An van. Dienderen

I am a Belgian filmmaker and scholar with a degree in Audiovisual Arts from Sint-Lukas, Brussels, and a PhD in Comparative Cultural Sciences from Ghent University. As a former visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, I combine filmmaking, writing, and lecturing to examine how media shape and reflect ideological frameworks, prompting critical reflection on power, representation, and society. My internationally circulated and award-winning work explores how realities marked by violence, displacement, and inequality are mediated and distorted through dominant media. By exposing the ideological biases embedded in these forms, I wish to transform critique into artistic practice, using my work to unsettle dominant narratives, challenge power, and imagine alternatives. I hold a tenured professorship and senior researcher position at KASK & Conservatorium, School of Arts Ghent (Belgium).

Next to teaching, supervising PhD candidates in the arts, and publishing, I am currently finishing a feature documentary titled KOPIRAET, with professor of anthropology Hugo DeBlock. Kopiraet, which in Bislama, the Vanuatu Pidgin language, means native or collective authorship. The film KOPIRAET explores the boundaries of copyright and ownership (within documentary) in relation to Vanuatu. The film highlights the fragility of deconstructing a colonial gaze through images still made by Western filmmakers. DeBlock has done extensive fieldwork in Vanuatu, and published widely on subjects such as material culture and art from Africa and the Pacific, anthropology of tourism, and museum anthropology. I collaborate extensively with academics, artists and activist worldwide thanks to my international network developed over the years.

Recently I have developed a chronical illness, which affects all aspects of my life, including my academic and artistic work. I am constantly learning strategies to cope, with my artistic practice being vital. Even in small doses, it lifts me above the pain. For the first time, I now wish to develop an autobiographical practice. None of my previous works have addressed my personal life, but living with fibromyalgia makes this an urgent necessity. Inspired by Suleika Jaouad’s words—“We learned that sometimes the only way to endure pain was to make art from it”—I look to artists like Matisse, Proust, Kahlo, and Goldin, who transformed suffering into creativity, even under severe limitations. CHal will be a great network to exchange experiences, insights and theoretical reflections. In my own research I hope to develop artistic research based on my autobiography. I am therefore keen to learn from the members. It will allow me to lift up my autobiographical experiences to more reflexive and critically analyzed perspectives. I look very much forward meeting and learning from the CHal members!

Email: anvd@telenet.be

Affiliation: KASK School of Arts Ghent, Belgium

More info: www.anvandienderen.net