Interview with Ory Dessau, guest curator of the exhibition by David Claerbout at Konschthal Esch.

Ory Dessau, you are the guest curator of Five Hours, Fifty Days, Fifty Years, the first exhibition dedicated to artist David Claerbout in Luxembourg. How did this project come about and how did your collaboration with Christian Mosar go?

Christian Mosar and I became familiar with each other during the Gregor Schneider exhibition at Konschthal Esch. Schneider is an artist I work a lot with and have been following for years. Shortly after it closed, Christian was searching for a writer-in-residence to spend a period at Bridderhaus, and he thought of me. I consider writing as part of my curatorial activity. In one of my trips to Esch before my residency at Bridderhaus, I think it was the opening of the group exhibition Displaced, Christian shared with me his wish for a show at Konschthal by a major video artist and I brought two names with whom I have a close relationship, one of them being David Claerbout. Christian decided on the spot to invite him. 

How did you approach the space at Konschthal, a place with a unique architecture that used to be a furniture store?

Konschthal Esch is an exciting space. The first two levels comprise a web of spaces, or a space-web that branches out in constant expansion, simulating a sort of traveling shot. And the upper two levels mirror one another, which gives a curator the option of playing with these features, which somehow determine the exhibition’s structure, being a response to them. The balcony looking at the ground floor, the pillar at the back of the ground floor, the elongated windows on the top floor, all were taken into account in the installation and the choice of works.

Let’s talk about David Claerbout and how you wanted to handle his multifaceted work in your exhibition. 

The basic idea, the basic metaphor we worked with when conceiving the exhibition, was that of the city, meaning that we wanted to have as many works and as many screens seen concurrently by the viewer at any given point in space, which then would make the spaces between the works into a scene, an event. We were instructed, so to speak, by two parallel guidelines; one guideline was informed by the fact that it is Claerbout’s first solo exhibition in Luxembourg and therefore should provide an introduction to his oeuvre for the Luxembourgish audience, and the second guideline had to do with the will to provide for those acquainted with Claerbout’s work with a new outlook involving our understanding of it at this moment, as well as our understanding of consequences of its arrival in Esch-sur-Alzette and at Konschthal Esch. This is the reason the viewer sees works that were installed in such a way that they echo the architectural elements of the venue. A video like The Mantova Pigeon (2021), showing a pigeon in a balcony, was installed next to the balcony looking at Konschthal’s ground floor, etc. Also, the venue’s proximity to the thriving neighbourhoods of the city’s African communities is reflected in the choice to present a work like Oil Workers (2013), which presents the Nigerian workers of the Shell Company. 

Interdisciplinarity is at the heart of David Claerbout’s practice, and The Woodcarver and the Forest appears as a kind of culmination of this approach, presenting itself as an “experience to be lived rather than seen”. Can you tell us about this work?

The woodcarver and the Forest is a performative film installation, Claerbout’s most recent work, conveying the artist’s continuous research into the consequences, contradictions, and paradoxes of the ‘return to nature’ trends in a cultural landscape of oversaturation and immersive mediation. The work revolves around two figures: the figure of a solitary woodcarver and the figure of a forest serving as his limited resource. The woodcarver is a bearded, pale, white man dressed as a lumberjack. He spends his days inside a neo-brutalist villa defined by a glazed floor-to-ceiling window wall facing the forest. From dusk to dawn, his sole, ceaseless activity is carving wooden spoons out of the forest’s tree logs. However, we do not see him felling trees, cutting them into logs, and carrying them inside. He does not approach the outside but sits behind the window’s glass screen, carving. The window is also a video screen, blocking off, protecting from, and filtering the world behind it. The film constantly shifts between the inside and the outside, tracing the hardly discernible depletion of the forest and the processing of its trees into wooden spoons, until it is cleared. The work presents three days, in three different time spans, each one day, during which the forest is cleared as logs are processed into wooden spoons. 

The exhibition brings together very different pieces: how did you tackle the diversity of his work?

Exhibitions by video artists, or exhibitions of projected image installations, are a tricky matter because they can easily appear repetitive. Our idea was to show the diversity and heterogeneity of Claerbout’s work, how it moves very smoothly between experimental cinema and video installations to digital animation and generative moving images; how it adapts to new technologies with each work, but also how these new technologies do not define it, but play a role in the content of a given work.

Can you tell us how Claerbout embraces technology and how he positions himself in relation to it, especially regarding AI?

The best way to explain it would be through The woodcarver and the Forest. The making of began with a few lines of written script, which were fed into an existing AI system. But the actual work was initiated by prompting images with generative AI. Then, the generated images were used as a model for the design of the indoor and outdoor settings and filmic sequences, combining camera work in physical locations with an actor, as well as computer work. It is cinematography combined with computer-generated imagery and compositing, the assembly of the different image layers. It started with AI, then moved to real, direct cinema, which was then fed again into AI. 

One aspect that stands out in the exhibition is Claerbout’s anachronistic use of new technologies, often rooted in art history.

I would say that he seeks to humanise new technologies, searching for the human factor, or the lack thereof, in his application of a given technique. 

What would you say to an audience unfamiliar with David’s work to encourage them to go and see the exhibition Five Hours, Fifty Days, Fifty Years?

I would tell them, come and see the show. Take two hours and get acquainted with one of the most exciting artists living today. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that you edited. How does this publication complement the show?

It is not necessarily complementary but more of a supplement, taking essential aspects of the artist’s oeuvre and explaining how they are reflected in the works on view and in several other works which are not displayed.

Exhibition Five Hours, Fifty Days, Fifty Years by David Claerbout at Kontschthal Esch, until 22 February 2026.