Silence, Song

Alex Schuurbiers, 4x 16mm projection on bioplastic screens, 2026.

In Silence, Song, a four-channel 16mm installation, Alex Schuurbiers films a community of women seaweed harvesters in South India and explores their relationship to the sea. The film was hand-developed with seaweeds harvested during the shoot, making the sea and the things that belong to it active collaborators. In this intuitive documentary, Alex reflects on the women’s rituals, daily struggles and self-determination, making space for their mother tongue whilst questioning her own position in determining which stories are told and translated. In the absence of a shared language, attention and active listening become an offering for exchange, focussing not on words but on water, which ‘flows through and across difference’ (Neimanis).
Ongoing from 14h00 to 18h00

Alex Schuurbiers is an audiovisual artist working predominantly with analogue media. Her practice explores themes such as heimat, lineage, intergenerational transmission and trauma. The materiality of analogue film is strongly present in her work, symbolising both an anchoring in the past and a malleable representation of ‘reality’. Her research centers on memory and its depiction, as well as care, community, ecological developing methods and the effects of organic matter on celluloid.

_{director, camera, processing & edit ALEX SCHUURBIERS
assistant director & additional camera ALISON PIPER
production assistant & translator AVISHIA ARUL
sound recordist india GIZEM KARAOSMANOĞLU
original music BERT DOCKX
sound recordist belgium & sound mix THOMAS JILLINGS
negative cut MONIKA DÖRGE
hand developed with GELIDIELLA ACEROSA
print lab COLOR BY DEJONGHE
projection ELS VAN RIEL & ERWIN VAN T HART
production ALEX SCHUURBIERS & URSULA VZW
coproduction HARKAT STUDIOS, HOTEL MARIA KAPEL & STUK
with the support of FLANDERS STATE OF THE ART & DE AUTEURS}