// tAI // Tragic Realist Fiction – A Road of One’s Own

The art collective Tragic Realist Fiction presented a new short film and music featuring Margo Bulgakov and Sarah de Graeve.

The show presented also peripheral artwork by Elian.Smit23

” … Tragic Realist Fiction takes the road again. Wandering places is a lifestyle. Wandering places is life. All along faint and quiet roads. The seduction of a place. You belong to where you go and leave again. And there is always something in between. You see a light in the distance. It comes closer. You talk to landscapes. They answer. You remember others, or not. You cross crossroads. You leave and move on, with the possibility to come back. … “

See https://www.theartsinstitute.org/happenings/tragic-realist-fiction-a-road-of-ones-own/ and https://www.tragicrealistfiction.com/film/a-road-of-ones-own/

Tragic Realist Fiction is
Margo Bulgakov
Elian.Smit23
Sarah De Graeve
Gaston Meskens

// tAI // Tragic Realist Fiction – ‘Cabarets Diaboliques’

The art collective Tragic Realist Fiction takes the road. In its films, videos and music, it pulls 19th century Decadent Romanticism through the swamp of modernity into our present times. Expect no dry philosophy. The world simply needs more she-devils.

Tragic Realist Fiction is
Margo Bulgakov
Elian Smit23
Sarah de Graeve
Gaston Meskens

Cabarets Diaboliques was a film & music video programme in an installation of artefacts that opened on 25 June 2021 and was on view on 26 & 27 June 2021 at The AnteRoom of The Arts Institute (as part of the BORGER Art Nocturnes).

Check it all out here
https://www.theartsinstitute.org/happenings/tragic-realist-fiction-cabarets-diaboliques/

//

Margo Bulgakov
Elian Smit23
Sarah de Graeve

// tAI // Tragic Realist Fiction – ‘So Here We Are’ (film works)

Over the past years, the Tragic Realist Fiction sound & vision collective created and produced 6 arthouse films, all in the context of shows that were on view in the AnteRoom, the art gallery of the Arts Institute.

The show screened and documented the films, and showed an installation of selected artworks that were produced as part of the preparation process of the films.

The Tragic Realist Fiction collective for these films was

Sarah de Graeve, Juliane Borths & Gaston Meskens

and

Hadewych Cocquyt, Mauro Pawlowski, Sam Geuens, CJ Bolland, Gert Larivière, Davinder Valeri, Shamina de Gonzaga, Marko Kovac, Alejandro Margetic, Torri Nickmans & Aya De Coster.

Check it all out here
https://www.theartsinstitute.org/happenings/tragic-realist-fiction-so-here-we-are-film-works/

Film stills

// TRF // Film – The Archive of Opportunities

The film The Archive of Opportunities was created on the occasion of the art show The Archive of Opportunities on view at The AnteRoom in Antwerp in January 2015.


The archive of opportunities

A film by TRAGIC REALIST FICTION

Voices
Sarah de Graeve
Davinder Valeri (from Toronto)
Shamina de Gonzaga (from New York)
Marko Kovac (from Ljubljana)
Alejandro Margetic (from Buenos Aires)

sound, music
Gaston Meskens, Sarah de Graeve

concept, video source material, direction, editing, montage
Gaston Meskens

https://vimeo.com/137293518


Conversations

Sarah

So here we are.
Rows and rows of silent trees.
Blinded by the stream of consciousness,
that stream gives us almost nothing to see.

Bewildered, it should be the proof of everything in me
that was pulled out that night; the wind wiped away the rain, ultimately.
No rain, there was no rain; nature did not exist, at least not formally.
However, invisible me, for you, the shifted blooded sea:

suspected to be essentially flawed ?
merely… see.

[…]

Davinder

When I entered the archive for the first time, I was surprised at the sheer simplicity of the classification system. The plan was clear and well-organised. There were no deviant routes, no blind alleys, no confusing crossroads. The numbering of corridors, cabinets and shelves followed a rigid logic and was kept up to date. There were no gaps or jumps, no sudden interruptions. The sense of predictability softened the sinister atmosphere of the immense space. The logic was reassuring and forthcoming. The logic was good.

Shamina 

The remarkable thing, I also remember, was that the cabinets in the halls were all empty. Modern in style but empty, as if they had just been installed, waiting to be filled with content. But the striking thing was that the date labels of the shelves, cabinets and rooms didn’t go back in time but started counting towards the future. They were not meant to contain historical material, but artefacts that still needed to be created and documented.

