showcase of a master photography workshop at LUCA School of Arts, which was led by Lieven Segers (°1975, Geel). Now I’m waiting for him at the meeting room of yet another Art School, PXL department Arts and Design in Hasselt. Every Thursday Lieven Segers travels from his home town Antwerp to Hasselt to host classes for bachelor students. Suddenly Lieven enters the room, and though we were never introduced to each other or had a small talk it seemed very familiar to start off this talk on humour.

Since 2008 Lieven Segers is connected to the Academy of Antwerp as a researcher, his field of experience is the link between art and humour. “It is actually rather by confidence that I’m there” he starts, and it all started just like we do now with a small talk. Not with me, but with Menno Meeuwis. As a director of Middelheim museum Antwerp he asked several young artists to give a lecture about something, except their own work. Lieven suggested doing something with humour and art. “After discussing into dept, the theme became so Portrait of Lieven Segers interesting that Menno decided to invite me to do an exhibition on the theme” so said Lieven. “Off course an amazing opportunity, since the budget is higher and there is the opportunity to invite fellow (international) artists, which was not always the case with the expo’s I curated so far. Along with Michèle Mathyn, whom with I’m forming a kind of collective called Cakehouse (launched in 2007) we made the exhibition A MEETING OF THE TRAGIC AND THE FUNNY in the Hessenhuis at the Middelheim museum in 2008.” In relation to this exhibition Lieven Segers had a talk with Johan Pas whom suggested he should start a PHd on it at the Academy of Antwerp. And since he was already doing his own research Lieven started as a part-time researcher. So far he curated about 5 to 6 exhibitions, linked his own work to the theme and is leading several masterclasses such as the one held in Brussels.

“I only had one week to complete this masterclass” Lieven says. He did a kind of kick off workshop on Monday where he tried to inspire the students and open up a dialog about humour in art. When I ask him if humour has been fascinating him since he was a kid, he wanders and smiles. “I guess that has to be the case. When I graduated from the academy in Antwerp as a photographer we all got a book of Carl de Keyzer. Each professor wrote something in the book, and one of them wrote ‘a nice humour’. I wasn’t aware of this fact, but it was definitely part of my photos. The same thing happens when I’m looking into the history of art, for me there is always a link with humour. And then I mean not always literary, laughing. For me humour is not the effect of laughter, I’m interested in what happens right before you laugh or smile. How the construction of a sentence, a photo, an artwork influences its reaction.” For Lieven the relationship between his contemporary work and photography is always present. “I pick things from everyday life, snapshots, sometimes even from a conversation. Just like a photographer would do.”

That humour and the reaction on images is very personal is something Lieven is aware of. That’s also the reason why he started the workshop with several books with images that are for him personally related to humour. “I showed the students about 360 images, not by giving them a historical overview of humour in the history of art, but approaching them with a personal overview. So to say by showing these I gave the students an insight in my head and along the way I contextualize the images. There were for example some images from Magritte and the Vache period. A very atypical period in his career, where he provokes by paintings that can only be found good when there is humour involved. Other artists mentioned where Olaf Breuning, David Shrigley, Wolfgang Tillmans, Paul McCarthy, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs and many more.” After this session Lieven made time to get to know the students better by inviting them to tell him more about their work. Finally the assignment was given towards the students and a first brainstorm moment opened up the possibilities. “Although the workshop was about humour, I never give an assignment or write a curator statement literally on humour itselfs. The risk to rely on stereotypes is too big and you’ll always fail when you want to do something about humour. So I decided to challenge the students by letting them think about a place, where they’ve never been but always wanted to go to. The assignment was rather a way to support them and is on my opinion broad enough to be interpreted.”

When I asked Lieven from where this idea to approach the workshop like this comes from, he refers to a work he presented in a really small art space. ”It was so small that the invited artist decided to invite as many as artists as possible. I completely emptied a spray and accompanied the result with a text: I’ve always wanted to do this but I never thought it was so fucking boring. Is this humour? I think so  At the other hand it’s also pubertal, but with the right humoristic approach it works.

