The Greek-Canadian artist Constantine Ferreo (57), already for many years living in Antwerp, has in association with the online art platform Anina, set up a virtual internetparcours with animations. The animations are mostly inspired by poetry, politics and Europe, items that during is long-time career constantly are reappearing. The virtual internetparcours will be presented on October 15th, at 8 p.m. in the new ‘Theater aan de Stroom’ (TAS) at the Ijzerenwaag 6 in Antwerp.

Already as a teenager, Constantine Ferreo left Greece, disgusted and terrorised by the notorious and repressive colonel’s regime. This was the start of a journey that would bring him through many Europeon countries and led him eventually to Canada, where he graduated at the Ontario College of Art. At that moment he already started his artistic career, with exibitions in the Canadian gallery-circuit. Most of his work had a background of and was inspired by the mental scars that had been left by het impact of the Greek dictatorship.

Twenty years ago, Constantine Ferreo decided to move from Canada for Antwerp, one of the European cities that had left a big impression on the artist. Also in Antwerp and other Belgian cities, the Greek-Canadian became a well known member of the art scene, with a vast series of exhibitions. In Antwerp, he took part in projects such as ‘Stad aan de Stroom’, the ‘Zomer van de Fotografie’ and the ‘Steenfestival’. Constantine Ferreo was also one of the first that began experimenting with digital forms of art, because he’s not someone who let put boundaries to him by one medium. In line with this open approach of art, he started also a collaboration with the online art platform Anina.

In this collaboration, Constantine Ferreo brings a virtual internetparcours with six animations. Again, he uses some of his favorite items and inspiration sources, such as politics, poetry and the European idea. Doing this, the artist stresses also in his virtual art that the content and the message is the key element of his work. Constantine Ferreo considers this project also as a art-in-proces, with adding and replacing content. He even doesn’t exclude that he will create with this online content a cross-over to the domain of the offline art.

After the opening in the ‘Theater aan de Stroom’, the virtual internetparcours can be seen on the website www.anina.be. In the archive, one can also visit the former projects of Anina.be.

Virtual Internetparcours

Saterday, may 10th 2008, in the Internationaal Perscentrum Vlaanderen (IPV), situated at Grote Markt in Antwerp, a new exhibition was started on the internetsite anina.be. This time photographer Luc Peeters (54) from Lier appeared as guest with an online series with photographs about ‘Inside Tibet’. After the opening, the exhibition can be visited on the internetsite anina.be. In the archives of the site, one can discover all the previous exhibitions.

Luc Peeters is well known in the Antwerp and Flemish world of the press. After he had graduated at the Narafi in Brussels and had set up a press agency, with his employees he provided many years photographic work about the most different themes to Flemish newspaper and magazines. After some time, he specialised himself in human interest and started working with international press agencies. But at the end, he had his fill of all the trouble and strife of these stories.

Then Luc Peeters switched to corporate photography and was one of the first who also embraced digital photography. At this moment he is extremely interested in eventphotography. It’s not the official photoshoots at concerts that he’s looking for, but rather the way the artist himself is experiencing the event.

Next to the eventphotography, Luc Peeters also continues to do traditionel studiowork and takes part in artprojects, among others on cooperation with Robert Groslot. “But I remain mainly an all ronder,” stresses Luc Peeters. “I refuse to put myself in one box, but for me the technical aspect of the photgraph will remain always a very big priority.”

Luc Peeters won the very first photograph price of the International Press Centrum Flanders, but for him the best accolades he got for his work, are the pictures on the first pages of newspapers and magazines and his cliënts coming back again and again.

For his cooperation with Anina, Luc peeters choose for a photographic commentary concerning Tibet. “The images are already some years old, but they have in fact lost still nothing of their topicality,” he comments his choice. “Moreover, the pictures are offering an unexpected view of Tibet. There are a lot of stories going around concering the Tibetan society, but nobody really knows what’s going on there.”

But in his exhibition, the photographer refuses tot present himself as an antagonist of one the concerned parties. “I show exclusively pictures of the inland of Tibet,” explains Luc Peeters. “There one doesn’t notice very much about of the Chinese colonisation, which is mostly concentrated in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa.”

The exhibition ‘Inside Tibet’ can also be seen in the virtual world, at www.managing21.taatu.com.

Inside Tibet: photography

On Friday January 11th at 8 p.m. the online newsmagazine Managing21.be and the art platform Anina.be open the virtual Mediacafé Managing21. This happens with the collaboration of the virtual community Taatu. The official opening of the mediacafe will be held in the Internatinal Press centre Flandres (IPV) on the Grote Markt 40 in Antwerp. From then of, the mediacafe will be daily accessible for newsheadlines and online artprojects.

