Survey: Ives Maes

Why do you teach?

I joined the PhD in the Arts program at Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Ghent (KASK) in 2012. It’s a six-year program, and I devoted 70 percent of my time to research, with the other 30 percent spent teaching. I led masterclasses and seminars about my own research in addition to working with students in the ateliers. That is how I began teaching; I had a small assignment in the visual arts department, and I later adapted my research into a seminar called the “Architecture of Photography.” After I obtained my PhD in 2018, I continued in postdoctoral research, which at our school, remarkably enough, requires another six years of study.

The postdoctoral program at KASK allows an artist to fully deploy previous research with total freedom, which is rather unique. That is why I am enrolled. Research has always been integral to my artistic practice, and this seemed like an ideal path for me. And within postdoctoral research, the line between research and artistic work is very thin. Time is split equally between conducting research and teaching. Consequently, postdoctoral researchers are highly integrated into the school, which sets them up for a possible professorship and even more ongoing research. I currently co-coordinate the photography master’s program, give masterclasses, and maintain my teaching assignment in the visual arts studios. It can be a bit much sometimes, but I must admit I really like teaching. I enjoy holding this position in tandem with being a student and researcher at the university myself. I have a staff membership card as well as a student card!

What was your “Architecture of Photography” seminar about? Was this course born from your own artistic research and practice?

“The Architecture of Photography” is also the title of my dissertation. My research focused on architectural display strategies for photography, starting with a historical case study of camera obscura pavilions and ending with an examination of the photodetectors at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. In 2008, I began photographing buildings and structures that were built for world’s fairs, and the idea for my dissertation emerged from that project. These utopian architectures were supposed to be demolished, but many remained in place. I wanted to capture their remains, which now look rather dystopian. While conducting research for this project, I came across many exhibition views of photographic installations that I had never encountered before—and that had clearly been overlooked by the established histories of art, photography, and architecture.

As had been these unique pavilions, which were built around their photographic content and interior display. These photographs were reflected in their pavilions’ exteriors as well, designs made to be photographed. Many of the images that captured these expos are nearly as old as photography itself. Photographic documentation of visual art did not become common until much later, but exhibition views of World’s Fairs were there right from the start, and it was not a coincidence they emerged alongside the invention of photography. World’s Fairs began to crop up across Europe soon after people realized that they could register temporary buildings. In the official report for London’s Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in 1851, I found notes indicating that the Crystal Palace was designed from the very beginning with its own photographic documentation in mind; its cast-iron and plate-glass exterior was chosen to provide photographers with ample light to capture the interior exhibitions.

When I learned that, everything shifted a bit. A camera obscura pavilion is not just a container for the photographic phenomenon. It is an architectural trope, of which the premise is that architecture is inherently a part of photography. Without a dark room and an aperture that projects outside images inside, there would be no photography. And photography played a very important role in constructing space since the Industrial Revolution. Louis Daguerre’s Diorama building devised the idea of photography. The Crystal Palace was purpose-built to be photographed—to be a photographic studio. Étienne Jules-Marey is considered the inventor of photo-sculptures, but his most pioneering invention, the vast testing grounds of his photo facilities, have been surprisingly disregarded. El Lissitzky produced the first hybrid photo-installation for the Pressa exhibition, a small World’s Fair in Cologne in 1928. At the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris, Charlotte Perriand made the iconic Pavillon de l’Agriculture, an open-air photo-structure made from giant black and white prints painted over by Fernand Léger. And between the 1950s and ’70s, the United States Information Agency created fabulous photographic pavilions—for the US Pavilion for Brussels Expo 58, the American National Exhibition in Moscow, the US Pavilions for Montreal Expo 67, and Osaka Expo 70, to name a few—designed by some of the most important American artists and architects, such as Buckminster Fuller, Charles and Ray Eames, and Robert Rauschenberg. This research was important for the continuation of my own work, for venturing deeper into formal aspects of photography and into syntheses of installation, sculpture, drawing, and painting.

Interior view of the United States of America Pavilion at the Exposition Universelle et Internationale de Bruxelles, 1958. Design: Robert Brownjoh, Ivan Chermayeff, and Thomas Geismar.

