Jef Cornelis - Brussels, pieces of happiness

Brussels, pieces of happiness will be streamed at Le Salon, an online platform aimed at presenting, documenting and reflecting on the Brussels contemporary art scene.

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Jef Cornelis — TV works/Obras de Televisão — 1964-1997

Between 1963 and 1998 Jef Cornelis (°1941, Antwerp (BE)) worked as director for the Flemish public broadcasting company VRT. In those 35 years Cornelis accomplished an impressive body of work of more than 200 films, dealing with an extraordinary broad range of subjects (fine art, literature, theatre, architecture, urbanism and a variety of social and cultural-philosophical issues). Within the restrictive framework of the VRT Cornelis succeeded in investigating and challenging the medium of television and the public sphere in general.

Jef Cornelis - TV works/Obras de Televisão - 1964-1997 comprises 58 films with English subtitles. All films can be watched individually. Each film is properly introduced in a brochure which is chronologically ordered.

Curator: Koen Brams

Location:
Culturgest Porto
Av. dos Aliados 104
4000-065 Porto
Portugal

Jef Cornelis — TV works/Obras de Televisão — 1964-1997 has been realized in collaboration with Argos, Brussels

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Jef Cornelis: TV works 1964–1997

A Needle Walks into a Haystack
Liverpool Biennial 2014

Between 1963 and 1998, Jef Cornelis (b.1941, Antwerp, Belgium), worked as Director for the Flemish public broadcasting company VRT. In those 35 years, Cornelis accomplished an impressive body of work of more than 200 films, dealing with an extraordinary broad range of subjects including fine art, literature, theatre, architecture, urbanism and a variety of social, cultural and philosophical issues. Within the restrictive framework of VRT, Cornelis succeeded in investigating and challenging the medium of television and the public sphere in general.

This exhibition offers the first chance for an English-speaking audience to be introduced to the oeuvre of Jef Cornelis.

Jef Cornelis: TV works 1964–1997 offers two opportunities to explore his practice in depth. In the main exhibition room a weekly programme of films are shown, and in a small adjacent room you are able to choose from a selection of 55 films with English subtitles. Short texts about each film are available, and a mediator is present to answer questions.

The selection of films and weekly programmes are curated by Koen Brams.

Supported and funded by the Flemish Community, SALT, The Mansion Group and Argos.

Jef Cornelis - TV works is part of the Liverpool Biennial 2014: A Needle Walks into a Haystack (curated by Mai Abu ElDahab and Anthony Huberman)

Location
St. Andrews Gardens
21
Moor Place

Liverpool
L3 5XA
More info: http://www.biennial.com/2014

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12 May 2012

Koen Brams — About Cornelis’ Documenta 4 and Documenta 5 films, followed by a talk with Adam Kleinman, moderated by Huib Haye van der Werf, Witte de With (Rotterdam)

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12 March 2012

Koen Brams — “Do questions require more energy than other sentences?”. About The World Question Center, Rietveld Academie (Amsterdam)

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21 January 2012

Koen Brams — Icebreaker or the distortion of feedback, Signal:Noise II, The Showroom (Londen)

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20 November 2011

Koen Brams — James Lee Byars, een Amerikaans kunstenaar, Marres (Maastricht)

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21 May 2011

Koen Brams — The World Question Center Questioned, With With: Everything but an Artist Talk, Institute of Popular Culture Studies (Zürich)

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20 April 2011

Koen Brams — Marcel Broodthaers, taped (by Jef Cornelis), followed by a talk with Jef Cornelis, The South London Gallery (Londen)

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2 April 2011

Koen Brams — Marcel Broodthaers, taped (by Jef Cornelis), Castello di Rivoli (Turin)

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30 October 2010

Koen Brams — (On and off) Highway nr. 1, Electronic Arts Festival Shift, Schaulager (Basel)

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28 September 2010

Koen Brams — Marcel Broodthaers, taped, Index (Stockholm)

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Program Jef Cornelis - fall 2010

LEUVEN / Museum M

Thursday 14 October 2010 (from 14:00)
Koen Brams over de Biënnale van Venetië in 1966
Fieke Konijn over Sonsbeek 86. Spaziergänger mit Hund
Steven ten Thije over Castello di Rivoli
Dirk Pültau over Skulptur Projekte Münster

Thursday 14 October 2010 (from 20:00)
Filmvoorstelling. Inleiding: Dirk Pültau
Sonsbeek 86. Spaziergänger mit Hund
Castello di Rivoli
Jan Vercruysse