The online art platform Anina.be is about one year active and has during this periode presented a large pallet of online artexpressions. The archive of this events can be consulted on the website Anina.be. The online newsmagazine Managing21.be exist about three year and brings daily a selection news from the socio-economic environment. At present, the magazine has about 15.000 readers a day.

In collaboration with the virtual community Taatu Anina.be (www.anina.be) and Managing21.be
(www.managing21.be) decided to start a joint-venture and to open together the Mediacafé Managing21.be. This initiative wants to present daily newsheadlines from the magazine and spends attention at the artprojects from Anina.be. In the long run, also videoreportages will rugular be added and guests will invited to change ideas about some specific items.

Taatu (www.taatu.com) develops and manages since 2005 a unique multimedia virtual community-concept. This concept is based on 3 D isometric technology, that integrates the functionalities from Web 2.0. The platform is free accessible via all internet explorer-programs. Downloads are not need. The virtual environment is protected, specialy for young users. The members can personalise and arrange their avatars by purchasing TAT’s, the internal currency from Taatu.

Taatu offer its members the possibility to create a new online social live, based on an interactive community. Taatu is also open for partnership and advertising. A nearly endless series of promo-products is available. The world from Taatu is divided in mutual corresponding, French-speaking, Ditch-speaking and English speaking language communities.

On the opening the Taatu-project wil commented by Jean-Philippe Dumont, director production & project management from the virtual community. Also there is an action planned from Flemish songwriter-saxplayer Walter Baeken, member from the Scora quartet and The Rythm Junks, the group formed around harmonica-virtuoso Steven De Bruyn. Walter Baeken composed ‘Avatar’, a work that will presented on the opening event. Afterwhile, the public gets the opportunity to explore the virtual world and the Mediacafé Managing21, where one can meet its notorious barshrink.

After the opening, the Mediacafé Managing21 can be accessible on the website www.managing21.taatu.com.

The online art platform Anina.be presents work from the Antwerp artist Katie Lagast (40). It is the first time that the artist has set up an online artproject. Before she was especially active on spatial area, with among others installations, drawings and objects. The vernissage of the exhibition took place at the International Press Centre Flandres in Antwerp.

Katie Lagast studied graphics at the Sint-Maria Institute in Antwerp and ceramics at the Sint-Lucas institute in Ghent. As an artist, Katie Lagast took part in several exhibitions such as Error One in Antwerp, Jan Colle in Ghent and the passage from Sint Lucas and she also took part on the K_Filmfestival in Antwerp. Next to her artistic career, she is also teacher at the Art Academy of Arendonk.

In collaboration with the online artplatform Anina.be Katie Lagast makes now her appearance as an internetartist. In this project, she brings among others ‘Candybirds’, a series about direct cinema, where old film material, mixed with negatives from screen print and packaging foil, forms the basics. This all was put together to a new whole, without making a definite story, making it possible for the visitor to fill it in by himself.

Also the artist brings four videoanimations concerning the city. Two of the four copies were shown in one of the Silvertopblocks in Antwerp. In this video the artist starts from street maps and typical city sounds. But also in this project the visitor must participate in the imagery and fill it further in by himself.

The exhibition is shown on www.anina.be. There it is also possible to see previous projects from the artplatform.

Candybirds

The online art project presents the videoproject ‘Oscarette’ during the months of september and october. It shows the work of four Flemish artists who presents different styles of videos. Participants are Sophie Vanhomwegen, Sara Claes, Nel Aerts and Laure-Anne Jacobs. Oscarette is a forerunner of a larger online video festival in a virtual world that Anina has planned for next year’s spring. As usal, the vernissage of the exhibition took place in the International Press Centre Flandres in Antwerp.

Sophie Vanhomwegen considers video as the medium in which she can express her creativity the best and where she can experiment with pictures and movements, with their colour and composition. Her videowork forms no aim in itself, but has a small hidden motive. She wants to stimulate specific emotions and ideas at peoples. Sophie Vanhomwegen does not want to propose her opinion or personal knowledge to the viewer, but offers him the freedom to make his own discoveries.

Sophie Vanhomwegen studied on the Academy of Ghent and took part in exhibitions such as Kunstbende in Koksijde (2006), Transcript in Koksijde (2006), Xpo KANT in Ghent (2006), Quartier Excentrique in Ghent (2007), Making Movies in Antwerp (2007), Kunstbende in Ghent (2007) en Bastart in Houthalen-Helchteren (2007). During Oscarette she brings the video films ‘La Lumière’, ‘She and Her’ and ‘Ma Vision sur L’Art’.

