Time to catch up on months of news. September 2015: exhibition in the Transfo in Zwevegem, a small town in West Flanders. I brought together calligraphy by artists from De Zandberg, a center for mentally handicapped artists, and work by other artists of my choice. The Transfo is an immense decommissioned power station from the 1930s. The huge, raw industrial spaces were excellent for the kind of work I decided to show, work that valued emotional intensity above reason and clear intention. As I was pulling the show together, I had the chance to think about how, why and with what mental processes we go about making our work and reacting to the work of others. Most of the Zandberg artists are illiterate, but choose for rather complex reasons to work with writing. They often dictate their thoughts to the Zandberg staff, who then type them out. The artists then copy the typescript one letter at a time, but of course without being able to read the results of their efforts. What is intention and what is meaning in a situation like this?
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