Thursday 21 October 2010 (from 20:00)
Filmvoorstelling. Inleiding: Dirk Pültau
Skulptur Projekte Münster
Thierry De Cordier

ANTWERPEN / Extra City Kunsthal Antwerpen

Tuesday 19 October (from 19:00)
Filmvoorstelling: Voyage à Paris
Koen Brams over de films met en over Daniel Buren
Dirk Pültau over Antwerpen in de films van Jef Cornelis

ANTWERPEN / Cinema Zuid

Wednesday 20 October (from 20:00)
Filmvoorstelling: Antwerpen in de films van Jef Cornelis. Inleiding: Dirk Pültau
James Lee Byars: een Amerikaans kunstenaar / Daniel Buren / Cogels Osylei (1) / Cogels Osylei (2) / De straat / Het gedroomde boek

BRUSSEL / Argos centre for media and art

Thursday 25 November
Koen Brams: Learning from the archive
Dirk Pültau: Ge kent de weg en de taal/Abdij van Park Heverlee/Cogels Osylei/Patershol

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24 June 2010

Koen Brams - Entering the picture. The iconographic motive of the door in the work of Jef Cornelis, HISK (Gent)

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24 June 2010

Dirk Pültau - Opening Pandora's box of painting. On Jef Cornelis’ film The Music Box (1994), HISK (Gent)

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10 February 2010

Koen Brams - De archieven van Jef Cornelis, in the framework of the symposium Het geheugen van de kunstenaar, Kunstencentrum Stuk (Leuven)

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13 November 2009

The interior in the oeuvre of Jef Cornelis

Lectures organised by NAi Maastricht (Maastricht)

The interior plays a very diverse role and gets a vast range of meanings in the films that Jef Cornelis realised between 1964 and 1997 for the Belgian/Flemish public broadcasting corporation. It is a direct subject in the early films about architecture and urbanity, such as the three-part Waarover men niet spreekt (1968), and in the experimental live TV programme IJsbreker (1983), particularly in the eleventh episode, dedicated to ‘living’. In addition, the interior ‘appears’ almost as a matter of course when collectors discuss their collections in their own homes, as in Drie blinde muizen (1968), or when art lovers make their homes available for artists’ interventions. The programme De langste dag, about – among other things – the exhibition Chambres d’Amis, not only gives a commentary on this important art event, but also provides a view into the homes of forty Ghent citizens. This discursive project deals with all these shapes and appearances of the interior in the work of Jef Cornelis.

Fredie Floré - Waarover men niet spreekt (1968)
Koen Brams - Drie blinde muizen (1968) (Hubert Peeters, Martin Visser, Frits Becht)
Irene Cieraad: Ijsbreker, episode 11: Wonen + wonen = 2 (1983)
Dirk Pültau: De langste dag (1986)

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4 October 2009

Koen Brams - Over het vroege (net)werk van Jef Cornelis, in the framework of the project Jeugdzonde. Over opus één en opus min één, Hedah (Maastricht)

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Sunday 19 April 2009

Koen Brams - The World Question Center Questioned

lecture by Koen Brams
— SMART Project Space, Amsterdam, NL

In the context of the exhibition Endless Installation: A Ghost Story for Adults, organised by Public Space With A Roof and held at SMART Project Space in Amsterdam, Koen Brams will give the lecture The World Question Center Questioned, on Sunday 19 April. The lecture addresses two films made by Jef Cornelis in 1969: James Lee Byars: een Amerikaans kunstenaar and The World Question Center. The first film is a fairly typical documentary on the occasion of Byars’ exhibition at the Antwerp Wide White Space Gallery (18 April to 7 May 1969) – his first show on the European mainland. The World Question Center is without a doubt one of the most curious programmes made by Cornelis: it is the live broadcast of a performance that took place in a studio of the Belgian public broadcasting corporation in Brussels. During this performance, entirely led by the American artist James Lee Byars, more than twenty personalities – artists (like Joseph Beuys and Marcel Broodthaers), scientists and media figures – were given the opportunity to ask what they considered the most relevant question. Some questions were posed, no answers given. In his lecture, Koen Brams will elaborate on how The World Question Center came into being and situate the two films within the oeuvre of Jef Cornelis and of James Lee Byars.

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19 November 2008

Koen Brams - Towards another history of art in Belgium to the present: the case of the Searchlight-documentary about Daniel Buren (1971), Hochschule der Künste (Bern)

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30 October 2008

The secret in the work of Jef Cornelis

Lecture by Koen Brams in the framework of Video out of joint, at Film-Plateau, Paddenhoek 3, Ghent, Thursday 30 October 2008, 19.00-22.00 h.

