David Bergé: What Remains Is Future

Opening hours: Tuesday–Friday 6–10pm, Saturday–Sunday 2–6pm

What Remains Is Future is an installation / book by David Bergé responding to the since 1981 ongoing archive of choreographer Marc Vanrunxt (Belgium, 1960). 

For the installation What Remains Is Future, artist David Bergé spatially activates, transforms and recomposes elements of Vanrunxt’s archive to turn them into a multi-layered tactile experience. Archival photographs are projected and then erased by light. Movement instructions found in the notebooks, commented on by Bergé, intertwine with music and rescaled replicas of scenographic objects designed for Vanrunxt over the years by Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven, Koenraad Dedobbeleer, Kristof van Gestel, Katleen Vinck and David Bergé himself.

Approaching the archive as a resonance, David Bergé, long time friend and collaborator of the choreographer, creates a space for the audience to capture its echoes in their own pace.  

The book What Remains Is Future is an extension of the installation and contains new interventions by Marc Vanrunxt and Lieven De Boeck, as well as contributions by Yasmina Reggad, Trajal Harrell and Gaia Carabillo. Publisher is Big black mountain the darkness never ever comes and the graphic design was done by Studio Christos Lialios, Athens.

conceived by David Bergé; with contributions by Ilan Manouach (sound design) and Gaia Carabillo (production); commissioned and produced by Kunst/Werk in co-production with Platform 0090; funded by the Arts Council of the Flemish Community; Support STUK House for Dance, Image & Sound.

David Bergé (1983) practices photography without taking pictures.

His work evolves around his ongoing investigation in the immersive qualities of photography and the practice of photography as an all inclusive experience.  By radically liberating his praxis from all its conventional tools or classical forms of appearance, he creates space to return to the very essence of his intention as a photographer: sharing the instant experience of a specific moment in time and space.

David Bergé instead uses the body as a central device to catch his imagery and invites his audience to share this experience. The body as a traveling medium, measuring rod or navigator, physical seismograph of our inner archive. In short: the complex machine that enables us to merge the tactile, intellectual, emotional and aesthetic into one multi-layered picture. The body as a multi-dimensional camera.

Understanding photography as a performative act to generate a (collective) experience, David Bergé has been experimenting with a wide range of formats and outcomes such as the Silent Walk Pieces, publications, installations and performance lectures.

In What Remains Is Future, archival photographs are projected, than erased by light in a physical way.  

He published a book with MER. Paper Kunsthalle (2015) and his work has been presented at various international art centers including CAC Vilnius (2015); NETWERK Center for Contemporary Art, Aalst (2012, 2015); SALT, Istanbul (2011); Maison Particulière, Brussels (2014), Goethe Institution New Delhi (2011) and Extra-City kunsthal, Antwerp (2015, 2016).  

He has been invited to artist residence programs around the world, such as the Cape Cod Modern House Trust in Wellfleet, USA; The Ars Aevi collection in Sarajevo; geoAIR in Tbilisi, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and Saari residency of the Kone Foundation in Finland.

David Bergé lives and works in Athens and Brussels.