Elien Ronse

I hadn't been to a hairdresser in years when I walked into Kim's salon with the instruction, "You can choose the colour and how much to cut off." She dyed my hair her favourite colour, orange, the same colour as the walls in her house. Twenty days later, I asked Nathalie, who made me feel so welcome with her openness, to do the same. For the first time in my life, I sat under a large dryer for what seemed like an eternity. Twenty days later, I visited Christiane and Dimitri, who discussed their plans together but did not tell me what colour would emerge from under the silver foil. Meanwhile, a woman sitting next to me has been coming here every week for 25 years, sometimes at 7 o'clock in the morning."

And what about length? consists of a video (20 min) in different chapters: 'no more fun', 'red hair', 'tourists',... The images were shot in the hairdressing salons and there is a voice-over in which the conversations are re-enacted by local residents of the Stokvelde neighbourhood.

In addition, there were walks past the hairdressing salons, during which we brought the hairdressing salon conversations back to life. Everyone was given caps with snippets of the conversations written on them, which were re-enacted along the way. This allowed the intimate yet (relatively) universal conversations to be shared and created space to talk about less obvious topics such as depression, bullying, loneliness, etc.

Elien on the Stokvelde neighbourhood, her creative process, and the tour she presented around her work.

The first thing I noticed in the neighbourhood was the tranquillity in the streets, with the occasional person walking their dog, only disturbed by scouts or KSA running around in the woods. The paths that lead me to surprising corners of grass between different back gardens. The many front gardens that I sometimes crossed diagonally to cut a corner. What also struck me were the many hairdressers in a small area. I visited each hairdresser and let them choose how to colour and cut my hair. Meanwhile, we shared a conversation about life and the neighbourhood.

I find it interesting how we often touch on major social and political issues in everyday situations without being aware of it. The conversations seem ordinary, but they are actually quite special and say a lot about how we depend on each other as human beings. In my tour, I start from the conversations I had in the hairdressing salons. People shared very valuable and intimate things that are important in our lives. By talking about dogs, stages of life, death, the weather, sexism, loneliness, holidays, depression, etc., I want to make difficult and less difficult themes discussable in all their ambivalence.