The jury unanimously chose Sohel Bourgeau's project “Le bolincheur,” an experimental video game with an alternative controller where players interact only through their gaze.

The jury greatly appreciated “Sohel's global approach, which addresses video games (as well as VR and other digital visual devices) with intelligence, conciseness, and consistency.”

The jury also highlighted “the formal clarity and conceptual effectiveness with which he explores the issues of the visible within the digital world”, which “offer this young artist a vast and very promising territory for exploration and development”.

SOHEL BOURGEAU

Sohel Bourgeau studied computer science and game design in the south of France before continuing his training at the École de Recherche Graphique in Brussels. His practice consists of developing video games inspired by reflections on interactivity. His work questions public perception, particularly through research into the mechanics of the gaze.
In his work, he is interested in the collective perspective, exploring it through experiments during game jams and the organization of group exhibitions.

The jury unanimously chose (sex)toyBending by Noah Destrée, a project involving “the creation of sex machines using second-hand toy carcasses as raw material.”

The jury particularly appreciated “the inventiveness, freshness, and freedom of the project, which promise experiments rich in uninhibited creativity” and considers that the artist “successfully combines seriousness and derision, depth and playfulness,” and is therefore well suited for a residency at the iMAL fablab.

Noah Destrée

Noah Destrée is a 22-year-old queer Belgian artist completing a master's degree in Applied Arts in Vienna (die Angewandte). In his work, he addresses themes such as transhumanism, cyberfeminism, queer existence, and archiving. Blending different techniques, both digital and analog, his work combines serious subjects with absurdity. Through video games, drawings, animation, and more recently 3D printing, Noah creates fantastical worlds that question social structures, homogenization, lack of representation, and the seriousness of the contemporary art world.

With a degree in Digital Arts from ESA Saint-Luc and an Erasmus exchange at HAW (Hamburg), he began a master's degree in Fashion & Technology in Linz (Kunstuniversität) before joining Margarete Jahrmann's class at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. His work has been exhibited in various venues, including Young European Artists (Brussels), Botanica Urbana (Hamburg), PostCityLinz, and published in GlitchOfficial.

The jury was composed of the iMAL team, Anne-Françoise Lesuisse, and Dia Helmy, whom we warmly thank for their insightful reviews of the proposals and the rich discussions that followed.

Anne-Françoise Lesuisse

Anne-Françoise Lesuisse holds a PhD in Film Studies from the University of Liège. She has been Artistic Director of the BIP (Biennale de l'Image Possible in Liège) since 2010 and Coordinator of the Master's program in Photography at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent, Belgium.

Dia Helmy

Dia Helmy is a creative practitioner with a poly-disciplinary approach, operating in the field of Art, Culture and Community. He dwells between stages, media-labs and gallery offices, carrying either tools, scripts, project budgets or prototypes in hand. He rarely produces works as a stand-alone artist, which encourages him to collaborate and co-create with people from many different contexts. He is the Co-founder and former leader of Medrar.org. His long trajectory of living and working between Cairo and various cities of Europe, eventually led to his settlement in the Flanders region as an anything design/craft-er, instruct/curat-or, and a volunteer in few community run hubs. He critically explores the sociopolitical dynamics around creative practices, to cultivate models of fair workflows and knowledge commons.

visual 1 ©Noah Destrée