Drawing from seemingly endlessly proliferating word sequences—which arise from a single word through a simple rule and through association—Veva Leye creates montages that present the same words in completely different ways. Uncannily coagulating, these word images expand and contract in an accordion-like movement. A similar rhythm characterizes Jelle Martens’ (photo)graphic registrations that combine fragments, reproductions and trivial observations into layered prints and drawings. Every print layer, every drawing operates as a temporary frame bringing together images that only temporarily solidify, overlap, and fall apart again. Image and language tumble along, stumble upon. Letters form words form images reading looking.

‘Fabricate Nature’ is an exploration of the way in which we, as human beings, relate to a natural world that is becoming increasingly distorted, yet on which we have simultaneously come to depend to a great extent. This alienation is visible everywhere. The forests we walk through are often man-made and consist of monocultures that take their toll on flora and fauna. The food on shop shelves contains ingredients whose names we can barely read or understand. The landscape around us, too, is increasingly defined by a mechanical, man-made environment. It is precisely this alienation that Matts Nauwelaers seeks to portray in his exhibition. ‘Fabricate Nature’ explores the boundary between the natural and the man-made, and asks how we relate today to a natural world that is increasingly being shaped, adapted and replaced by our own hands.

Jean-Luc Godard’s final film reworked into a room-filling installation by his long-standing collaborator Fabrice Aragno

A mushroom cloud, legends of film history, IS flags, sunsets in Tunis, scenes of flight, expulsion, execution and war: Jean-Luc Godard’s at once poëtic and political film Le livre d’image (2018) spans more than a century. It questions the production of images, art, religion, representation and law.

The filmmaker combined film and contemporary history in five chapters and an epilogue to create an associative collage. The exhibition Sentiments, Signes, Passions is conceived by Fabrice Aragno, filmmaker and longtime collaborator of Godard. It takes up the division of Le livre d’image into chapters, further fragmenting the parts of the work and unfurling them in space. The dynamic projection breaks with the chronological form of a film screening. Across dozens of screens, the audience can give free rein to associations and pursue their own visual lines of sight.

Deeply respectful of his mentor, Aragno travels the world with each time a different version of the installation. For Film Fest Gent he adds a new component, documenting Godard’s personal workspace: Et la nuit le jour.

This internationally acclaimed project offers a rare window into the director’s creative world, inviting visitors to wander through fragments of image and sound and step inside the mind of one of cinema’s most influential figures.

On display in the Zwarte Zaal, from Thursday 8 October to Sunday 18 October, every day from 12:00 to 20:00.