Image Entanglements
Visual artist Toon Leën presents a programme of four consecutive lecture performances that playfully reflect on the power of images. With a keen eye for compelling comparisons, Leën explores a series of curious relations between images from diverse contexts and periods.
Image Entanglements addresses images as social agents and looks beyond high and low divisions between art, religion, politics and social media to question the extent to which we are actually in charge of the images we use and produce.
These lectures are part of Toon Leën’s doctoral defence. You are also invited to attend the defence on October 22nd (10h00 - 12h00).
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Visual artist Toon Leën presents a programme of four consecutive lecture performances that playfully reflect on the power of images. With a keen eye for compelling comparisons, Leën explores a series of curious relations between images from diverse contexts and periods.
Image Entanglements addresses images as social agents and looks beyond high and low divisions between art, religion, politics and social media to question the extent to which we are actually in charge of the images we use and produce.
16:00 - 16:45
A Big Basket of Apples
Language: English
This lecture takes a closer look at Paul Cézanne’s work and the reasons why it is often associated with an “objective” mode of seeing the world. It tells the story of the colour-blind painter Sarah Bal and herartistic struggles, while reflecting on the notion of the “innocent eye.”
17:00 - 18:00
Homage to an Absent Pony
Language: Dutch with English subtitles
Exploring what it means to be an empathic spectator, this lecture draws on examples from the fine arts, religion and politics, and cites works by Harun Farocki and Rabih Mroué, to compare the different ways in which spectators visually express their empathy for certain images and their “inhabitants.”
19:00 - 20:15
Homage to the Dash
Language: English with Dutch subtitles
This lecture performance focuses on interruption as a stylistic device, ex-emplified by the dash. It develops an iconography of coups d’état using the failed coup in the Soviet Union in 1991 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol in 2021 as key examples.
20:45 - 22:15
The Irresistible Image and the Sceptical Gaze
Language: English with Dutch subtitles
Based on an investigation of the iconography of Saint Christopher, this lecture performance explores the notion of the “irresistible image” in relation to the politics of authoritarianism. It compares artistic strategies of ambiguity and deception with anti-democratic disinformation campaigns, and asks how the “unreliable” artwork can renegotiate its critical potential with regard to the unreliable images that flourish in the digital infrastructures of our time.
Date and location:
- Tuesday October 21st, 2025
- Lectures: 16h00 - 22h15
- CCHA, Kunstlaan 5, 3500 Hasselt
- This lecture performance programme is part of the doctoral defence of Toon Leën. You are invited to attend the defence on October 22nd. All details and registration: click here.
Registration for the lectures:
You can register for these lectures via this website.
