David Claerbout x Chantal Pattyn: Sections of a Happy Moment

Sections of a Happy Moment from 2007, depicts a single moment in the life of a Chinese family on a sunlit square, surrounded by clean social housing.
The figures – grouped in a circular composition around a ball hanging in mid-air – have been caught in an intimate family moment by a multitude of photo cameras, placed all around the scene.

Presented in a slideshow format, the succession of images that circumscribe ‘place’ gradually erase expectations of movement. As the slideshow progresses, the playfulness of the moment becomes like heavy, cast matter. Indeed, the scene trades in its momentary lightness for a feeling of being controlled like propaganda. If one takes into count the Chinese nationality of the family, the idea of control adds another layer.

Images of the children, their parents and grandparents, all shot in the artist’s studio, were put together with hundreds of images of a square in between the social housing units of Renaet Braem in Antwerp (Kiel). In 1950 Braem was finally given the opportunity to put into practice on a large scale the ideas of CIAM, of which both he and Le Corbusier were part.

As part of a photo edition derived from Sections of a Happy Moment, one image is part of the exhibition A Public Affair. Chantal Pattyn will talk to David Claerbout about the intentions of this great work, dealing with the abstraction of human emotions, the notion of time, the camera used as a security tool and the ambition to bring to life the bright future of the era when this architectural infrastructure was created.

Admission is free, but due to limited seating, reservation is required.