How did you transpose this research into a seminar, methodologically speaking?

The seminar focused on this history, and I actively involved my students in my research. We would discuss the relevance of case studies such as Richard Hamilton’s 1951 “Growth and Form” exhibition, Jeff Wall and Dan Graham’s Children’s Pavilion (1987), Ângela Ferreira’s For Mozambique (2008), Simon Starling’s Plant Room (2008), and Mariana Castillo Deball’s 2011 installation in the pavilion at Museo Experimental El Eco. But I would also share my struggle to implement this research within my practice. The seminar drew students from all departments—even drama and music—who were in search of an expanded practice. Le Corbusier’s Philips Pavilion, shown at Expo 58 in Brussels, and the work of Anthea Hamilton, became very relevant. Both examples accomplish a remarkable synthesis of architectural, sculptural, and photographical elements with moving images, film, music, and performance.

In the masterclasses, we took a more hands-on approach, creating and installing works in our own exhibition space. It became very important for students to discuss and share doubts and decisions about their own practices, in addition to questioning the political implications of the historical examples at hand. Architectural displays for photography are a versatile medium, used for very different purposes. It’s important that they know the meaning that sticks to the language they wield.

What sort of language do you encounter being used without awareness of the “meaning that sticks” to it? How do these semantics interact with the historical materials and political questions that you introduce in the classroom?

Many of my photography students emulate Wolfgang Tillmans’s hanging method, but many of them are unaware of this display strategy’s long history. In a 2008 interview, Julie Ault asked Tillmans about the resemblance of his installations to Edward Steichen’s “Family of Man” exhibition of 1955. He answered that he had long been unaware of that exhibition, but that “despite obvious connections, [it was] not that relevant.” 1 Tillmans had clearly benefited from the fact that a generation or two had completely avoided many of the tactics he used, such as hanging many seemingly incongruous images close together. Various photo-conceptualists like Richard Hamilton, John Baldessari, and Dennis Adams converted these tainted display strategies from propagandistic devices to an arena for free play, laying a foundation for Tillmans. Before Steichen used it, this display strategy had already served multiple political purposes, as Benjamin Buchloh makes clear in his seminal 1984 October article “From Faktura to Factography.”

Inspired by the seventeenth and eighteenth-century salon style of hanging artworks in ensemble, Lissitzky adapted their display techniques to photography. He began using them in his designs for the Soviet Union’s pavilions at various international fairs. Lissitzky‘s methods were adopted by the Bauhaus artists and then effortlessly assimilated by the Nazis. Herbert Bayer designed exhibitions and pamphlets for the fascist regime, and after fleeing Germany, he introduced his style of assemblage to the United States when he started designing exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1942, he collaborated with Edward Steichen on the war propaganda exhibition “Road to Victory.” Steichen went on to curate “The Family of Man,” which sported a very similar design by the architect Paul Rudolph. New innovations by the photo-conceptualists of the 1960s and the spread of television gradually released photography exhibitions from their association with propaganda. I believe it is important to be aware of that. Students often use preexisting forms and signs without knowing their origins or accumulated connotations. I try to make them aware of these sensitive nuances, so the young artists at least have the choice to use or abuse them, to avoid or confront them, to reference them correctly, or even to make an educated choice to ignore them and hang stuff up either way.

It sounds enigmatic, but I will answer your second question with an example I once used in class. The Road to Victory exhibition, mounted less than six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, had the propagandistic intention of rallying the American public in favor of US participation in World War II. Included in the exhibition was a huge, printed photograph of an America First Committee gathering in the late 1930s. This isolationist pressure group—whose members often expressed anti-Semitic and pro-Fascist views and openly displayed Nazi symbolics—influenced the polices that held the US at bay. I think it is very important to be aware of this history when we encounter the phrase “America First” being used today.

View of Road to Victory, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1942. © MoMA.

Are there aspects of teaching and studying at KASK that strike you as unique to the institution, student body, and broader culture? You’ve mentioned a great deal of broader European and American cultural history—does higher education in Belgium commonly peer outward?

