Is display pertinent to our particular understandings of nature? For the second edition of the Temple Talks, architect Wim Cuyvers and artist Filip Van Dingenen entered into a dialogue about the spaces and places where our ambiguous relation with nature is at stake. The dialogue continued a series of lecture-performances by Filip Van Dingenen in which he investigates and questions forms of display in zoological collections and archives of natural history. At La Loge, Van Dingenen handled a variety of objects to narrate the different ways in which display affects the presentation, representation, or experience of nature. These diverse accounts were confronted with the mantra-like definitions of space, offered by Wim Cuyvers. In addition, Cuyvers brought a "bâton de buis mort". Once associated with eternal life but nowadays more susceptible to die-off, the stick of evergeen box (buxus sempervirens) acted as a comfort object, a haptic symbol of our own vulnerability.

Biography

Wim Cuyvers graduated as an architect at the Hoger Architectuurinstituut Gent in 1982. His work, often remarkable because of the wayward interpretation and projective transposition of its prior conditions, has been frequently published (a.o. in A+, Archis, De Architect, S/AM, Flanders Architectural Yearbook, A+U, Oase) and exhibited (monographic exhibition deSingel Antwerp, 1995; numerous Group Exhibitions a.o: “Nouvelle architecture en Flandres”, Bordeaux, 1996; “De rijkdom van de eenvoud”, Brussels, 1996; “Homeward, Contemporary Architecture in Flanders” Antwerp, Bordeaux, Rome, Venice, Plymouth, 2000, Archilab, Orleans, 2004, Kunst&Zwalm 2007. He has been active as an author of critical essays on architecture and on broader cultural questions. Since 2009 he’s mainly working at and on Le Montavoix/es, a mountainious piece of land in the French Jura near the city of Saint-Claude, he calls Le Montavoix/es a refuge de passage, a shelter for passers.

Filip Van Dingenen is a multidisciplinary artist and co-founder of the Ecole Mondiale in Brussels. He is currently PHD researcher at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent/Brussels and affiliated researcher at the Laboratory of Education and Society at KU Leuven. In his process-based art practice he uses a broad range of different methods and outputs merging participatory strategies with a social and ecological relevance, in between leisure and education. The last years he worked extensively on zoological issues and observed the phenomena of zoo culture from different angles. With the Argentinian choreographer/dancer Barbara Pereyra he co-founded Fantaman Productions & Matelisto Contemporary Movements, a platform for developing projects in between performance and visual arts. He was researcher at the Jan Van Eyck Academy (2013), associate artist in residence with Mark Dion at ACA (2008) and developed projects in Artist Residency Programs at Irish Museum of Modern Art (2008), Wiels Art Center (2009) Banff Art Center (2013), Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle (2015) and worked in Ireland, Argentina and Equatorial Guinea. He is represented by Waldburger Wouters in Brussels.