Marko     

And what was really strange, and in a way scary, was the fact that the first date label of the first shelf of the first cabinet in the first room always had the actual date of your visit to the archive, and that the labels always counted up from that date towards the future, for years and years and ages and ages. Nobody could ever find out where the counting stopped. The space was too big. So although that situation was quiet creepy, it was logic that the shelves remained empty, as their date labels always started counting from the date we entered. That archive could not contain artefacts, as there was never a past to be documented.

Alejandro

It was only after years of exploration that we realised that the archive of the past was somewhere else. The thing was that you had to turn left immediately after entering the first room. There was a stair going down, and nobody ever thought of descending it. It is almost unbelievable that nobody had the intuition to go down to check what was there. I guess we were all too confused about the strange thing with the labels and the empty shelves.

Shamina 

It was the doorkeeper who told us that we should go down. For years, he didn’t say a word, but then, one day, he stood up and came out of his office towards us. He said that it was time, that it was finally time to go down. We did not understand what he meant with that. We looked at each other, confused, and I remember he smiled. He returned to his office, and instead of waiting for further clarification, we descended the stairs. What we saw, after our eyes had adapted to the darkness, looked like the setting of a classical archive. Again the corridors, rooms and cabinets, and again in seemingly endless rows.

Marko     

We started to walk, trying to find our way through the archive. The light was scarce and the whole place looked totally crammed with cabinets, documents and objects. Although it seemed as if there was nobody else present, we heard footsteps and conversations from time to time. Those sounds were immersed in a bed of soft dark noise, as if air was continuously breezing through the corridors, rooms and halls. The smell was mouldy and damp, although with a crispy overtone of a strange smoky perfume, the same you would experience around a campfire outside, in the woods.

Alejandro

The first rooms we entered were cramped but rather empty. They had prints and diagrams stuck to the walls and on a table in the middle of the space. We could not figure out what they represented. We saw images of a building, and group photos of people. The building could have been the archive itself, but we were uncertain. It looked different from what we were used to see from the outside. But in some way, the displays suggested it was the archive. The group photos seemed to have been taken not so long ago. We didn’t recognise anyone of the people, but they must have been colleagues, as we recognised the places where the photos were taken.

Marko     

After crossing the first smaller rooms, we entered big halls that were connected through corridors at all sides. The ceiling of the halls must have been very high, as we could not see it in the dark. We were totally amazed by what we discovered. There were several halls with documents on shelves. Most were arranged in box files, but some of them were unfolded and displayed, so that you could read the text and see the images. We randomly took out a document here and there to see what it was about.

Davinder

After a few hours of studying and reading, we understood we were in the middle of a countless collection of ideas, reflections and critiques that once must have been put aside without proper consideration. There were thousands of fragments of conversations still to be set up, and a myriad of suggestions of gatherings that never had taken place. It was all there, waiting to be said and done, and the strange thing was that, just by trying to grasp their meaning and focus, we felt that they were all new.

Shamina 

On the higher shelves, there was an extended systematic classification of – what I can only describe as – various ‘manifestations’ of awe, confusion, wonderment, hope and fear, all in their turn documented with both mystical and rational arguments. We tried to understand them, but it was difficult, as it felt as we had never experienced them. The references contained dates, most of them from the middle of last century, and sometimes there were photos of people, always somewhere in a laboratory. There was no explanation of who was in the photo, or reference to where it was taken. The people in the photos were very ‘present’. They looked committed to what they were doing, but not arrogant.

Marko     

Other halls had rows and rows of objects displayed. There were strange artefacts that must have had a function in some context, and we found out that many of them were accompanied with comments on their origin and possible use. Other things were unrecognizable and had no explanation. They could have been art objects, but we were not sure. We entered halls with cabinets that only contained printed pictures in every possible form and depicting all imaginable subjects and scenes.

Alejandro

Drawers contained printed schemes and diagrams explaining logics and systems, some of them recognisable, but most not, as extra information on their origin and use was missing. There were also several halls with rows of tables, presenting scale models of technological and architectural structures, and there were numerous replicas of cities and strange urban settlements. We had the feeling we could recognise a few, but most looked as designs still to be build.

Davinder

At some point, at a crossing of three large and long corridors, there was a big display cabine t with two people in it. It was a woman and a man. They were standing back to back and they were naked. We approached the cabinet with a very uneasy feeling. They seemed to be real and alive, but then this would have been very strange, because the cabinet looked very old, and impossible to open. When we stood close, we had the impression it were life-size wax dolls, but their gaze was penetrating, as if they really saw us. What was really weird was that, while we were standing there close, we were not scared anymore. We saw them, and they saw us. There was a feeling of recognition, but no urge to do something with it. We continued our way.

