Track Report

Track Report is the publishing house of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. It reports on artistic practices and research in and around the Academy.

Recent publications:

	Giulia Cauti - TRAUM (dream) + RAUM (space) = TRAUMA This artist's book aims to give a sense of the fragmented truth, involuntary associations and flashbacks typical of the post-traumatic experience. It is conceived as a visual diary, attempting to frame a year of research into the relationship between our physical and mental realities. The content is an intersection of research pictures, material experimentations in regard to body and movement, and visual whispers from the diverse contexts that accompanied the investigation.
	Sine Van Menxel - A Table under a Tree In the artists' publication, an imaginary table moment is photographically captured using photograms. Glass plates in the shape of spoons and plates were placed blindly on the photo paper in the dark room and then exposed. These images were taken without the use of a camera, and yet they exhibit photographic characteristics such as depth, movement, foreground and background, zooming in and out.
	Janna Beck & Annelise Cerchedean - Framed This flipbook emerges as a collaborative outcome of the research projects 'GrowingGifs,' 'Framed,' and '&Co,' all three creating common grounds for immersive experiences and encouraging public participation and interaction. The book is accompanied by a digital counterpart by Frankie Frrrankie (ANH LE) and Kristí Fekete.
	Yorgos Maraziotis - Mythical Truths The site-specific artistic research that Yorgos Maraziotis executed at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, spans between archiving, social sculpture and institutional critique. Drawing on the understanding of space through embodied memories and over a methodology that includes story-telling, human relations and visual arts, Maraziotis provokes the canon of academic knowledge and envisions an alternative school model where decision making occurs on the authority of its community.
	Chris Snik - SLOW COSTUMING. Creating characters through coupe This publication can be used as a handbook for 'Slow costuming'. This integrated costume design process requires a rehearsal period where performers and designers interact and have time to be closely involved in all phases of the creating and making process. The work of costume designer and performer merge: through close collaboration on and with the unique performer’s body in motion.
	Berit Schneidereit - walks, conversations Berit Schneidereit’s practice-oriented research project explored the fragment as a distinctive aspect of photography. Based on this work, the publication extends the investigation to the realm of the book. It engages in a dialogue between various types of spaces and their contents, while tracing a continuous fine line from page to page. This publication primarily focuses on the artistic methodology rather than attempting to reproduce the full array of works developed and exhibited during this period.
	Katleen Van Langendonck - The Art of Performance What happens when artists play with the codes of the visual and performing arts? Which negotations take place when you leave your own medium to explore another? As it turns out, those who are considered innovative on the one hand, are often labeled amateur on the other. In twenty-five conversations with leading artists, curators, dramaturgs and production workers, Katleen Van Langendonck explores which choices are made when creating a contemporary performance, taking into account all layers of the creative process.
	*A Kind of a 'Huh?' Artists’ Publications, (Not) A User’s Guide** What are artists' publications and what does one recognise them by? Bibliographers, librarians, archivists and collection managers of visual arts museums are regularly confronted with this question.This publication is the record of a research by Johan Pas and Nico Dockx into, in and with the Middelheim Museum’s collection of artists’ publications. It aims to offer professional and private collectors a guide to dealing with these often in all respects contrarian publications.
	Eline De Clercq - The Sympoiesis Garden In September 2022, Eline De Clercq started a community garden for and by students and artists at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. ‘The Sympoiesis Garden’ is a three-year artistic research project on art and ecology and functions as a non-formal learning environment about climate change, gender norms, decolonisation and intersectionalism. The publication is conceived as a map of the garden, with patches of words and a path for the reader to follow.
	Anton Cotteleer - An Out-of-Focus Scan, part 2 The phantom statute of the unsharp, its relationship to our memories, its intimate character and openness for interpretation is what attracts Cotteleer in the blurry. After investigating the meaning of the blurry and the sharp within photography, he looked as a sculptor how the sharp and unsharp relate to sculpture. In this he developed a well-founded personal vision about 'the blurry' or the unsharp.
	Ersi Varveri & Gijs Waterschoot - I write what you write, I walk where you walk This book follows a project developed on the rocks and slabs of Syros between 2020 to 2022: During their walks around the island, Ersi Varveri & Gijs Waterschoot noticed engravings dating back to the 19th century on the stones and rocks of Ermoupolis, the capital of Syros and the Cyclades. Inspired by that they placed 26 new inscriptions with the idea of creating a “permanent” exhibition that enters into dialogue with history as well as with the landscape. This book is a guide to discover these traces.
	Mother of Light Serving at the Gas Station This travelling exhibition and Track Report publication is the outcome of 'It Doesn't Work', a research project initiated by Ines Cox, in collaboration with the second year students of the Graphic Design department of the Academy. Printed on a puzzle of nine posters that can easily travel and take place at two hundred different locations. (not for sale)
