Wandering in what remains: Exploring an environment for embodied spirituality

Abstract

This visual essay approaches the concept of religious ‘environment’ in a literal sense: as the physical places in which we worship. The basis for the images stems from an artistic project that Remco Roes initiated in a 13th century chapel in the small Belgian city of Borgloon, in collaboration with fellow artists Sara Bomans and Tom Lambeens. Over the course of two residency periods, Roes and his colleagues worked on a series of spatial installations in the Gasthuis Chapel, whilst visiting a host of local churches – all of which are suffering from shrinking rural congregations and thus facing questions surrounding their future purpose. The process inside the (deconsecrated) Gasthuis chapel ran parallel to the exploration of the local churches. The new installations mirrored the morphology of the found religious environments. The purpose of this essay (in its original sense, from the French verb essayer, to try, to attempt) is an experiment of ‘embodied thinking’, by using aesthetics, in the broadest sense of the word, as an instrument. It wants to explore a series of complex and interacting meaningful experiences that are evoked by these (post-)catholic environments. In order to do this, the essay combines different image-spaces and artistic media: the photographs of existing chapels and churches, the photographs of the installations by Bomans, Lambeens and Roes and the imaginary of some religious poems by Kris Pint, resonating with elements of the visual artwork.