Alejandro

Who invented, suggested, constructed and formulated all this? Who collected, classified and preserved al these records and, above all, with which aim? It must have been a work of ages, even millennia. The documents and artefacts were physically there, they must have been created in the past. But they had no label indicating the date of their classification. We had the impression they were classified according to themes and subthemes. But it was impossible to understand the classification system by studying the labels, as they only contained letters and numbers and no catchwords. The system seemed at least meaningful but ultimately sophisticated.

Shamina 

I don’t remember anymore how long we spent down in the archive during our first visit. One moment, we found ourselves standing upstairs in the first, empty archive again. The doorkeeper was gone, and the place was dark. We checked the date of the first shelf of the first cabinet in the first room and concluded that we had been down for weeks. There must have been water and food, and we must have slept down there, but all memories of this sort were gone.

Davinder

Afterwards, in one of the many attempts to make sense of our experience, we had this commonsensical thought that it is unwise to study history with the aim to extract theories for the future, but also that we all felt that this was different. What was kept down there was not history. It was a peculiar consolidation of opportunities, bizarre in its forms and setting and ultimately intriguing. The question of who had ever collected and classified it didn’t matter anymore. It was there.

[…]

Marko     

So here we are…

Shamina 

The simple idea is that the pursuit of peace and well-being is not a matter of finding compromise over incommensurable or conflicting interests, as our essential interests as humans are not necessarily incommensurable or in conflict ‘by definition’. Our society is inherently complex but not inherently antagonistic. The idea that we have to live with the fact that there exist fundamentally opposing worldviews and conceptions of life is strategically maintained by religious and political oppressors. Only then can they construct their presumed rational theory of the ‘collective identity’ and decide who belongs and who does not. Their populist oracles appeal to the conformists of the citizenry who can only make sense of the complexity of life by way of ascribing guilt to an enemy. Collective extremism is not rooted in deviance but in conformism. Collective extremism roots in extreme conformism…

Davinder

Every time again, it will turn out that this one night, that one walk, this one conversation, that one morning, … was not a new reference for a deeper and more authentic life, but simply a meaningful event to never forget. And then you are somewhere, alone or in company, and suddenly you feel connected to some other place, to some moment in the past and to some time in the future, all at the same instant. You experience a time lapse of connection with an undefined set of possibilities. You cannot name this other place and these other moments, but you know you know them, either as a potentiality or as a memory. You know that you might have been to that other place already, and that the moment in the past feels as if it still needs to happen. And you feel already that consolatory kind of melancholy, remembering that time that still needs to come.

// TRF // Film ‘Twilight Hotel’

The film Twilight Hotel is a trip in three acts. A person dwells through the corridors of politics, science and activism before arriving at the Twilight Hotel. His meeting with her in the lobby of the hotel is a crucial turning point for both of them. What follows is a great escape.

 

Twilight Hotel – a story (second act).

The boulevard is swamped with humid thick air and bathes in sunlight. You enter the lobby of the hotel, spacious, air-cooled and dark. You breathe. Outside, life goes on, scarcely populated but in a haze of impatience. Inside, the fumé windows and brown carpets shut out the loud graffiti-coloured scenes from the street. The coolness suddenly unveils the fragrance of the city. The air smells smoky and sweet; a late-afternoon promising odour, announcing life that is waking inside, waiting to come out after sundown.

She stands in the middle of the lobby and waits. She stares at some point behind you. You walk in her direction and she pretends she recognises you. You stand still, in limbo.

‘I am not here’, the woman says. ‘I am not here, you are not here, we are not here. I mean: we did not arrive yet. We wait, dispersed but aware of each other. We try not to look angry. We are not angry’.

You think. The soundtrack from the street dims. You put down your suitcase and search your pockets for a business card.

‘We came from different sides’, the woman continues. ‘We came from different fields, backstreets and squares. We have nothing to report. That is: nothing to each other. You may ask us questions, we may know the answers. We will go back, but only when we want’.

You look behind you and your eyes seek the exit. But the woman walks away. You take your suitcase and proceed to the reception desk to check in.