Belgium is a very small country, so we have to look beyond. Our research department is quite unique, because of its integration within the school and the close connections it fosters with students. Demographically speaking, our students are slightly different than those in other countries; in Belgium, we have a social system that really supports the underprivileged. School is nearly free—certainly by comparison with the United States. In some German states, school is entirely free, but people must pay high health care fees, which are nearly nonexistent in Belgium. The risk to start an artist’s career is reduced to a minimum. Even if your career fails, you can still count on the welfare system. Consequently, the influx of students is very diverse and inclusive, and higher learning is not only for the privileged or the extremely gifted. The Erasmus Programme also brings an abundance of exchange students from across Europe.2 It creates an interesting cocktail and I’m always happy to see some of these youngsters flourish when given a chance.

Perhaps it speaks so much to me because I was once one of them: no money, and perhaps not that gifted. But stubborn! I wasn’t satisfied with my own schooling, although some mentors, such as Stefan Hertmans, have shown me the true power of teaching. As part of my new position at KASK, I work on our institute’s international relations with other art schools outside of the Erasmus Programme to seek out schools and lecturers for collaborations, exchanges, studio visits, and so forth. We have organized some interesting workshops with external guests such as Simon Starling and Thomas Hirshhorn, and have collaborated with the Photo Museum in Antwerp with Susan Meiselas and Liz Johnson Artur. It keeps things fresh. During the Covid lockdowns, I reached out to the artist and educator Carlos Vela-Prado, with whom I was in a show at Palazzo De’Toschi in Bologna some years ago. I asked him and a handful of other artists across the world to give online talks to our confined students. It wasn’t so easy with the time difference and the pandemic, but it was certainly generous and essential.

View of Master of Visual Arts student Layla Morando’s exhibition 123 Aspen, KASK School of Arts, Ghent, Belgium, 2023. © Sander Van Damme.

View of KASK Master of Photography student Awa Gaye’s exhibition Looking for Flowers, KASK School of Arts, Ghent, Belgium, 2024. © Awa Gaye.

View of KASK Master of Photography student Lisa Koo Gautama’s performance Gautama, KASK School of Arts, Belgium, 2023. © Lisa Koo Gautama.

View of Master of Visual Arts student Layla Morando’s exhibition 123 Aspen, KASK School of Arts, Ghent, Belgium, 2023. © Sander Van Damme.

Does your postdoctoral research at KASK have a predetermined end date? If so, how might your ongoing artistic, research, and teaching practices evolve or transform?

My postdoctoral research at KASK ends this October, but the work has become part of a larger whole. If not at KASK, it will find a new venue. I will also continue teaching at KASK over the next few years, keeping a part-time assignment in the visual arts studio.

I am working with Art Paper Editions to publish a series of small books on my research and the work that has come out of it. The first book will contain a lengthy conversation with the artist, writer, and curator David Campany, who was an invited jury member for my PhD defense. I have very much enjoyed being in a sheltered environment for such a long time and I do prefer to stay in it. I have come to view teaching as an elementary part of my life and work—sharing knowledge and passing on experience, that is. It keeps me awake, shelters me somewhat from the art-market machine. That being said, I am working on a new exhibition with Sofie Van de Velde Gallery in Antwerp for January. But my focus remains on institutional exhibitions, preferably with an educational component. I’m working on a large museum solo show for 2026, but also on a small solo show in an exhibition space attached to a university. All of these projects will feature new work that is a product of my postdoctoral research.

I have learned to recognize the potential of a school as a place of production, not only reflection. There is a lot of knowledge and equipment present, especially when you have access to a partner school of technology. Collaborating with students can also be very mutually beneficial. Last year I presented a large solo exhibition on my research at the KMSKA in Belgium. The KMSKA, or Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, had closed its doors for over ten years to undergo renovations and to add two new wings. For the reopening, I had the unique opportunity to spend over half a year installing my work, and for a whole semester, I involved students in the process, from decision-making and try-outs, to production and transport, to final installation. Students learned a lot about exhibition-making, and I received some pretty good advice from them in return. My teaching, research, and art practice have all become entangled, and this web has transformed me and my work substantially.