Residents

Aaron McLaughlin is an artist and curator originally from Ireland and based in Amsterdam since 2013.  His work is multidisciplinary, spanning several media, including curatorial and collaborative practices. Critically employing the methods and technologies we use to live, share, and give value to our lives, his most recent pieces are film-based installations that explore contemporary filmmaking techniques including virtual reality, CGI and stage direction, and incorporate an ongoing interest in writing, roleplay, sculpture, and performance. In the past years, the artist has been drawn to supporting art practitioners that pertain to progressive movements, primarily through the curatorial project Still Making Art, a platform that aims to support artists in the initial and usually most turbulent stages of their career. In 2020, McLaughlin was invited as an assistant curator for the exhibition Private Song 사적인 노@ at the Doosan Art Centre in Seoul.

Meryem Bayram is a multidisciplinary artist, scenographer and curator. She graduated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp as sculptor, she studied scenography at POPOK in Antwerp. Her work consists of installations, performances and scenographies. Aside from her own works, she contributed as a scenographer in collaboration with national and international choreographers, theatre directors, movie directors and museums.

In the work of Meryem Bayram the unfolding relation between human behavior and a constructed spatial environment is the central drivingforce. Her installations are constructed with elements that can be manipulated or activated by artists, performers or by the audience. They instigate a dialogue with architecture, objects, (day)light and sound. By generating specific encounters between body and material, Meryem Bayram triggers tensions and exchanges between the present and the potential, the composed and the improvised, emphasizing the impact of our experience on space itself.

Her sculptures and spatial installations start from an intense analysis of a specific site and the ambition to materialize its different perspectives in space. With simple materials such as wood or ropes, she generates spatial shapes and lines of sight that can be modulated by the audience, changing their experience of the space. Her stage designs start from the deconstruction of daily objects and the multilayered possibilities and perspectives that can arise when the object is activated. Meryem Bayram is fascinated by the possibilities of geometry in relation to the body, language, color, gestures, poetry, mathematics, philosophy, sound and light. She sees absraction as a way to trigger the imagination and participation of the audience. In this way narrativity is suggested by visual fragility. 

Marie Brumagne David and Bram Van Cauwenberghe are a duo of artists with a background in documentary film. In 2016 they made the award-winning feature film “Remember your name, Babylon”. The film is made of several tableaux with plastic qualities and leaves a lot of room for the sound experience. For a number of years, Marie and Bram, respectively musician and permaculturist, have been focusing on the medium of sound and the exploration of invisible spaces such as the underground or water. With Sonic Diplomacy, they explore our capacity to create new synergies between humans and non-humans through sound. They question our relationship with the living and our way of making a common world. Sonic Diplomacy aims at creating interspecific sound works, involving humans and non-humans. Their work is situated between visual arts, field recording, experimental music, ecology and visual arts.