A donner , Chat perdu

À donner, chat perdu — under this title, Nicolas (°) portrays an otherwise invisible undercurrent of supply and demand. An 80’s alarm system with dog barking leads usinto a space with ever-changing object and sound compositions. Together, they form akind of soundscape. A bit like walking into a busy street or metro and at the same timebeing able or willing to tune in to everything and nothing. From the association with theto-give objects of Brussels’ streets, things seem to become tangible. Telephones, anotherwise perhaps never-listened-to cassette with multilingual voicemail messages,a street musician, dirt in the border but equally straight in the face, whining, cablesrunning along the wall and half-open poster frames, rammed windows, tags on prefabs,a sudden bell, but also continuous buzzing sounds. Or more specifically, in all the disso-nance, miscommunication and dysfunctionality, we discern a quirky, vibrant portrait ofan elusive capital city and its more than one million inhabitants. Are we experiencing akind of never-before-seen advertisement for the city here? A celebration of its chaotic,fragmented, multilingual and musical character? The throbbing, naturally interlockingnature of the compositions leads us to conclude that the artist is in his element here.It feels like a challenge he has taken up and succeeded in without even explicitly naminganything. There is a talent in evoking this kind of personal interpretation and forcingtime, attention and isolation to arrive at this. This is not about immediate contact, butabout trying to reach the viewer with varying degrees of success. ‘Leave a messageafter the beep — tuut tuut tuut.’