Award-winning Galician poet and performer Jesús Castro Yáñez, Os nomes e os himnos (2016), /\/\/\ (2017), and Ultramarino (2017), edited Campo de Plumas, an anthology of queer poetry. His translation of Anne Carson’s The Anthropology of Water is forthcoming. He has represented Galicia in various international festivals and workshops and his work has been translated into Greek, Finnish and Slovenian.

All of my work is deeply associated with nature and therefore with the way territory shapes identity and every relation between each element that comprises it. This is one of the main reasons I’m drawn to this residency and its marvelous location.

I did not notice that my first book revolved around rivers that much until a critic review pointed it out. It is no coincidence that I grew up near the source of the main river in Galicia, Miño river. My second book, called Ultramarine and written when I was living beside the river mouth onto the sea, consists of poems and blueprint images both made of light and sea water. Maybe the next book I’m trying to write will be influenced by the archipelago. That would be a very appropriate image: the project I’m working on studies the idea of communal creation and intertextuality, and the existence of every poem as a palimpsest of all the previous ones existing out there, communicating with each other, sampling and remixing each other in an infinite array of possibilities. As islands, they seem to be floating on their own, but every voice is deep down making part of the same greater thing, coexisting and cooperating.

I’m also translating Anne Carson’s book Autobiography of Red, an exploration of identity and desire that retells a greek myth through the lens of a homosexual relationship between two young lovers. The volcanic imagery is omnipresent in the book and central to its development, so Hektor seems like a great place to keep working on the text and imbue it with that presence.

Follow Jesús.

Hilde Bouchez, PhD teaches and researches within the field of applied arts, design & architecture, with a focus on responsibility and awareness, and a direct link with ways of storytelling as generators of meaning.

In the past she was head of the Design Departement of KASK & Conservatorium (Ghent), design manager for Proud Europe, a co-design platform, and initiator of the FabLab and Innovation Hub Buda (Kortrijk), involved in a research group On continuity and identity (KULeuven), looking into the power of ancestral knowledge in rural area’s in Nepal, Greenland, Egypt and Congo. She founded and was editor in chief of the magazines BEople and A Magazine.  She has been curating several international exhibitions (MARTa Herford, Design Miami, Design museum Gent, Broelmuseum Kortrijk). 

In 2017 she published A Wild Thing. Essays on things, nearness and love, APE. With this widely acclaimed collection of philosophical essays she is one of the voices of the ‘ontological turn’: looking into a new understanding of the relationship between the human and the non-human. Proposing ways in giving agency to the man-made and thus questioning the role and perception of everyday objects in transitional times. 

Throughout her career she has been on a quest for meaning, in different corners, layers and attitudes. For twenty years she has been a tantric practitioner of ancient paths. As a wayfinder she has been gathering a collection of often oppositional experiences, thoughts and things, which she recently assembles in her artistic practice, in an aim to bridge the visible and the invisible.

Discover Maarten Denaeyer’s in situ works on Lanzarote here.

The abstract graphic works of Maarten De Naeyer (born 1992 in Leuven, lives and works in Leuven, Belgium) are the result of a constant experimentation with shapes and textures. After obtaining his masters degree in Graphic Design in 2015, Maarten developed his own unique way of working by experimenting in his studio.

Purified form tension through geometric and organic shapes that interact in an environment of varying textures are the common thread throughout the work. Another very characteristic fact is the almost exclusive use of black and white, this in turn preserving the purity of shapes and allowing the negative white space to enter into a dialogue with the composition.

The mountain is, with/in, you.

Visual & material research.

Representation and interpretation of internal competitions. About the generational performance pressure, 'goals' and social performative deadlines and limiting beliefs adopted during adolescency.

Small scale of a human life & life's relativity when surrounded by nature.

Asesinato en la colina

This series of sculptures in natural, unbaked clay, study how this material will persist in Lanzarote’s often brutal weather conditions wind, sunshine - and some rare rain. On almost every level of our land a fierce warrior has been put, ready to take on the battle with nature. Some are already beheaded, some are standing strong. When planning a visit, you might want to look out for them.

Truls also added some works to the permanent collection.

Truls Mårtensson (b, 1993) works with ceramics to transform the societal consumer culture in to his pieces, where his references to historical pop-art does not go unnoticed. The critique of a digitalized and capitalistic society in relation to his medium creates a unavoidable clash between worlds. 

