Casper Fitzhue

Picture this: Earth, after years of wars and industrial spillage, toxic waste and climatic imbalance, the systematic annihilation of bees.
A near or distant future, where all this became too much, resulting in the destruction of all organic plant life.

That is the imaginary space/time in which this project was conceived.

Because we miss things which are beautiful and, unfortunately, we miss them most when they are gone, what would it look like if future Man attempted to build monuments to flowers from the scraps of the same technology that killed them?

During the 60s and 70s, the general feeling was one of optimism for our automated future. Today, the press antagonises robots. Optimal Prime explores the ambivalent nature of humanity’s hopes for its future versus the mainly negative portrayal of it in popular news. It is primarily sculptural and material-led (made only from coloured plastic and metal, both non-biodegradable).

Optimal Prime was selected by the curators at BredaPhoto 2016 as a highlight and used as material for an educational program in the Netherlands. There, over the course of 6 weeks, school children built and photographed similar small-scale sculptures. To better understand the intentions behind the photos, the goal of the program, just like the goal of the work, had to do with the manufacture and politics of hope.

explores how working together to commemorate one singular event - a personal heartbreak - can generate an entire œuvre.

OB-SO stands for the space between solace (finding comfort in someone, or something) and obsolescence (being prematurely released or replaced). In that sense, it is as an emotional space charged with displacement, fragility, and a feeling of mourning or deep loss. Working with musicians, dancers, videographers, 3D designers and sportspeople, the project comprises of a series of stand-alone outcomes that have spread the past two years, since the summer of 2016: a book, a musical performance in Extra City, a 3,83m scroll containing an original story, etc.

What they have as a common thread is that they start from the same textual source: a series of poems written in the summer of 2016.

Trans-disciplinary, this project is ongoing, as new collaborators join in and others leave. So far it has attracted South Korean artist Ji Kwon, Belarusian photographer Alexey Shlyk, French-Belgian choreographer Olympe Tits, NY dancer Raymond Pinto, German performer and movement director Jonathan Franz, audio artists Maxime Quardon (France) and Ben Tanghe (Belgium), an Afghani wrestler from the local Antwerp club Borz, and an 18-year old weightlifting champion whose parents once moved all the way from Congo.

are the result of a 2-year exchange with illustrator Alexander Voutchkov.
Within physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two or more waves overlap to form a resulting wave of greater, lower, or the same amplitude. Taking this waveform principle as base for their collaboration, the two worked by avoiding obvious solutions to the mix of illustration and photography (e.g. Voutchkov drew with coloured light inside a darkroom filled with soap bubbles or designed tattoo concepts to be used as light sources.)

In the usual exchange of what we call creative collaboration, two or more parties - artists, institutions, etc. - collude their visions towards the end goal of producing final pieces.
One could say the resulting work takes precedence over the act of collaboration itself, with the silent understanding that it is equal or greater than the skills of its parts.

We eschew this by not working hand in hand and only slightly interfering. Acknowledging the fact that the results yielded can be either better, worse, or just as good as if we were working alone.

is a select selection of individual words and works, commissioned pieces, successful accidents, and one-off wonders.

Because not everything is a series.

NOT WORRYING ABOUT THE DAMAGE YOU DO BY JUST STANDING THERE
An installation that invites the viewer to walk all over it. Also a self-portrait in 3D space.

ENDING WAIT
Ending Wait it a sound piece in the style of guided meditations aimed at helping you find release from historical waiting. Listen to it here or download it to listen in the comfort of your own home. Or share it with others, help them free themselves of waiting.

THE INDECISIVE MOMENT
Picture this: An interactive performance on photography and the photographic as an act of waiting. Or more precisely, against the act of waiting.
Picture this: You’ve been waiting your whole life and you don’t even know it.
Picture this: A release method from the slumber of modernisms with 3 concentric circles which expand or close in to allow you to focus on a moment, to speed up or slow down, to make it all lighter or darker.

The Indecisive Moment was a performance written in 2015 and performed on January 3rd 2016, in De Lange Zaal. The text linked the 3 rings of the camera (focus, aperture, and shutter speed) with 3 types of waiting experienced by all people (waiting excitedly, waiting fearfully or anxiously, and a priori waiting - or waiting that we are born into, and might not be aware we are experiencing).

It was a collective half-hour experience that left some people in the dark and illuminated others.

A SIMPLE CHOICE
A reaction piece to the November 2015 Paris attack and the discussions it kicked off in the media.