The Image Generator

in search of a collective imagination

The Image Generator is a site-specific two-day happening that explores the interplay between visual art, sound art and performance. The sixth edition welcomes twenty artists and nine organizations to take over the exhibitions and spaces of Kunsthal Extra City and MORPHO. Prepare for a vibrant live encounter with interactive installations, performative interventions, video works, contemporary dance, collective readings and soundscapes. All set in a former Dominican monastery in the heart of Antwerp, Belgium. 

The Image Generator aims to provide a fertile ground for new and pioneering art forms, but also stimulates a more direct and reciprocal exchange between audience, artist and environment. We believe that within this interaction a huge potential for new images and perspectives can emerge, leading to a sensorial dialogue and a way to share our most fleeting intuitions.

We invite you to come and generate your own imagination.

The Image Generator was initiated in 2015 by Platform 0090, Kunsthal Extra City, Lokaal 01 and Kunst/Werk, who shared the same building in Antwerp, Belgium. From this year onwards we ‘imagenerate’ together with additional partners who each bring their own ideas to the table. This non-hierarchical initiative was inspired by the short film Detour de force (2014), a fascinating video portrait by Rebecca Baron on ‘thoughtographer’ Ted Serios, who caused a sensation in the sixties with his alleged psychic ability to produce hundreds of Polaroid images from his mind.

Platform 0090 is a sustainable international platform. A workshop and hub for research, creation, residency, production and presentation of trans-disciplinary art with attention for interspaces and hybridity. The platform is anchored in a sustainable (inter) national network of artists and partners and converts emergent synergies into artistic processes. The organisation accompanies a group of artists in their innovative and contemporary artistic process and plays an active intermediary and service role in multidisciplinary art processes.

Kunsthal Extra City exhibits contemporary visual art in a welcoming and unique setting. As a middle-sized, Antwerp-based art organisation, they are firmly rooted in Belgium’s artistic ecosystem and offer an inspiring hub where artists, art lovers and city residents can come together. With an open gaze, intentional decision-making and attention for the artist, Kunsthal Extra City develops relevant and challenging exhibitions that serve to complement the activities of other arts organisations.

Kunst/Werk is a structurally funded organisation for dance. It embodies a professional and human space in which different dance practices can develop. The oeuvre of choreographer Marc Vanrunxt is central to these contemporary dance creations, performances and research.

MORPHO is a non-profit organisation dedicated to artistic development. They give time, space and resources to artists by providing residencies and studios, with the aim of fostering a dynamic and sustainable context for artistic work.

GRIP is a dance organization from Antwerp with shared artistic leadership. Choreographers Femke Gyselinck, Jan Martens, Cherish Menzo, and Steven Michel act together as artistic directors. GRIP is a nomadic structure and does not have a studio of its own, but makes use of the existing infrastructure in the performing arts landscape by forging alliances with theatres, co-producers, production companies and residency venues. The creations always emerge in different spaces and in interaction with the different professional contexts.

SoAP Maastricht is the artistic platform for the work of artists from different backgrounds and disciplines, that explores interactions and behaviours in the public space that we might take for granted. Drawing on their individual training and expertise, the artists create analogue interventions that offer participants a new way to experience and perceive our public spaces. The SoAP practitioners are united in their vision: to create spatial projects, share their experience and practice(s), work collaboratively, and strive for independence.

Art center nona tells stories. Nona has a weakness for artists who tell from necessity, who share a unique view of the world, in a form that surprises, confuses and preferably both. Artists who walk the border between the waking world and that of the dream. They tell about the underworld and the upper world in such a way that you no longer know what is above or below.

C-TAKT is a platform for transdisciplinary arts and a reference house for transdisciplinary talent. More and more artists today seek out and push or even transcend the boundaries of artistic disciplines. As a result, new ways of expressing themselves are emerging that cannot be easily categorised within a particular discipline. By supporting these artists, C-TAKT aims to provide opportunities for the development and realisation of transdisciplinary projects.

Moussem is an international arts centre working on development, production and presentation of visual and performing arts. From a strongly developed residency program and long-term partnerships with (inter)national art houses, the organisation invests in the structural development of artists and their work. Moussem contributes to the interculturalization of the Flemish and Brussels arts scene and focuses on a diverse and urban audience.