Photography (MA)
Jonas Mlejnek
My work is inspired mainly by speculative realism and new materialism. Since my studies in Belgium, I have been influenced by object-oriented philosophy and the relationship with non-human entities, accompanied more recently by the nature of contingency. I concentrate on the active role of non-human materials – vital things which speak to us in a strange region of the aesthetic sphere. I strive to create a speculative narrative, in which irrepressible things pulsate with life and become a living installation thanks to the aesthetic effects that they evoke, which are moments that enable us to look into their non-identity.
Sponsors
2019/20 RCA Fund Scholar
Reproduction
The stone. The stone lying on the street without any signs of life. The street is situated in Uccle, the Belle Époque district in Brussels. There are many large stones in the street but this, somehow, is the one I've been looking for. I can see that they have fallen from the second floor balcony of a Belle Époque era house - situated just a few blocks from the house designed by the architect Victor Horta - and that the ornamentation on some of them is still visible and the edges very sharp.
It occurs to me that the daily passengers on the tram to Stéphanie station have been witnesses to these fallen fragments for over a month, and I speculate about why the original part of the building 'decided' to fall and shatter after more then a century? I try to imagine what the stone remnants had witnessed and whether the intention was to reproduce themselves in order to change their perspective. I begin to think about what will happen to the stones (which probably originated in some granite quarry). As I clean my stone of its mud I felt its granular texture and thought about silence and dialogue - the former, our exclusion from … the latter, a conversation between the individual fragments.
It occurs to me that the daily passengers on the tram to Stéphanie station have been witnesses to these fallen fragments for over a month, and I speculate about why the original part of the building 'decided' to fall and shatter after more then a century? I try to imagine what the stone remnants had witnessed and whether the intention was to reproduce themselves in order to change their perspective. I begin to think about what will happen to the stones (which probably originated in some granite quarry). As I clean my stone of its mud I felt its granular texture and thought about silence and dialogue - the former, our exclusion from … the latter, a conversation between the individual fragments.