	Eric Thielemans - On Resonance I & II Two books wrapped as one, with scores, notes and conversations, by Eric Thielemans and friends, exploring daily magic and resonance in their practices. Part of the research project 'Techniques of Resonance', conducted at the Academy and the Conservatoire.
	Vijai Maia Patchineelam - The Artist Job Description The artist’s experience of being inside art institutions, will in several ways inform the development of an artist’s practice. This publication has been an attempt at recognizing and dealing with, rather than avoiding, the tensions that exist in the relationship between artists and art institutions at a time when most art institutions themselves are under the pressure of austerity-politics.
	Stefan Vanthuyne - Moving Through the Space of the Picture and the Page ‘Moving through the Space of the Picture and the Page’ brings together essays on six contemporary Belgian photobook makers and the way they deal with space, time, movement and surface within the book and within the photographic image. The artists discussed are Tine Guns, Dirk Braeckman, Els Martens, Max Pinckers, Viincent Delbrouck and Aglaia Konrad.
	Els Dietvorst - Coastal Shrine This publication is part of the PhD research' Partisans of the Real', conducted by Els Dietvorst at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (AP University of Applied Sciences and Arts) & the Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (ARIA - University of Antwerp). ‘Coastal Shrine’ is published in parallel with the exhibition This is what you came for in CENTRALE for Contemporary Art and Bozar Brussels.
	Vivi Touloumidi - Pharmakos. Adornment as a social tool This publication is part of the PhD research 'Pharmakos' conducted at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, the University of Antwerp & ARIA (Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts). Touloumidi investigates adornment as an active agent to address social discomfort, repression, and marginalization in the public realm. Her project appropriates and subverts signs of stigmatization employed during WWII, and through in-depth research, it proposes anew statement pieces that speak of resilience, emancipation, and self-determination of the social body.
	Elasticity at Home! Texts & images 1976-2019. Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (AMVK) This publication, designed by master student graphic design Maxim Preaux, bundles 96 notes by AMVK on making art and being an artist, written between 1976 and 2019, interspersed with some fifty drawings and collages from the same period.
	Alexis Gautier. MOVING WITH THE SHAPE OF AN EIGHT Published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Alexis Gautier. L’Heure de la Soupe' at M Leuven (2021) and at CIAP (2022).
	Vincent Van Meenen - EU Experimental novella in which we follow the adventures of a dog, a boss, and a dog sitter. Power and mutual dependence are the core themes. In the context of Van Meenen's PhD research project '100 years of surrealism’ at the Conservatoire and the Academy.
	'NOT A MANUAL. Extra Academy 2011-2020' by Nico Dockx & Steve Van den Bosch (eds.) Published on the occasion of 10 years of Extra Academy, an open public programme on artistic practice, reflection and research - a collaboration between the Academy and Sint-Lucas School of Arts Antwerp.
	Anton Cotteleer - An Out-of-Focus Scan, part 1 In the first publication issued in connection with his doctoral research, Anton Cotteleer shows how, by zooming in, cropping and enlarging, he manipulates personal and anonymous family photos from the 1970s and 80s, and infuses them with a new narrative potential. Every stage of the thinking and working process, from the enlarged photos, through the process of sketching, to reliefs in silicone and textile, and finally the realisation of the sculpture, constitutes a new manipulation and reinterpretation of the image.
	'Off Camera' by Steven Humblet (ed.) 'Off Camera' is a visual essay in four chapters, dealing with the impact of photography on the broader field of visual arts. Each chapter is devoted to one conceptualization of ‘the photographic’: photography as a form of fossilization, the importance of the chemical substrate, the role of the optical lens and the acknowledgment of photography as a procedure. The aim is to show how these four different photographic concepts directly or indirectly influenced the broader field of contemporary art.
	'Archivoltage', by Thomas Crombez & Nico Dockx (eds.) The research group ArchiVolt, founded in 2009 at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp, takes the archive as a public space of assembly in which both the material and non-material foundations of the present are being created as well as contested. In this Track Report publication, a multitude of research projects and their related archives gets unraveled, made public and activated.
	Mashed Mohadjerin - Freedom is not Free What does freedom mean? Through the lens of her camera and through a kaleidoscope of history of women in resistance in the Arab world Mashid Mohadjerin put together a multidimensional work which takes the viewer on a dreamlike journey neither bound by space nor time. This artist’s book focuses on the private and public world of Iranian women who grew up after the Revolution of 1979. For these women the political can no longer be separated from the personal – their bodies, their private and public life have been and continue to be influenced by the Revolution.
	Heide Hinrichs - shelf documents: art library as practice How can art libraries be generative resources and sites of action for all who identify as queer, as women, as Black, as Indigenous, as people of colour? What does it mean to consider the art library as a collective practice that spans multiple scales? In 'shelf documents', artists, writers, curators, teachers, and librarians reflect on their engagements with books, libraries and art-library-as-practice.