LIEVEN DE BOECK
www.lievendb.com
Lieven de Boeck is an artist and architect. He was invited to participate in the Zuidas Free Spaces AIR 2010 on the recommendation of the VMZ’s partner institutes VU Amsterdam / VU Brussels.
Lieven de Boeck graduated in 1994 from the Academy for Science and the Arts in Brussels. In 2002 he attended the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, the post-academic institute for research and production in the area of art, design and theory and concluded his studies in 2003. Since then he has been working on his Dictionary of Space. In this ongoing (research) project he explores the boundaries of concepts such as identity, territory, private and public space. An important methodology in his research is the creation of typologies of architecture, urban design and individual identity.
Dictionary of Space can be seen as an open archive and a continual investigation into the various facets of the concept of 'space'. For the first part of this project, ‘Housing’, Lieven de Boeck starts from his own experience of leading a nomadic lifestyle. For five years, the artist lived at the addresses of various friends. For the second part of the dictionary, ‘Public Space’, the artist wrote 366 letters addressed to himself. However, the letters are copies of excerpts from found texts and images dating from the 19th century to the present. In De Boeck’s research, these letters play a fundamental role because they connect two individual people, thereby breaking through the private sphere and creating a public space between the writer and reader. Moreover, by means of De Boeck’s exhibiting of the letters, they also become public for the spectator. He/she is the one who through observation and interpretation makes a reality out of the story – or ‘anecdote’ – that exists between two people, and in doing so creates ‘public space’. By erasing parts of the letters or translating them into a private alphabet, the artist re-appropriates and ‘re-privatizes’ the project. This game of what is private and public, of what is a private home or public space also forms the core of the project for the Zuidas, the so-called ‘A project’.
Results of the Residency: Dictionay of Space ‘the A project’
During his residency, Lieven de Boeck was amazed as always at modern urbanism, with its constant search for greater perfection, and at the Zuidas in particular. According to De Boeck, real urbanity arises precisely in the conflict, the lack of clarity and the mistake. Moreover, a perfect environment hardly offers anything that allows you to become attached to as an individual. Lieven de Boeck therefore not only argues for allowing the 'mistake', he also introduces that mistake by becoming the owner of a miniscule piece of private property on the Mahlerplein in the Zuidas: an imperfect circle of 44 square centimetres (the letter 'A' from his Dictionary of Space), which is only visible in the Land Registry. The acquisition procedure was underway, but ran into difficulties.
