Postcard from Brussels

Agnès Varda and some potatoes

A couple of weeks ago, I went to an exhibition by the artist and filmmaker Agnès Varda in Brussels. Among her many films, Varda created the extraordinary documentary The Gleaners and I. The film - released in 2000 - explores the lives of those who gather (or 'glean') things which others leave behind: grapes left by winemakers to rot on the vine, potatoes still in the fields after the harvest, food unsold at the end of a market.

As well as looking to parts of society that are rarely given respect by popular media, and her instinct for taking seriously the importance of material circumstances, I find Varda's work really inspiring because so many of her working processes are improvised.

For example, according to Kelley Conway's excellent book on Varda, Varda's decision to base her 1985 film Vagabond on the experiences of a young woman rather than a man came as a result of a chance encounter with a female drifter while on the road. Varda became friends with the woman, Setine Arhab, who went on to stay with Varda in Paris and have a cameo in the film. Likewise, Conway shows how The Gleaners and I changed significantly from the film Varda set out to produce.

This improvised or instinctive feel to her work helps give it a sense of adventure. It seems to allow Varda the space to not just spot the intriguing, but to follow it, and even nurture it in a way that encourages the viewer to follow where their own curiosity takes them. On watching one of her films, I get a sense of wanting to go somewhere, anywhere, to find something new to look at or to talk to someone I don't know - even if this is just the end of my street.

The exhibition in Brussels included extracts from Varda's films, as well as art installations relating to her childhood in Ixelles, the district of Brussels hosting the exhibition.

Varda recreates a pond from a local park which she recalls from childhood

The pond as it is today

In a piece entitled La paravent de mémoire - À ma mére, Varda arranges ephemera relating to her late mother on a folding wooden screen: postcards of Brussels, a half-completed jigsaw puzzle, an interrupted game of patience. On the exhibition's audioguide, Varda explains the screen involves both displaying and hiding: another clue perhaps as to how she is able to let the curious hang still in her films.

La paravent de mémoire - À ma mére

With Varda lodged in my head for my three days in Brussels, I inevitably found myself looking for moments of enchantment, of which Brussels has a ready supply.

Of course - and especially of late in the city - what one finds intriguing can be alarming as much as it can prompt illumination; it can provoke fear and tension as well as hope or amusement.

As archives thaw

"It's a shame not to have more photos around the house. I guess we didn't see the point of taking pictures of ourselves... It's a shame."

I went to the cinema at the Barbican Centre recently to see '45 Years', a new film by director Andrew Haigh.

Before going in, I visited the giftshop and bought a postcard of the Barbican Centre itself. I'm especially interested at the moment in how cultural institutions present themselves, for example which images end up on their own postcards. I'll blog on this at some point.

From 'Barbican Collages' by artist Margaux Soland

The sister film to Haigh's excellent 'Weekend', '45 Years' explores the long marriage of Kate and Geoff Mercer.

Played by Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay, the couple must react to the discovery of the body of Katya, Geoff's former partner. Katya died trekking on a mountain in Switzerland before Geoff met Kate; her body is found after the glacier into which she fell begins to thaw.

Perhaps a theme of the film, Katya's body is one of several material objects from the past - or at least things for a long time out of view - which push the characters in different directions, at times spinning them deep into crisis. These objects include, as it happens, a scrapbook of old postcards. (Of course! ;))

On the train home, no doubt wrapped up in the research I'm undertaking on how museums process objects, I was struck by the potential for 'archived' material to unsettle us.

This seems especially relevant today, given the extent to which archives of all sorts are being opened up: from the digitisation of cultural artefacts, to the leaks of records and emails that individuals would prefer to keep private (wikileaks, Hillary Clinton's personal email account, Ashley Madison...).

One might hope being forced to confront the past necessitates useful reflection, but I suspect this hope stems from our habit (or at least my habit) of searching for means of progress, or even from hard-to-shift ideas of redemption. In Kate and Geoff's case, the uncertainty of how to process the news from Switzerland creates a terrifying situation: their lives could go any which way.

More of the Barbican postcards can be found on Margaux Soland's beautiful website.