Silent Echoes

Dorine van Meel

PYLON is excited to present the exhibition 'Silent Echoes', featuring a three-channel video installation by Doreen van Meel (1984, NL) at HYBRID Box, opening January 12, 2024.

Dorine van Meel is an artist based between Brussels and Amsterdam. Her practice unfolds in collaborative and discursive projects that result in moving image installations, performances, publications and workshops. The visual language of her video work draws on digitally produced, apocalyptic landscapes, which are often accompanied by a composed soundtrack combined with texts spoken by the artist herself and other contributors. Through the use of poetic language current structures of power are exposed, whilst at the same time modes of resistance are considered.

Van Meel’s solo work has been shown at the South London Gallery (London), the 10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (Berlin), W139 (Amsterdam), Transmediale (Berlin), Nottingham Contemporary (Nottingham), KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin) and Extracity (Antwerp). Her interest in discursive practices, feminist methodologies, and self-organised forms of collaborations is reflected within the collective projects she initiates. These include “The Southern Summer School” organised with Nelmarie du Preez at BAK in Utrecht, “Gentle Dust” a performance event organised with Rianna Jade Parker at Jupiter Woods in London and at the Berlin Biennale, and "In the Eye of the Storm", a research group organised at rile* in Brussels. She is currently department head of Planetary Poetics, a master's programme at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, focusing on key questions of the ecological crisis and meaningful ways to intervene.

Duration of the installation: January 12 - February 3, 2023. Open one hour before and after the events in the Festspielhaus.

HYBRID BOX Modular Gallery

Karl-Liebknecht-Straße 56

01109 Dresden

The exhibition is part of the 2024 curatorial program LUCID ECHOES by PYLON, including a series of on- and offline screenings and exhibitions.

The exhibition is kindly supported by Landeshaupstadt Dresden - Amt für Kultur und Denkmalschutz and by Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen. Gefördert durch die Kulturstiftung des Freistaates Sachsen. Diese Maßnahme wird mitfinanziert durch Steuermittel auf der Grundlage des vom Sächsischen Landtag beschlossenen Haushaltes.

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Dorine van Meel

Silent Echos

Silent Echoes

Dorine van Meel

developed in collaboration with Sami El-Enany.

With text by Khairani Barokka, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio and Selina Neirok Leem

And darkness arrives early,

but who is there to witness.

The approaching shadows play,

a gentle dance of planets.

Silent Echoes addresses the climate crisis through these various poetic contributions written by poets and activists who come from different islands across the Pacific Ocean. Each poem highlights different ways in which the climate crisis unfolds on these islands through the workings of (neo-)colonialist practices past and present. Whether it is because of the poisoning of the water due to the presence of military remnants from World War II, because of the clearing of the original forests and the planting of endless fields of palm trees for the production of palm oil, because of the suppression of the language and culture of the indigenous population by the colonial settlers or because of the nuclear tests that were carried out on the atolls without any regard of the people living there. As much as these poems mourn the loss of life – in all its different forms, they also speak of resistance, endurance and cohabitation, and offer a hopeful view for our world in the face of a dark present and an uncertain future. The images that accompany the many voices show computer generated islands in which digital waves turn into digital grains of desert sand, presenting the viewer with a dystopian vision, in which an unfolding ecological catastrophe is implied.

Silent Echoes is a video piece by Dorine van Meel and is developed in collaboration with sound artist Sami El-Enany. The project includes poetic contributions by artists, writers and climate activists Khairani Barokka, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, Selina Neirok Leem and Dorine van Meel. Silent Echoes has received financial support from the Mondriaan Fonds.