For his project at Hektor Truls will explore the possibilities of marrying his own aesthetic with that of the specific location of the residency. He wants to see how he can progress in a new context - maybe with a material he is familiar with, clay, or other mediums. Furthermore he simply wants inspiration and stay at a place has not seen before. His practice has been very fast paced and urban centered and he wants to see what happens to it when you try to do the opposite in a more calm atmosphere. Moreover he intends to write and lay out future projects when at Hektor.

bontridders is playful electronics, the extravert coupled with the introvert, and that one Fergie cover. For some time bontridders was a more straight-forward indie-group, but now bontridders has taken on a more self-contained form. bontridders is Sam, also known from drumcomputerpunk band Brorlab.

bontridders will create a concept EP, infused with field recordings of the area of Lanzarote

Exhibition of Beginnings by Mark Rammers at Hektor.

Opening: Sunday April 23, 2023, 4 PM (on invitation only)

Visits on request, please complete the form on this page.

www.markrammers.com

All over again

Some estimates say that we reach the point of no return for our environment by 2035. Meanwhile, global superpowers are looking to bring the first humans to Mars, which could sustain human life and therefore is ready for colonization, according to experts. So instead of curing this planet we go to the next and do it all over again. And who are 'we' anyway? There are over 8 billion people on earth, and the majority never comes close to traveling to another country, let alone planet. Only those who can either afford it or prove they are of indispensable value may get a chance to go. I pose the question to the 'lucky ones': You now have the opportunity to do it all over again, will you do anything different?

This question has been on my mind for years. I feel a deep sense of regret for a number of choices I've made in life, some of which I cannot undo or alter. Even if I would escape to a distant planet, these feelings wouldn't just disappear, but follow me like a second shadow.

On Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands, large volcanoes line the horizon, their surface a blend of reds, browns and blacks. Saharan dust is transported across the Atlantic on the warm winds known as calima. I came to Lanzarote because it looks like Mars and to start coming to terms with the decisions I made in my past. All over again examines the crossroads of our physical world and the one we inhabit in our minds, and what it means when we enter the future before dealing with our past.

Beginnings

Beginnings marks our arrival on a new planet. Quivering, we take a step into a world unknown. We've made preparations, but everything remains uncertain. There is no way back, we can only go forward. Simultaneously these images represent my first attempts in unfolding where my deep rooted sense of regret comes from. My journey is charged with obscure thoughts and clouded memories. But every small discovery provides a bit of understanding and carries in it a little hope for progress.

I, perhaps naively, imagined I would find many answers in one month on the island. It turns out, I found only one: Answers come by asking the right questions, and each answer is a phase in the process, a chapter on its own. Beginnings is the first chapter in a series that will follow the process of comprehending the origins of my regrets. At the same time the work aims to unravel the ethical dilemmas of starting somewhere new when we already fail miserably in taking care of what we have. The images in this chapter will all be hand printed in the darkroom, to emphasize how things slowly reveal themselves when you embrace the process.

© Mark Rammers

Hanne M. Grégoire (1989) was born on the sea side and now lives in Antwerp, Belgium. She loves food, waves, things on paper and sound. She was trained as a journalist, graduated her Bachelor of Arts in Radio and went on to finish her Master’s degree in Multilingual Communication. 

As a granddaughter of a chef, the love for food is in her DNA. This fueled the start of her career: campaign leader at Flanders Kitchen Rebels, an initiative of VISITFLANDERS to promote Belgian gastronomy and young chefs. Hanne is currently Head of Communication and Press at M Leuven, a museum for Contemporary Art and Ancient Masters. A deep dive into esthetics and what this means throughout centuries. Over the years she has given several guest lectures and keynote speeches on crisis and cultural communication. Hanne has received recognition for her work with nominations and Awards from best culinary magazine, culinary personality of the year to being the only Belgian in top 25 best cultural marketeers in Belgium and the Netherlands. LinkedIn is very helpful if you want to know more about this little ego trip.

After a hibernation of 10 years, Hanne picked up the microphone again and is finishing her Master's in Audiovisual Arts at the prestigious RITCS in Brussels. She upholds gender equality, queer rights and the freedom to choose in her personal and professional life, finding her way in it as a radio maker. The starting point is the podcast series I Don’t Know If I Want To Children.

I Don’t Know If I Want Children is a podcast series in which I look at that life-changing question from different perspectives, based on my own search. 33 years old, with house and job, cool sweetheart and hardly any maternal feelings. Why do I think about this, what is the biological impact of having children at a later age, what does the life of an over-60s without children look like, how do children of older parents look at this question, what is family even...

Lots of questions and all bundled in one series.