La Galerie Louise

An artist statement, a novella, a confession

2015-2020

Written by Batsheva Ross

Read by Ella de Burca

Text editors:

Perri Mackenzie

Liz Allen

sound editor:

Marco Lampis

The following recording is the 5th chapter of La Galerie Louise, an audiobook based on a novella written by Batsheva Ross between 2015 and 2020. The full novella includes seven chapters and an epilogue.

In a period in which she was agonising over writing artist applications, Ross felt she was facing an artistic crisis in her practice. She distracted herself by writing a memoir about her side job as an aggressive salesclerk for Dead Sea cosmetics. This side job wasn't something she was particularly proud of. Although it demanded her intellectual talents and skills, it also required applying some devious personality traits that, at times, felt morally questionable to her. Moreover, it gave her the feeling of getting off track from her own art practice by being too invested in something so detached from the art world. She felt the necessity of defending herself, and the memoir served simultaneously as a written confession. But in taking up this task, she came to see the complicated reality of her daily life as a compassionate marriage between two worlds—the art world and the merchandise world. An alliance that left her appeased with both. She began to see her side job as a crucial part of her artist trajectory, if not even her actual artistic practice.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

La Galerie Louise

An artist statement, a novella, a confession

2015-2020

Written by Batsheva Ross

Read by Ella de Burca

Text editors:

Perri Mackenzie

Liz Allen

sound editor:

Marco Lampis

The following recording is the 4th chapter of La Galerie Louise, an audiobook based on a novella written by Batsheva Ross between 2015 and 2020. The full novella includes seven chapters and an epilogue.

In a period in which she was agonising over writing artist applications, Ross felt she was facing an artistic crisis in her practice. She distracted herself by writing a memoir about her side job as an aggressive salesclerk for Dead Sea cosmetics. This side job wasn't something she was particularly proud of. Although it demanded her intellectual talents and skills, it also required applying some devious personality traits that, at times, felt morally questionable to her. Moreover, it gave her the feeling of getting off track from her own art practice by being too invested in something so detached from the art world. She felt the necessity of defending herself, and the memoir served simultaneously as a written confession. But in taking up this task, she came to see the complicated reality of her daily life as a compassionate marriage between two worlds—the art world and the merchandise world. An alliance that left her appeased with both. She began to see her side job as a crucial part of her artist trajectory, if not even her actual artistic practice.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

La Galerie Louise

An artist statement, a novella, a confession

2015-2020

Written by Batsheva Ross

Read by Ella de Burca

Text editors:

Perri Mackenzie

Liz Allen

sound editor:

Marco Lampis

The following recording is the 3rd chapter of La Galerie Louise, an audiobook based on a novella written by Batsheva Ross between 2015 and 2020. The full novella includes seven chapters and an epilogue.

In a period in which she was agonising over writing artist applications, Ross felt she was facing an artistic crisis in her practice. She distracted herself by writing a memoir about her side job as an aggressive salesclerk for Dead Sea cosmetics. This side job wasn't something she was particularly proud of. Although it demanded her intellectual talents and skills, it also required applying some devious personality traits that, at times, felt morally questionable to her. Moreover, it gave her the feeling of getting off track from her own art practice by being too invested in something so detached from the art world. She felt the necessity of defending herself, and the memoir served simultaneously as a written confession. But in taking up this task, she came to see the complicated reality of her daily life as a compassionate marriage between two worlds—the art world and the merchandise world. An alliance that left her appeased with both. She began to see her side job as a crucial part of her artist trajectory, if not even her actual artistic practice.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

La Galerie Louise

An artist statement, a novella, a confession

2015-2020

Written by Batsheva Ross

Read by Ella de Burca

Text editors:

Perri Mackenzie

Liz Allen

Sound editor:

Marco Lampis

The following recording is the 2nd chapter of La Galerie Louise, an audiobook based on a novella written by Batsheva Ross between 2015 and 2020. The full novella includes seven chapters and an epilogue.

In a period in which she was agonising over writing artist applications, Ross felt she was facing an artistic crisis in her practice. She distracted herself by writing a memoir about her side job as an aggressive salesclerk for Dead Sea cosmetics. This side job wasn't something she was particularly proud of. Although it demanded her intellectual talents and skills, it also required applying some devious personality traits that, at times, felt morally questionable to her. Moreover, it gave her the feeling of getting off track from her own art practice by being too invested in something so detached from the art world. She felt the necessity of defending herself, and the memoir served simultaneously as a written confession. But in taking up this task, she came to see the complicated reality of her daily life as a compassionate marriage between two worlds—the art world and the merchandise world. An alliance that left her appeased with both. She began to see her side job as a crucial part of her artist trajectory, if not even her actual artistic practice.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

La Galerie Louise

An artist statement, a novella, a confession

2015-2020

Written by Batsheva Ross

Read by Ella de Burca

Text editors:

Perri Mackenzie

Liz Allen

Sound editor:

Marco Lampis

The following recording is the 1st chapter of La Galerie Louise, an audiobook based on a novella written by Batsheva Ross between 2015 and 2020. The full novella includes seven chapters and an epilogue.

