Wednesday evening in The Living Room
with Ans Mertens (STRT-Kit)
presenting “as i walk at leisure”

Arbeit.
I haven taken a job – serving coffee – and now take part in the economic exchange of time and money. I serve coffee to passengers enjoying their break in order to consume my own coffee and time off somewhere else.

In 1895 the brothers Lumière filmed the end of a working day. This seemingly monotonous moment between labour and leisure time was later projected with the sole purpose to entertain its audience. As a filmmaker Ans Mertens defines those moments as time vacuums and investigates them by playing with formal editing rhythms and camera choreographies.

The work of Ans Mertens revolves around the audience experience of duration and contemporary debates on labour and leisure time. Through this process she aims to understand the human strategies in organizing their personal environment and the process of artistic labour itself. How does the artist/filmmaker relate to his/her surroundings? What does materialisation mean in the context of observing the uneventful.

Ans Mertens (°1989) lives and works in Antwerp and Brussels.

STRT-Kit 2018
Jeroen Bocken, Céline Mathieu, Ans Mertens, Puck Vonk, Chloë Delanghe

STRT-Kit is an international development year-program for visual artists based in Antwerp by Studio Start in collaboration between AIR Antwerpen, (H)Art, Kunsthal Extra City and with the financial support from Stad Antwerpen and the Flemish Community.

Artists: Ans Mertens