The Yellow House Across the Road

Some of these images are video stills I made of my own video portraits, if interested, you can go and see the short movies on my website: https://www.lambrechtlou.com/video

Sometimes I wonder whether you can choose your future or not. Is everything destined to happen? If you decide to try and change the future for yourself, is that selfish or just self-aware? And If I would try to change my path, remembering my past, would I be looking for more safety or more adventure?

I feel safe whenever I’m behind a lens. The camera makes me question my surroundings. I can observe different nations and cultures. I’m present and I’m not present. I still haven’t figured out if I go along with the moment or if I decide what I’m looking for beforehand when encountering a new space.

In the past year, I searched for new surroundings, for spaces that have lost their function and evoke a new dialogue. These kinds of locations allow someone to escape the real world as if in these spaces you can go back somewhere sometime. Is it an attempt to escape this urge to disappear into an unknown world?

I try to get an understanding by spending time there, observing other people in these spaces, listening to them. The conversations are honest and are born from

a desire. In the end, different people and spaces come together in intimate installation work. You can sense my presence, but I’m never visually there. I try to create a new space by using sound. Maybe I want to stay hidden in the sound? Do I want to be found? I’m not sure. Do I want to leave a trace? “To live is to leave traces”, according to Walter Benjamin.

What traces have been left in my mind and how do they connect? Since I spent a year in Australia, my work questions my experience of the bushfires I saw there.

I was fascinated by the colors and the surroundings changing. When I arrived back in Belgium, I desired to find these same colors. I started my search by walking and observing. I translated this into three videos that contain clues and memories of these experiences that are somehow also connected to the idea of ‘home’, how I remember it and what it can become.

Memories are considered objects that are stored in a space of mind, and the process of retrieval is conceived as a search for these objects. The object itself can be seen as a reminder of the memory that maintains the retrieval of information. The retrieval is important evidence to connect the dots of information which makes us understand the past, the past being itself already a memory. If we think about stone, we connect it to the past.

When I went on a hike around Uluru in Australia, I was told they told us that the aboriginals believe stories come from the shape of the shadow. The sun creates these visuals on the rocks which every generation is able to experience. The elder generation will tell the tale to the younger generation so the story never dies. The normal milestone is thought to have been shaped by genealogical creatures during the Dreaming. The term Dreaming alludes to when the land and individuals were made by the progenitor spirits. So they believe that the traces on the rocks were made while the spirits were dreaming.

Somehow I also have this idea that traces becoming something truthful, gaining meaning over time. In the same way that you can remember and retrace pictures, We leave something behind as if it is evidence. As if we don’t want to leave with any proof of existence. The same counts for our speaking language. If you think about the etymology of the word “language” it used to mean “true” or “true meanings”.