Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven (also known as AMVK) is an artist of singular complexity. Born in 1951 in Antwerp, where she still lives and works, she has been active since the 1970s as a visual artist, graphic designer and performer. She has always been a pioneer. She should, first and foremost, be considered an artist for the future. AMVK’s practice is truly interdisciplinary.

M HKA wants to introduce Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven to a wider audience as an innovator of forms and interpreter of moods - as oxygen of the whole society.

Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven / AMVK

(c)video still: AMVK
Nursing Care, in Melancholy Stupor, 1999
Video , variable dimensions, interactive
computer animation

"Theme: melancholy and how to make it a positive force.

The animation was the main theme of “Nursing Care, in Melancholy Stupor”, the fourth show of the HeadNurse cycle, which started in 1995. The HeadNurse cycle is a “Sex & Technology” project, using the therapeutic strength in beauty and has as subtitle: “Elasticity at Home”. It is an alchemistic attempt to undisclose the corrupted alliance in massmedia between the commercialization of lust and the banalisation of violence.

Using the structure of Baroque music and philosophy, the movies of “Nursing Care, in Melancholy Stupor” are impregnated by the essence of Leibnizer philosophy: the criterium of substance is its activity, its power.

The alchemist state of this work is situated in the phase of ‘glowing out’: the battle between dark and light, the diagonale. Mixing virtuosity, calculation and emotion."

− AMVK


Sound: samples of soundtrack of Bladerunner + environemental sound

Contributors: Marc Vanrunxt and Tom Barman

Interactivity: Danny Devos

Producer: Club Moral