Emma van der Put ©

2. EMMA VAN DER PUT     

   Lives and works in Brussels,
   represented by tegenboschvanvreden, Amsterdam.
   
   The films of Emma van der Put stem from a close visual examination of urban public spaces. In her position as an observer, she tries to maintain a balance between empathy and detachment. Even though she is physically part of the crowd, the telescopic lens of her camera creates a distance; a private space within the public domain.
   
   Van der Put’s work emerges from long-term investigations into specific public sites. Over a period of several years, she repeatedly visits a location, taking photographs that she later uses to create her films. With an interest in the surfaces that construct the public sphere and its ‘public facing’, she meticulously traces the environment with her camera, assembling a large archive of photographs. By zooming in and slowly scanning over details of the material during montage, she edits her archive of images into cinematographic photo collages.
   
   Van der Put’s films take the position of a floating bodiless eye, intensifying the glance of an incidental passer-by. With an interest in how the future is visualized in the public space of the city - through digital renderings and building plans that are hung in plain sight – van der Put’s films question the viability of these envisioned forecasts. Her films reflect on what these public signs could tell us about our current wishes for the future, and wonders for whom exactly this imagined future is intended. 
   
   In addition to the films she makes, the intensive process of working on site has also led to several side projects that have surrounded and impacted Van der Put’s practice.


   
   Brussels Architecture Film Festival

   In 2021 Emma van der Put and Ingel Vaikla were invited by urban.brussels and City3 to curate the Brussels Architecture Film Festival. The festival took place over the course of two evenings and consisted of two film programs that brought together audiovisual works from different era’s, genres and makers, looking at how the inhabitants of Brussels respond to the historical remnants and (power) constructions that the city and its inhabitants inherited from the past. By giving voice to a multitude of perspectives, the filmmakers show that historical narratives are not fixed and never singular. 
   
   Blue Screen

   Since 2019, together with Chloé Malcotti and more recently Alasdair Asmussen Doyle, Emma van der Put curates and organizes Blue Screen. Blue Screen is a bimonthly screening program taking place at the collaborative artists’ studio Level Five in Brussels. The program focuses on visual artists working with film and video. Every Blue Screen has an ‘artist in focus’ and in response to the practice of this invited artist the curators compose a program of short films by other filmmakers. The invited artist in focus proposes a next guest for the following program. In this way, the selection of the artists in focus derives from a dialogue with the previous guests and is thereby aspiring to create new encounters within the field of film, video and visual arts. In context of the live events, Blue Screen is screening an additional film of the artist in focus online for the duration of a month in the Screening Room of GLEAN magazine, accompanied by an interview.