In his lecture, Koen Brams (director Jan van Eyck Academie) will focus on the films about fine art that Cornelis made in 1971: a short film on Daniel Buren, in connection with his exhibition at the Wide White Space Gallery in Antwerp in May 1971 and the film on pioneering exhibition Sonsbeek buiten de perken, in August 1971. In these films Cornelis does not shy away from controversy – on het contrary, he goes out of his way to find it. Numerous incidents – between artists, between artists and exhibition makers, et cetera - are documented. In his lecture, Koen Brams draws attention to the way Cornelis shows these conflicts – and how he stages conflicts himself.

More info:
http://www.film-plateau.ugent.be/default.aspx?alias=prog_video2

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30 October 2008

On Container: the (public) place of the intellectual in the Flanders of 1989 & the archaeology of (post-)modernity

Lecture by Koen Brams & Dirk Pültau in the framework of Video out of joint, at Film-Plateau, Paddenhoek 3, Ghent, Thursday 30 October 2008, 19.00-22.00 h.

In 1989 Jef Cornelis made the infamous programme Container. In Container, ten episodes of which were shown on national television, three or four intellectuals would discuss topics which, one way or another, were all concerned with 'the archaeology of modernity'. Sitting in a brand-new 'Container', designed by Beel, they would talk for an hour about subjects like 'the department store', 'Ernest Claes', 'theatricality' or 'the figure of Don Juan'. The TV format of the programme did not concern them in the least. The programme got scathing reviews; it was no coincidence that it was broadcast in the same year that the commercial TV channel VTM was founded. Koen Brams (director Jan van Eyck Academie) and Dirk Pültau (editor-in-chief De Witte Raaf) will discuss Container as a case study to highlight the (public) position of the intellectual in Flanders. Next to that, they will talk about the (post-)modern topics under discussion in Container.

More info:
http://www.film-plateau.ugent.be/default.aspx?alias=prog_video2

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10 October 2008

Exhibition transcriptions

Lecture by Koen Brams in the framework of Landmark Exhibitions: Contemporary Art Shows Since 1968
– A symposium, curated by Antony Hudek, at Tate Modern (London), Friday 10 October 2008, 10.30–20.30 h. and Saturday 11 October 2008, 10.30–19.00 h.

Koen Brams – director Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, and specialised in the work of Flemish filmmaker and producer Jef Cornelis – will present and discuss Cornelis' televised documentation of landmark exhibitions from the 1960s to today. Brams will analyse the various (and variously successful) strategies Cornelis employs to register the visitor's physical experience of complex contemporary art exhibitions such as Documenta and Sonsbeek; to portray the artist in the exhibition, primarily by means of the interview; to re-script exhibitions through filmic tropes.
Response and Q&A: Eric de Bruyn (University Lecturer, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen).

More info:
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/15962.htm

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25 February 2008

About Ijsbreker: the artistic scene in Belgium in 1983/1984

On 25 February, Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau will be giving a presentation on the Jef Cornelis TV programmes IJsbreker and De Langste Dag, at Art Cinema OffOff, Begijnhof Ter Hoye, Lange Violettestraat 237, 9000 Ghent.


 In 1983 and 1984 Jef Cornelis and his colleagues of the newly erected Art Issues Service of the then BRT realised the monthly TV programme IJsbreker, of which a total of 22 episodes were produced. Each episode of IJsbreker featured a cultural topic, in the widest sense of the word, ranging from 'culture in the papers' to 'computer art, from 'fashion' to 'tattoos'. IJsbreker was a live programme, with speakers on different locations. Various locations were connected with each other and the studio. Communication – or the lack of it – could only be accomplished using countless cameras and TV monitors.


 The presentation focuses on four episodes of IJsbreker, in which aspects of fine art are under discussion: IJsbreker 1 on Panamarenko, IJsbreker 4 on art for sale, IJsbreker 18 on art on the coast and IJsbreker 22 on cultural management. A representative fragment from each episode of IJsbreker will be shown and clarified, thus rendering an image of the unique format of IJsbreker, while also showing the artistic scene in Belgium at that time. The presentation will be rounded off with a fragment from De Langste Dag, sometimes called the 23rd episode of IJsbreker, since this live broadcast of the start of the summer of art in Ghent, in 1986, was made completely in conformity with the IJsbreker format.