The Belgian photographer Sara Claes presents in association with Liesbeth Marit and Ine Claes a film which was made as a recording of a performance. The performance forms a search in contact, feelings, sense, love and missing. The artist favours the online art direction because the internet brings people together and in the same time creates a more distant manner of communication and viewing at each other. In a certain way, the performance acts is about the forced gathering of people.

In 2003 Sara Claes successful finished her studies at the Hoge School Sint-Lukas in Brussel. In 2005 en 2006 she did a post-gradual course at the Hoger Instituut voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp. In 2006 and 2007 she got a grant from the Flemish Community to support her works. Sara Claes participated in different exhibitions in Antwerp, Malines, Dendermonde, Sint-Truiden, Amsterdam and Herford. With Oscarette Sara Claes presents the video ‘Les Soeurs’.

Nel Aerts is participating in Oscarette with video-art that in a documentary stuly is zooming in at a fiction like phenomenon. Limited, symmetric cubical forms in a monumental non-space are inhabited by indefinable creatures. It creates a mutual exchange between composition and symmetric en leads to a typical human disorientated feeling. With her camera, Nel Aerts investigates this strange event, asking the question if it is possible to build a livable composition in such an anonymous living accommodation.

Nel Aerts studies at the Academie of the Hoge School Ghent, where she is finishing her education bachelor new media. She already participated in different exhibitions and some works of the young artist can be found on the internet. On Oscarette, she is showing the video ‘Composition of Inhabitants’. The music for the video is composed bij Simon Halsberghe.

Laure-Anne Jacobs, artist and creator of the project Anina.be, is showing the video’s ‘Rainwater’, ‘Disconnection’ and ‘Momento’. The video’s are showing details of everyday life and build with these little elements short videostories.

Anina.be wants to create an interaction between artists from different disciplines, but also an interaction between the art and the public.

Oscarette

On June, 28th at 20 o’clock, the Glober-project of the Antwerp artist Koen Huysmans will be presented in the International Press Centre Flanders at the Grote Markt 40 in Antwerp. The Glober-project forms a part of the two-monthly exhibition cycle of the online art platform Anina.be (Antwerp Internet Art). Glober is the subject of the fifth edition of Anina.

For his project, artist Koen Huysmans created a Glober-figure, a plastic puppet which his creator hopes during the next months will be wandering through the whole world. Glober is a figure in synthetic material, of which different copies in several colours were produced. The intention is tourists will take a copy along on their holiday and take a picture of Glober on the road or at the holiday destination.

The pictures will forwarded and placed on the internet by the artist. In this way the next months an online exposition will be created. The exhibition runs simultaneously at the internet sites www.anina.be and www.glober.be. At the opening of the exhibition in the International Press Centre Flanders, the Glober-family will be presented to the
world.

Each Glober-figure get also his own passport, as a result of which each copy becomes unique, with also its own colour and its own christian name. On a forum the artist collects also travel tales and funny hints. In the past, Koen Huysmans was especially active as an
art painter and started with Bart Bourdiaudhy the collective Antwerp artstudio Coat03. Koen Huysmans is an autodidact, but starts in the near feature a training at the Antwerp academy.

The music on the website www.glober.be was provided by the Antwerp band Nudex. At the official presentation of the Glober-family, one of the bandmembers will perfom an acoustic version of this music. A Glober-figure, especially created for the band, will accompany Nudex also on his next tour.

Anina.be (Antwerp Internet Art) is an online art platform that every two months offers an artist the possibility to develop a digital art project. In the past, Anina worked with different artistic expressions such as computergraphics, photography, video, sound art and
interactive media. The projects must, however, created especially for the internet. Anina collaborates with Belgian and foreign artists.

Glober-project

XXX

On Friday May 4th at 8 p.m., the Antwerp International Press Centre Flanders shows the virtual exhibition ‘Life Cycle’ by the artists Laure-Anne Jacobs (imaging) and Missfit (sound design). ‘Life Cycle’ is the fourth edition of a virtual exhibition series of the online art project Anina.be. The new exhibition presents the life cycle of people in digital imaging and sounds.

The exhibition ‘Life Cycle’ contains two parts. The first part – In The City – shows the visitor the confrontation between the daily live in the city with contemporary or recent world events. All these images are digitally mastered. The second part – Flash Greetings – shows the life cycle of the human being with ten portraits, also digitally mastered.

The models who are showed in Flash Greetings get also the possibility to spread their portraits as virtual greeting-cards into their online communities and the internet. Flash Greetings has an obvious interactive undertone, with online visitors getting the opportunity to pick up images from a moving screen, puzzling together a portrait and explore the virtual installation, following his own route. As a result, the exhibition becomes a personal experience for each visitor.

