Whiteout - Goiris, Geert; Smets, Francis; Frost, Sabine; Mühleis, Volkmar (Leuven Acco, 2012)
Photographer Geert Goiris was attracted to natural optical effects that challenge or defy observation. This fascination only deepened after reading a witness account by two polar explorers who got stuck in a whiteout for some days. They described the meteorological phenomenon almost as a mystical experience: the landscape disappearing into a void, the dissolve of all matter into light. In this research project, Geert Goiris records with analogue photography this elusive phenomenon, which is barely visible and resists reproduction. WHITEOUT is a large format slide projection, and the translucent images evoke the landscape as a site of exploration and discovery, where emptiness plays a principal role.Over de auteurs: Geert Goiris is a photographer concentrating on the notion of first encounter and the viewpoint of the 'outsider'. In his series Resonance, he brings together anomalic appearances or moods. He teaches practice based research at Hogeschool Sint-Lukas Brussels. Sabine Frost studied Literary Studies at the University of Erfurt and completed her PhD in 2010 with a thesis on Whiteout. Snow and Whiteness in Literature since 1800. She takes the whiteout-phenomenon as a metaphorical model to describe disruptive effects in literary texts as a possibility for exposing textuality and self-reflection. Volkmar Mühleis is a philosopher and works at Sint-Lucas Visual Arts in Ghent. He published articles and books on philosophy and art in the Philosophische Rundschau, by publisher Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Rodopi and others. 'Whiteout' can be seen as a phenomenon of losing orientation, shadows, horizon. Mühleis deepens out the question what this means: losing ground, groundlessness? He contrasts in a poetical and philosophical way the images of Goiris with thoughts and metaphors of Vilém Flusser, Hans Blumenberg and others. Francis Smets is a cultural philosopher and author of numerous articles and Sophia's terugkeer (1988), De Groefgangers (1996), A van Abyssaal (2002), Rozen in de knop (2005) and Lof der onwennigheid (2011).