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20 September 2007

About Container: the changing (public) place of the intellectual in Flanders in 1989

Koen Brams (director Jan van Eyck Academie) and Dirk Pültau (editor-in-chief De Witte Raaf) will talk about the television programme Container, realized by the Belgian television maker Jef Cornelis and broadcast by the BRT (the Dutch-speaking Belgian Television Company) in 1989. In Container, three or four intellectuals would discuss different subjects, which, in one way or another, were all concerned with 'the archaeology of modernity' (see also Documenta's questions concerning the archaeology of modernity). They would conduct an hour-long high-brow discussion, sitting in a newly designed Container, on themes like 'the storehouse', 'theatrality' and 'Don Juan'. The format of the discussion was entirely free and did not concern itself with any kind of television format. After presenting Container, Koen Brams and Dirk Pültau will talk about the (public) position of the intellectual in Flanders, which changed considerably around 1989, coinciding with the broadcasts of Container and its hostile reception on the one hand, and the start of commercial television in Flanders, on the other.

Heine's Paper Cone: intellectuals about intellectuals (with the help of some painters)

20 September, 16.00 h.

In the afternoon, one particular episode of Container will be shown (with English subtitles) and discussed in a workshop: De Puntzak van Heine (Heine's paper cone). In this daring episode Lieven De Cauter, Bart Verschaffel (the anchormen), Rudi Laermans and Paul De Vylder (the guests) used letters written by 19th-century writers and philosophers to discuss the way intellectuals deal with history. The letters were read live in the studio, while, at the same time, images were shown of 19th-century paintings and engravings, as well as television images. Using an extremely associative and provocative 'montage' of text and images, Heine's Paper Cone can probably be considered as the most experimental television programme ever broadcast in Flanders.

For one week, a small exhibition about Container and the work of Jef Cornelis in general will be set up in the magazine section of the library. Apart from the issue of De Witte Raaf devoted to Container and the (public) position of the intellectual, a website about the work of Jef Cornelis and a selection of fragments of Cornelis' films will also be presented. Last but not least, the event will feature the presentation of a book, comprising the English translation of an annotated interview with Jef Cornelis about Container, which was first published in Dutch – without notes – in the abovementioned issue of De Witte Raaf. The book is published by De Witte Raaf, Jan van Eyck Academie and Marcelum Boxtareos.

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Events before September 2007

1. 23/05/07
   Dirk Pültau/Bart Verschaffel - Het raadsel van de sfinx (1983)
2. 20/05/07
   Koen Brams - Daniel Buren (1971)
3. 17/03/07
   Koen Brams - Daniel Buren (1971)
4. 18/09/06
   Andrea Phillips - Openbaar bad in Münster (1987)
5. 19/05/06
   Wouter Davidts - Daniel Buren in Cornelis' films
6. 18/04/06
   Koen Brams - De straat (1972)
7. 08/12/05
   Koen Brams/Dirk Pültau - De straat (1972) & Landschap van kerken (1989)
8. 11/07/05
   Dirk Pültau/Helmut Draxler - Landschap van kerken (1989) & Little Sparta. Et in Arcadia Ego (1987)
9. 23/02/05
   Jack Post - IJsbreker (1983-1984)
10. 13/12/04
    Stephan Geene - Marcel Broodthaers in Cornelis' films
11. 06/12/04
    Eric de Bruyn - Sonsbeek buiten de perken (1971)
12. 29/11/04
    Bart Verschaffel/Geert Bekaert - OMA/Rem Koolhaas (1985)
13. 22/11/04
    Steven Jacobs - Documenta 4 (1968) & Documenta 5 (1972)
14. 01/11/04
    Chris Dercon/Rudi Laermans - Voyage à Paris (1993) & Call it sleep (1995)
15. 24/10/04
    Wouter Davidts - Daniel Buren in Cornelis' films
16. 18/10/04
    Arjen Mulder - Container (1989)
17. 27/09/04
    Jannah Loontjes - Na Alle Vlees (1981)
18. 20/09/04
    Marc Holthof - Jan Vercruysse (1989) & The Music Box (1994)
19. 13/09/04
    Daniël Biltereyst - Container (1989)
20. 06/09/04
    Lieven De Cauter - Landschap van kerken (1989)
21. 11/06/04
    Christian Philip Müller - Openbaar bad in Münster (1987)
22. 26/04/04
    Bart Verschaffel - Ge kent de weg en de taal (1976) & Brussel, scherven van geluk (1995)
23. 19/04/04
    Dirk Lauwaert - Abdij van Park Heverlee (1964)

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