Anina.be is an initiative of Laure-Anne Jacobs. For the first time, she shows her own work on the virtual platform. Anina.be wants to create an interaction between artists from different disciplines, but also an interaction between the art and the public. For this edition, Laure-Anne Jacobs created a cooperation with sound artist Missfit (pseudonym for Aernoudt Jacobs), who created sound-effects for the images.

Missfit works with sounds from the world. For this exhibition, the artist choose for sounds from the surroundings of the daily world. Other examples from his work can be found on the website www.tmrx.org. Anina (Antwerp Internet Art) started as a ditigtal platform to offer artists a virtual Antwerp gallery and does not have the intention to focus only on local work.

The exhibition ‘Life Cycle’ starts with an introduction by Koen Betsens from the concept bureau OneDotOnly. He will comment some recent and future developments in the field of the interactivity of the internet and digital technology. From May, 4 th, the exhibition ‘Life Cycle’ is shown on the website www.anina.be, where one also can discover the previous projects.

Part I: In the City

Part II: Flash Greetings

XXX

Untill the end of April the Antwerp artist Janna Beck (28) presents her photographic project ‘(Un) reasonable Doubt’on the digital art platform Anina.be. In this project, Janna Beck will show a series of pictures which are the consequence of analogous picture manipulation, where the use of analogous technology at the moment of the prerecordings leads to a distortion of reality.

“Deliberately I choose for the use of non-digital manipulation,” the artist comments her work. “The analogous moment-manipulation is created during the prerecordings themselves, thanks to the use of techniques such as the imperfection, toycams, expired films and the improper use of dia film and filters. The objects of my work are the man-made objects around me, the metamorphic human surroundings, many times a fragmentated reality or details from a larger whole.”

In ‘(Un)reasonable Doubt’ Janna Beck uses a self made lens to create imperfection. “I try to bring the surreal of the reality to the forefront, to show how nice the track of the development can be,” says the artist. “I am always in search of techniques to do this kind of experiments, without using digital possibilities. I want to bring honest objects to the public. To create this, I’m experimenting with cameras, lenses and film.”

“Nature and landscapes are really and nicely in itself, but plastic, concrete, metal need frequently to be disguised, to be examined by a euphemetical optical device and being stripped of its visually restless surroundings,” Janna Beck stresses. “That is what I do. I show the things as I want them to be seen, to reach compositions and colours which seem to come from an imaginary world.”

Janna Beck studied College of Department Design and Sciences in Antwerp and specialised herself further in an exchange project at the Escola Superior the Artes and Design at Porto. She gained a degree in product development. At this moment, she is a professor webdesign at the Urban Nijverheidsschool Antwerp and architectural shaping and 3D with the Kunsthumaniora Antwerp. She is alwso a guest lecturer multimedia to the Academie voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen.

As an artist, Janna Beck was involved in projects for Europalia Bulgaria (2002), Europalia Italy (2003) and Europalia Russia (2005). She also cooperated in the exhibition Natures Wisdom in the Belgian pavilion at the World Exhibition in Nagoya, Japan. She also particapted in the travelling photo-exihibition Photoview with the Center voor Beeldexpressie.

She exhibited also in several galleries and at this moment she takes part in the travelling exhibition ‘It is Eye’, an organisation of the Fotografisch Circuit Vlaanderen. Janna Beck also cooperated in the Cultureel Jaarboek 2003 of the city Antwerp and the book Stadsgedichte by Tom Lanoye. Work of the artist also features on the internetsite www.jannabeck.be.
XXX

Thursday 26 October 2006, in the International Press Centre Franders, the online art project Antwerp Internet Art (Anina) made its debute. Anina is a virtual art gallery and brings every two months an online exibition. The website features different kinds of internet art. Initiator of the project is the Antwerp artist and photographer Laure-Anne Jacobs.

The first artist that participated in the project, was Antwerp based Kris Van Echelpoel (44), who designed a special series of computer graphics for the Anina website. Second artist was Geert Wachtelaer (Aalst) with a video-project. This season also will future an audioproject of Arnoudt Jacobs (Brussels) and a series of photography in cooperation with a number of press photographers.

During the months of July and Austus, there will be a special summer edition of Anina. During these months, Anina will offer space for experimenting to young artists of art students.

Anina is Antwerp based, but has the ambition to feature local, national and international artists. At this moment, the website has contacts with artists in Antwerpen, Brussels and the Netherlands.

Not unlike as the traditional exhibition, Anina holds also each time a vernissage on a physical location. The first two events took place in the Antwerp Press House at the Grote Markt of Antwerp. In the future, locations can be deversified, possibly adapted to the content of the exhibition.

Anina is also building an archive, where the previous exhibitions are being stored and are available for the visitor. This way, Anina wants to create an extensive collection of internet art. The works remain the exclusive property of the artist.

website: www.anina.be
XXX