Oona Libens
OPTICAL ANATOMY CHAMBER
In Bekegem, Oona Libens created a number of primitive projectors that allowed the audience to manipulate the image using objects and lenses. This resulted in a laboratory of light, an anatomical chamber of projectors.
BIO
The work of artist and musician Oona Libens (born 1987, Belgium/Sweden) revolves around the history of the (moving) image. In her intimate performances – a cross between abstract object theatre and educational documentary – she develops a distinctively artisanal universe consisting of fragile mechanisms and analogue techniques.
Often using shadow theatre as a starting point – shadow play being the most primitive form of moving image – she also employs and manipulates other historical and more recent projection techniques to expose their mechanisms. In this way, she creates a dialogue between old and modern media phenomena – from the magic lantern as an educational tool to contemporary touch screens and virtual reality. With her performances, Oona Libens aims to broaden our experience of the image and the screen, to create an analogue virtual reality and to make an entertainment machine that is slow, hesitant, faltering and failing.
She graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent, Belgium, in 2012.
