In the Belly of the City
In the Belly of the City
(2022, 16mm digitized, two-channel video installation, sound, two ticker tapes, whale fossil, in loop)
In the belly of the city a whale cemetery extends itself. What looks like a rock turns out to be a whale fossil, millions of years old. In the urban landscape above it, its current inhabitants work, live, play, talk and rest.
The audiovisual installation In the Belly of the City is a symphony that takes place both above and underneath the Antwerps surface. The changing landscape reveals the evolution of the animal that lived millions of years ago where people now stroll through the park. In that city, passionate paleontologist Mark Bosselaers enthusiastically collects, studies and cares for Antwerp’s whale bones. Organizing the bones in a place and time is his way of getting to grips with the origin of the world as we know it today. Faced with his own mortality, his attention veers to the cyclical movement of the survival of the whale species that knows no end and continuously reproduces itself.
Image: Ans Mertens
Sound: Aiko Devriendt
Color Grading: Thijs Paijmans
Production: De Imagerie
Supported by: Stad Antwerpen Het Bos