We are pleased to invite you to iMAL for a collective live writing experience!

Writing one text with multiple people (A textual collage) is a public debate format conceived by Ief Spincemaille in which a group of voices—speakers and audience—collectively rewrites a single text. The starting point is an existing text of 500 to 1,000 words focused on one theme.

After a shared silent reading, a live conversation opens up around technology, art, and society. The conversation will take place on Rope, a sculpture of Ief Spincemaille of 60 meter long and 30 cm in diameter.

Five guest speakers help steer the debate:

• Jelena Matičić (Curator, ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe)
• Tim Roerig (Senior Curator, Z33 House for Contemporary Art, Design & Architecture)
• Lucía García (Director, iMAL)
• Ischa Tallieu (Director, Tallieu Art Office)
• Kurt d’Haeseleer (Artistic Director & co-founder, WERKTANK)

The audience is also actively involved: responses, questions, and interventions become part of the content. The full audio of the conversation and audience interactions is recorded and later transcribed. Based on this transcript, a collective textual collage is created, bringing together insights, tensions, and unexpected connections from the debate—while keeping exactly the same word count as the original text.

Ief Spincemaille explores perception and the immaterial through multisensory sculptures and objects. His works can be worn, handled, or played with, often fostering social interaction. Working in both traditional art contexts and public space, he investigates how art can exist in daily life and emerge through human exchange, at the intersection of technology, poetry, philosophy, and science.

His work has been exhibited internationally, including at Wiels (Belgium), Kasteel van Gaasbeek (Belgium), Guangzhou Biennale (China), Biennale des Arts Numériques (France), Nova Biennial (Brazil), Ars Electronica (Austria and Tokyo), Boxes Art Museum (China), OK Center (Linz), De Brakke Grond (Amsterdam), Felix De Boeck Museum (Belgium), Opéra de Paris (France), and the Festival de Marseille (France), among others.

His atelier is based in Leuven (Ateliers Minnoye).

In 2010, Kurt D'Haeseleer and Spincemaille founded Werktank, an organization dedicated to new and old media art.

Photo © Lore Stessel