Time and Experience: Niels Van Tomme on Belgian Video Art

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CHOCOLATE, BEER, FRITES, Plastic Bertrand, Herge, Magritte -- say "Belgium" to an American and you're lucky to get half of these in response. Recently relocated to New York after a couple of years in D.C., Belgian-born curator Niels Van Tomme observes that his countrymen seem quite comfortable with a national identity that remains nebulous, expressed in local cultures attached to the languages of larger neighbors: Dutch, French, a smattering of German.

Although it consciously eschews nationalism, "Onthaasting" ("Slowing Down"), curated by Van Tomme and Jan Van Woensel, unites Belgian video artists under a sensibility. This deadpan, absurdist twist on the Italian dolce far niente emerges as actors re-create a seaside vignette for Guillaume Bijl's "James Ensor in Ostende ca. 1920" or a man whose shoes are nailed to the floor struggles to remove his vest without taking off his jacket in Cel Crabeels' "Topologic" or the artist uses a cordless drill to spin a bouquet of flowers into pieces in an episode of Messieurs Delmotte's "Breakdown Dream."

» EXPRESS: Does the Belgian government's subsidy of artists allow them to play with their spare time?
» VAN TOMME: All the Belgian artists are hard workers, but at the same time I think there is a difference.

» EXPRESS: A difference in the way we conceive of leisure?
» VAN TOMME: People [in Belgium] like to experience time, whereas here in the United States, it's about filling up time.

» EXPRESS: Unlike painting, sculpture or photography, video art has a built-in element of duration that asks something of the viewer.
» VAN TOMME: It really demands of you to slow down, to really spend your time with the artworks and ... really go into a very intimate encounter with them.

» EXPRESS: An invitation to fidgety, work-obsessed Washington to linger is both appealing and anxiety-provoking. Lingering is taboo here.
» VAN TOMME: The kind of experience of time that we would like to instigate, I think, in this exhibition is the kind of time that you can still experience in Belgium.

» EXPRESS: The trend in new media is to put the viewer in greater control of the flow of information. Does the customary presentation of video art stand in opposition to that?
» VAN TOMME: The whole blogosphere and the Internet makes it as if everything should be like that, and I don't think it has to. Sometimes you have to [make] an effort to get to something that you maybe don't want to see. And if you're willing to do that, you will discover new things and otherwise you won't. If you only rely on your own choices and the things you yourself want to do, it'll be harder for you to discover something new.

» American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW; through Dec. 21, free; 202-885-1300.

Written by Express contributor Glenn Dixon
Image from Guillaume Bijl's video re-creation of "James Ensor in Ostende ca. 1920" courtesy Katzen Arts Center