Taming the Horror Vacui – Publication
Haseeb Ahmed & Piero Bisello

Haseeb Ahmed is a research-based artist. Originally from the US, he now lives and works in Brussels. He produces objects, site-specific installations, films, and writes for various publications. Often working collaboratively, Ahmed integrates methodologies from the hard sciences into his art production. His recently completed Wind Egg Trilogy blends art and aeronautics, myth and technology, to create new narratives for the present. It was developed with Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (VKI) in Brussels and was the subject of his first solo exhibition for Harlan Levey Projects in Brussels who now represents him, his solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary art of Antwerp (BE), as well as the topic of his PhD in practice-based arts completed in 2018 as a collaboration between the VKI, University of Antwerp, Saint Lucas Antwerp School of Art and Design,and Zurich University of the Arts. Ahmed has been a lecturer at the latter two art universities as well as the Royal Academy of the Art in The Hague. His work with the wind and science began during his Masters from the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, completed in 2010. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Ahmed has been a resident at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (NL), the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting (US), a EU Commission STARTS Vertigo resident at the Brain and Emotion Laboratory at the University of Maastricht, La Becque Foundation among others. His work has been exhibited internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (US), The Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art (SE), and De Appel in Amsterdam (NL).

Piero Bisello is Editorial Director at Conceptual Fine Arts, an online art writing platform and gallery visiting program in Milan. He has a background in art history and analytic philosophy, with degrees from KU Leuven and Erasmus University Rotterdam. Among other topics, his editorial work has focused on artist publications and artist books. Since 2011, Bisello has been based in Brussels.

Issue N°2: Modeling Nothingness

Christiane Blattmann is an artist living in Hamburg and Brussels. She studied at Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg and at Universität der Künste in Berlin. Between 2011 and 2013, she ran Betongalerie, an exhibition venue in Hamburg St. Pauli together with Jannis Marwitz. She is part of the artist-run publishing house Montez Press, which she founded with friends in 2012. In 2013 Blattmann received a travel grant for Mexico City. In 2017 she was artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and in 2019 at Triangle France in Marseille. Most recently her work has been exhibited at Damien & The Love Guru (Brussels), Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Kunsthaus Hamburg, The Community (Paris), Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Croy Nielsen (Berlin), Mathew Gallery (New York/Berlin), at VI,VII (Oslo), at Marwan (Amsterdam), the Biennale Regard Benin (Cotonou) and at Kunsthalle Münster.

Sophie Dars & Carlo Menon are architects based in Brussels. Since 2013, they have been collaborating on a practice situated across theoretical research, pedagogy, publication and design. They were curators of the exhibitions Corporate Arcadia and V+ Architecture Documents on Five Projects and are co-founders of the magazine Accattone.

Issue N°3: Aeolian Urbanism

Aslı Çiçek (Istanbul, 1978) architect, based in Brussels, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 2004. After working in Vienna and Rotterdam she settled in Belgium where she worked as a project architect at Gigantes Zenghelis Architects and Robbrecht and Daem architecten. Between 2009 and 2020, she ran several design studios at KU Leuven Faculty of Architecture, campuses St Lucas Brussels and Ghent. Currently she is a visiting professor at the University of Hasselt. She regularly contributes to architecture and art publications, was co-editor of the 11th Flanders Architecture Yearbook and has been on the editorial board of OASE architecture journal since 2017. In 2015 she founded her practice with a focus on exhibition architecture.

Laura Herman (Brussels, 1988) is a curator, writer, and editor. She is Director of the postgraduate Curatorial Studies programme and head of the Master of Visual Arts at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent. Previously, Herman served as a curator at La Loge in Brussels, a space dedicated to contemporary art, architecture, and theory, where she curated Learning from Artemisia by Uriel Orlow, Palais de Justice by Carey Young, Despina by Zoë Paul, among other projects. She was editor of De Witte Raaf, a bimonthly art journal distributed in Belgium and The Netherlands. Between 2018 and 2020 Herman was curator of The New Sanctuary, the 12th Satellite programme at Jeu de Paume in Paris, CAPC in Bordeaux, and the Museo Amparo de Puebla in Mexico. She is a theory tutor at the department of Contextual Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, co-editor of The Floor is Uneven. Does It Slope? (Mousse Publishing, 2019) and co-author of publications including Herewith the Clues (Sternberg Press, 2019) and Experience Traps (Motto Distribution, 2018). Herman received an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York, in 2016, and an MA in Comparative Modern Literature from Ghent University in 2010.

Issue N°4: Laminar Experience

Caitlin Berrigan works across performance, video, sculpture and text to engage with the intimate and embodied dimensions of power, politics and capitalism. Her recent work, Imaginary Explosions was part of the Berlinale Forum Expanded exhibition (2020), the subject of a solo show at Art in General, New York (2019), and an artist’s book with Broken Dimanche Press, Berlin (2018). Her work has been shown at the Whitney Museum, Poetry Project, Henry Art Gallery, Harvard Carpenter Center, Anthology Film Archives, and UnionDocs, among others. She has received grants and residencies from the Humboldt Foundation, Skowhegan, Graham Foundation, and Akademie Schloss Solitude. She holds a Master's in visual art from MIT and a B.A. from Hampshire College. She taught emerging media full-time at NYU Tisch and is a Visiting Professor at Bard College Berlin. She is an artist, writer, and researcher affiliated with the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and NYU Technology, Culture and Society.

Dr. Olivier Chazot is professor and Head of the Aeronautic and Aerospace department at the Von Karman Institute. He carries out research in high enthalpy facilities and plasma wind tunnels to study laminar to turbulent transition and Gas-Surface interactions in re-entry flows. His main research focus is the duplication of real flight conditions in ground testing facilities. He participated in multiple ESA missions for the development of flight-testing experiments like the EXPERT probe, IXV and Space Rider programs and QARMAN re-entry CubeSat. He is also “scientist in residence” at Zurich University of Arts for transdisciplinary collaboration between art, science and philosophy in experimental research.

Benoît Bottin is Associate Professor of Fluid Mechanics, Aerodynamics and other aircraft-related topics at ISIB, Brussel’s Industrial Engineering School, where he is also Head of the Mechanical Department. He collaborates with various institutions, including the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, where he teaches wind tunnel technology and design, the University of Brussels, where he teaches Aircraft Structures, and Polytech Nancy in France, where he teaches aerodynamics. Born in 1970, he graduated from Université de Liège in 1992 as an Aerospace Engineer and did a master after master and a Ph.D. thesis at the von Karman Institute.

Issue N°5: Liminal Experience

Lotte Beckwé is engaged with the collection of M HKA since 2017 and has curated James Lee Byars: The Perfect Kiss (2018) and Marcel Broodthaers: Soleil Politique (2019).

Frits Gierstberg is art historian and critic. He has curated exhibitions for among others the Australian Centre for Photography (Sydney), Bozar (Brussels), the Museum of Modern Art Kyoto, the Nederlands Fotomuseum (Rotterdam) and Fundación ICO (Madrid). Gierstberg has collaborated on exhibitions with artists such as Alfredo Jaar, Susan Meiselas, Santu Mofokeng, Martha Rosler, Joachim Schmid, Allan Sekula and Ulay.