In a period in which she was agonising over writing artist applications, Ross felt she was facing an artistic crisis in her practice. She distracted herself by writing a memoir about her side job as an aggressive salesclerk for Dead Sea cosmetics. This side job wasn't something she was particularly proud of. Although it demanded her intellectual talents and skills, it also required applying some devious personality traits that, at times, felt morally questionable to her. Moreover, it gave her the feeling of getting off track from her own art practice by being too invested in something so detached from the art world. She felt the necessity of defending herself, and the memoir served simultaneously as a written confession. But in taking up this task, she came to see the complicated reality of her daily life as a compassionate marriage between two worlds—the art world and the merchandise world. An alliance that left her appeased with both. She began to see her side job as a crucial part of her artist trajectory, if not even her actual artistic practice.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

25 years of collaborating have brought Xavier Garcia Bardon and Emmanuel Gonay in an interesting and fruitful position somewhere between dedicated amateurism and professionalism. Their fascinating music pieces are fuelled by assembling noises and harmonies, the analogue and the digital, the input of changing ensembles they have worked with over the years. We listen to a - non-chronological - compilation from their beginnings to today's latest work and talk about how they started, what is guiding them, what it means to make a shift from improvising to composing and what we can expect from their new 7-inch-record soon to be launched. Info on the upcoming record via http://www.lexidisques.net and https://www.facebook.com/lexidisques

Interviewed by Eitan Efrat and Olaf Winkler.

Musica Mosaica, "Untitled", 2021

Buffle, "Dudes With a Vision", 2010

Buffle, "Cavernicole" (excerpt), Relax Produzioni, 2008

Buffle, "Dead City Holograms", 2008

Humus, "Paysage avec la chute d'Icare" (excerpt), Kraak, 2015

Waikiki Walhalla, "Oceanic Soukous Operation #8", 2010 (unreleased)

Buffle, "Bumblebee #4", Ultra Eczema, 2005

Unspecified Duo, "Fraise", Minijack, 2004

Buffle: Benjamin Francart, Denis Duez, Xavier Garcia Bardon, Emmanuel Gonay

Humus: Quentin Nicolaï, Xavier Garcia Bardon, Emmanuel Gonay

Waikiki Walhalla: David Jarrin, Anne Spencer, Xavier Garcia Bardon, Emmanuel Gonay

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

How do we understand a work? How does it come into being and how do these two aspects interrelate? "For me, editing is really important," says artist Helen Dowling, mostly active with video and video installation: "It’s kind of where everything happens, where work gets formed." What sounds like a very factual statement is an invitation to an open approach. We follow her on an explorative path about how she combines visuals and where they come from, about how to construct a narrative that is not in a strict sense narrational, about the relation between image and sound, the (non-)use of language, intuition, seduction, and about the fact that recording always means: giving something away.

Helen Dowling’s video The Queen of Lemons can currently be viewed via vimeo.com/466171881

Interviewed by Batsheva Ross and Olaf Winkler.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings, and other sound pieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

Kevin Gallagher is originally from Illinois in the US, but is based these days in Brussels. He works primarily in sculpture; the sculptures’ installation are often specific to their forms. He uses a variety of materials in his practice: they are sometimes perishable, and are of consumer, natural, or domestic origins. In the work there are motifs that recur such as carrots, flowers, corncobs and containers. His interest lies in states of preservation, in embodiment, in how we as humans persevere through self-preservation. The word 'Administration' is a focal point in the artists thinking process - how are materials, organisms or bodies administered or managed? How does a work inhabit a space and how does it make itself feel comfortable in one? For more insights you can turn to http://www.kevingallagher.info/

Interviewed by Batsheva Ross and Bas van den Hout.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings and other soundpieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

Working with film, assembling pieces, sometimes reflecting on others or the traces they leave: Their work, say artists Sirah Foighel Brutmann and Eitan Efrat, often starts with the idea of something that is missing, a person, a material, a story – not trying to fill that gap, but reflecting on it. We follow them and their process of filmmaking, talking about how they start and proceed together, about family, power relations, politics and poetics of the moving image, and the aggression within the cut. For more insights you can turn to www.messidorgroup.be/foighel-brutmann-efrat

Interviewed by Batsheva Ross and Olaf Winkler.

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings and other soundpieces which are regularly published on this site. More info on Level Five via www.levelfive.brussels

With the second episode of The Notebook Readings, Marco Lampis takes us further into the delicate space opening up between what we find while wandering and what we make out of it or rather: with it, through it, instead of it, by it. Fitting to his work evolving around sound, object, body and (dis-)location, what appears becomes an almost hypnotic resonance chamber of thoughts thought and yet to be thought.

Notes by Marco Lampis, voice: Beth (voice-over generator)

Sound by Marco Lampis. Track title: "Before the eyes"

Included book quotes,:

Borges, There are more things

Bergson, Matter and Memory

Danto, The transfiguration of the common place

Jankelevitch, La Musique et l'ineffable

Viollet-le-Duc, Le Massif du Mont Blanc

This piece is part of a series with interviews, readings and other soundpieces which are regularly published on this site.