Let’s go back to the students whom off course were confronted with a doses stress due to the limited time frame within the assignment took place. “But still” Lieven replies “such fast assignments most of the time work the best, especially in this case when the students had a lot of freedom  I did not mention it had to be about humor nor it had to be on photography.”  On Wednesday the students met again to reveal their experiences, by talking in group they also linked their ideas to the space and fellow students. “The students had to tell about their thoughts, experiences,… and such to check if we could extract a product to present from it. I didn’t ask on results yet” One thing Lieven did ask the students to complete on Tuesday: “Start the day and concentrate on one aspect, on things that can possibly be linked to humour. Walk through the whole day with a higher concentration.”

On Friday morning all the results were collected and brought together in an exhibition. When I asked Lieven which students succeeded the best it was hard for him to just mentioning a few, since he was quiet satisfied by the process every individual student dealt with during the week. In this way not only the results are important. Also the overall presentation reached it’s goal: “I suggested not using the walls, there is always the risk if you work with students that they go for a very classical presentation. The wooden planks we used as levels to present. Due to that along with the results it became a very conceptual showcase.”  The title of the exhibition was ‘green, yellow and black’ and was chosen by Lieven it refers to ‘groen lachen’ in Dutch, ‘rire en jaune’ in French and black humour. Strange, how the colors change along to the language. “One of the students referred to blue humour, which also exists.”

While talking about a few works Lieven mentioned the one on Atlantis. This student found an image which points out all the possible locations of Atlantis. He combines this map with the text ‘Atlantis’ which you can find in several designs and put the word Atlantis on the map which creates an new image. “A very conceptual presentation, with a humoristic approach.” Lieven also mentioned the video with the sculpture of clay. Which was handmade by the students mother, who teaches in the artistic field as well. “For her it was a metaphor for studying in the art.” There is also a funny story linked to it: “She uses the small entries of the sculptures as a money-box, but after asking a friend to get some money out of it he did something wrong and the money got into the inside of this dreamy formed sculpture. The student made a video where she tries to get the money out of the sculpture, while her friend is watching. Through this performance she shows him how difficult it is to get the money back out of the sculpture. Funny  She makes the link with the way she one day hopes to makes money out of art. In this way this work is very cryptically” Lieven says.

The pictures with the one minute performances in the park were also very interesting for Lieven, although this student his work was strongly linked to the works shown in class, such as Jan Bas Ader, the activity he did in the park and the way he used the park in a game to walk around and check out what you can do in this specific area, got a nice result. For both of us the glue of the exhibition was the video all the way in the back. Lieven told me more about this work “This student literally wanted to go whale watching, she filmed herself where she tried to look as happy as possible. The sound is very aggressive, a bit strange if you cannot link it to a whale and by posing the video on top of the wooden wall you’ll have to look for it as a visitor. And that worked ”

For those who’ve visited the exhibition realized that it’s not all literally about humour, otherwise everybody already associates it with humour, without even really looking. That’s not without a reason  For Lieven Segers a good example is Luc Tuymans, whom you wouldn’t associate with humour. But during Documenta IX (1992) in Kassel with globalization as a general theme Tuymans presented a big still-life as an anti-reaction since he presented something so meaningless and small. Off course once you pay attention to it you can notice more humour in art and photography. For Lieven there is more humour in contemporary art then a few years ago. Then off course the question is, where is there no humour involved? Rothko? “Humour and art are very alike” Lieven suggest, “this comparison interests me. Art as well as humour are critical for our society. Humour is the perfect way to talk about more dark themes in life.”

Where this one week masterclass for the students ends the research continues on both sides. As well for the initiators professor Liesbeth Decan and team member Mieke Bleyen during their research on ‘photography performing humour’ as for Lieven Segers who will finalize his project this autumn with two exhibitions. One held in his gallery where he’ll present collages from his research on whom he’ll work on to create new work in a period of 2 months prior to the opening. Parallel to this he’ll curate a show in the Middelheim museum with a very melodious title and a promising presentation. It made me very curious and I hope to feel that sparkle that comes along with a smile when we meet back in Antwerp. Special thanks to Lieven for his time and interesting approach.