On the way to the elevator, the woman appears again. ‘The Boulevard of Broken Dreams was only a story. It is fiction’, she says. ‘The palm trees were plastic and the street was going nowhere. It was fake, but that doesn’t matter. Every populated physical environment is décor. Also here, outside. The rubbish in the alleys and on the bare zones of the city is fake. It is put there. The animals are dead and stuffed. The shops are full, but nothing is for sale. Taxis drive in circles and trains shuttle back and forth. People are dressed up, but for no particular reason. It is all sculptured, assembled and pretended’. She pauses. ‘But we can easily take it away if we want, and return everything back to normal’.

The air in the corridor is damped and the ventilator thrums. You put down your suitcase again. ‘Why would you do that?’, you ask. ‘The only thing normal here might just be the desert. The desert that connects the cities. The desert that is enclosed by the continents. We travel through it to escape it, and linger in the fata morganas we construct for each other. We set up decors to hide that there is nothing behind them and to enable ourselves to concentrate on pure encounter. So why would you take it away if you need it for us to recognise you in the first place?’

She stares at you and smiles, for the first time. ‘It is true’, she says. ‘I am here. You are here. And we will come back.’ She steps into the elevator. ‘It was nice to meet you’. She closes the door. You hear the elevator going up, and the sound of the ventilator takes over again. You wanted to tell her that she was right; that the normal she referred to is not the normal you had in mind. That with too much recognition one risks becoming a stale artefact of an ordinary world. That …

You leave the hotel and walk down the street. It is twilight hour. The vivid colours of the day faded and the air smells perfumed but mouldy now. The pavement is crowded with wanderers. They are smiling, chatting and going places. You want to walk and dissolve in them, with them, but the sand blown up by the wind prickles your eyes. You turn left into a side street and turn left again. You are at the back entrance of the hotel and decide to go in, but the glazed sliding door is blocked. A placard stuck on the door attracts your attention: ‘Warning. Temporary zone. No entrance. You are inside already.’

 

Twilight Hotel – a film by TRAGIC REALIST FICTION

performance and voice:
Sarah de Graeve and Sam Geuens
voice:
CJ Bolland
music:
Gaston Meskens, Sarah de Graeve and Gert Lariviere
images, concept and direction:
Gaston Meskens

https://vimeo.com/146157072

 

 

 

// tAI // Antwerp, 23 August 2014 – Screening of the film “A Journey into the Land of the 4th Dimension”

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Screening of the film ‘A Journey into the Land of the 4th Dimension

A film by TRAGIC REALIST FICTION, featuring MELVIN SHAKUN (Gaston Meskens), MARY H. ACKER (Sarah de Graeve) and JAMES DYER (Mauro Pawlowski), inspired by the book “A Journey into the Land of the Fourth Dimension” by Gaston de Pawlowski.

See an introduction to the film and film stills here.

Watching this film is a mental, physical and spatial experience of which nothing would remain were it to be shown on internet. Therefore the film is not available online. It is leading its own life, and will appear here and there, on occasion. Join us on 23 August 2014 at 8pm at the AnteRoom, Kattenberg 93, Borgerhout-Antwerp. Write to gaston.meskens@theartsinstitute.org for any inquiry.

Further fyi: on 10 September 2014, the film will be screened at the Rijksakademie Amsterdam.

 

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// TRF // Show – Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory

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The art collective TRAGIC REALIST FICTION presents Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory

A show built around the film ‘A Journey into the Land of the 4th Dimension’; a film by TRAGIC REALIST FICTION, featuring MELVIN SHAKUN (Gaston Meskens), MARY H. ACKER (Sarah de Graeve) and JAMES DYER (Mauro Pawlowski), advancing on the book “A Journey into the Land of the Fourth Dimension” by Gaston de Pawlowski.

venue: The AnteRoom, Kattenberg 93, Borgerhout – Antwerp
opening 2 May 2014, 18h00
on view
3 May 2014, 14h00 – 18h00
10 May 2014, 13h00 – 16h30
16 May 2014, 18h00 – 22h00 (nocturne)
17 May 2014, 14h00 – 18h00 (last day!)

during the show, the film (55min) will be screened continuously, but will start each time on the hour

Read an intro on the film and a background reflection on rational choice theory here.

 

there must be something

‘There must be something’, ink print on MDF

 

thesplit- small

‘The Split’, ink print on paper

 

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‘A Journey into the Land of the 4th Dimension’, film still

 

the dwelling

‘The Dwelling’, film still

//..//

This show is part of the BORGER Art Happening

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See more at https://www.facebook.com/BORGER.NOCTURNES