M HKA Ensembles

"Dura lex, sed lex", the law is hard, but it is the law. In a law, words appear in their most authoritarian and normative form. That is why it is essential for laws to be crafted with the utmost care, and that the necessary time and attention be paid to their formulation. It is also important to regularly review existing legislation. This attention to new or existing material is typical for all creative work.

The Senate traditionally monitors the textual quality of the legislation. By regular 'grooming' of the legislative arsenal, it intends to reduce the distance between the citizen and the rule of law.

Obsessed by the flow of media, Denmark (°1950, living in Antwerp) accumulates, in his installations, all manner of printed material. Les Quatre Saisons de Moniteur belge (The Four Seasons of the Belgian Official Journal) is the sum of the Belgian legal production, in one year, intended to structure our society as well as possible. A reflection on the function of Law, the work is also a meditation on human vanity.

Marcel Broodthaers (°1924- †1976), a poet and artist from Brussels, paired the names of car manufacturers with different breeds of cattle. He confronts words with images in the form of a game, demystifying the authoritarian and normative power of language.

Sheela Gowda (°1957, living in Bangalore) reworks the scraps from textile mills - once collected by poor women and sown together in a rudimentary fashion into bedspreads - into four patchwork quilts. Thirty years later, these coloured surfaces become the backbone of Gowda's subtle critical manipulations, and by the addition of other pieces of printed textile, they bear a socio-political meaning.

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