The School of Speculative Documentary

The School of Speculative Documentary is an initiative of Belgian photographers Max Pinckers and Michiel De Cleene, playwright Thomas Bellinck and filmmaker An van Dienderen. Together they established a research group at KASK & Conservatorium in Ghent, which acts as an interdisciplinary meeting place to question the documentary act.

How can we rethink the documentary in art in terms of content, form and methodology? How can we be inspired by the paradox that as soon as you try to document reality, it immediately evaporates and mutates? How do we pry the documentary loose from its division into disciplines and develop strategies averse to formatted market thinking? How do we take responsibility for mechanisms that determine what can or cannot be observed, seen, heard, said, thought, made, done? And how do documentary filmmakers grapple with their own (power) positions and blind spots?