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Vincent Meessen: Ultramarine
“Ultramarine” is a 2018 experimental film and multimedia art installation by Belgian artist Vincent Meessen, featuring African‑American spoken word poet Kain The Poet – a late ‑’60s forerunner of hip‑hop – accompanied by improvised drumming from Belgian percussionist Lander Gyselinck.
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Vincent Meessen: Ultramarine
“Ultramarine” is a 2018 experimental film and multimedia art installation by Belgian artist Vincent Meessen, featuring African‑American spoken word poet Kain The Poet – a late ‑’60s forerunner of hip‑hop – accompanied by improvised drumming from Belgian percussionist Lander Gyselinck.
Color blue is the historical and discursive filter through which this “spoken word performance” unfolds. The precursor of hip-hop in the late ’60s delivers his radical poem as the Belgian percussionist Lander Gyselinck improvises to the flow of his utterances. Throughout the performance various museum objects – funeral figurines, automaton, astrolabe, mappa mundi, textiles – are juxtaposed to Kain’s own props. They invoke affective retrospections on exile and belonging, slave routes and colonial trade.
“So far, all that has given color to existence still lacks a history.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Gay Science
“Ultramarine” is composed like a spectrum: it unfolds and intertwines fragments of meaning. This narrative form creates the possibility of connecting Kain's radical poetic to a larger frame of investigation: museum objects and artworks from very different origins, all stored in Toulouse museums and in collections of the Occitan region. These objects are put in dialogue with stage props and reproductions of art works that surround Kain in his Amsterdam exile since the 1980s.
By disrupting the Eurocentric ways of writing history and organizing museum collections, Ultramarine brings together a constellation of objects that come alive and take on an active role. The immersive experience of color—presented here as something vibrant, textured, shifting, and multifaceted – is inseparable from its political meaning and from cinema understood as a form of magical practice.
Vincent Meessen
Vincent Meessen (Baltimore, USA, 1971) is an artist who lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. He builds collective, temporary and self-managed alliances, designs exhibitions in the form of essays, makes montage films, writes texts based on field surveys… all forms that represent attempts to break free from the regimes of epistemic coloniality and authority of Western History. He is a member of Jubilee, a platform for artistic research and production.
Practical information
Address
Quai Karolina Rijeka
Accessibility
Dates and times
Thursday, September 18, 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Safety
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
EXPERIENCES On board
Immersive exhibition "Présentes
Created with the exceptional collaboration of the Musée du Louvre, this exhibition highlights female figures in Mediterranean civilization, thanks to the digitization and modeling of part of the Louvre's collections. A two-stage experience: an introductory film to provide context, followed by an immersive experience in a 16-meter-long tunnel covered by 120 m2 of LED screens.
A sound journey through the Mediterranean
An immersive sound experience designed by Ircam, inviting the public to explore the richness and diversity of the Mediterranean through headphones equipped with spatialized sound.
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© Elisa Von Brockdorff
The artists
Frequently asked questions
Yes, the boat is freely accessible on site. However, you can pre-book your time online on our website.
For reasons of safety and preservation of the boat, high heels and stilettos may not be worn on the boat.
The museum boat is open to all free of charge. To find out on which quay it will be moored, or to pre-book your slot, consult the page dedicated to your town.
Appropriate facilities have been set up on the Festival site for the reception and access of people with reduced mobility. The boat is equipped with a 1m-wide ramp, accessible to people with reduced mobility, but may require the accompaniment of a third party due to its gradient of over 6%. Access to the aft deck and immersive exhibition is possible. However, the upper deck is not accessible. Please inform us in advance of any special accessibility requirements, so that we can make the necessary arrangements.