Alexandra Crouwers

ɘᴎiʜɔɒm ɘʜƚ ᴎi ƚꙅoʜǫ ɘʜƚ
Belgium (residence), Netherlands (citizenship) °1974
research interests: ecology, Ecological Consciousness, science fiction, forest, digital art, digital cultures, speculative fiction, divination, technology, interspecies fictions, nonhuman perspective, experimental film, sound art, augmented reality, mixed reality, multispecies, natural science, digital space
affiliation: LUCA School of Arts / KU Leuven
orcid: 0000-0002-9956-8290
en

Alexandra Crouwers (NL, 1974)  is a visual artist and artistic researcher, responding to ecosystem crises through digital technologies. Between 2019 and 2026 she is a doctoral candidate at the Associated Faculty of the Arts of KU Leuven/LUCA School of Arts, working on the research project Summoning a Forest. Crouwers lives and works in Antwerp, Belgium. 

 

 

research

research expositions

  • The Plot, The Compositor, Mourning/Mistakes (2021) author(s): Alexandra Crouwers published in: VIS - Nordic Journal for Artistic Research
    In the Summer of 2019, a small family forest fell victim to a spruce bark beetle plague. Unusually mild winters caused larvae numbers to explode, and extreme drought weakened the otherwise more resilient trees. Expanding patches of dead forest can be found from the North Sea coast to the Baltics. The cleared forest became The Plot: a witness to climate change, and a gateway to dealing with ecological grief. My own eco-anxiety is utilized as a case study: how to deal with this new kind of loss? What is The Plot telling us? How do we move forward without losing hope? The exposition presents The Plot as fertile ground for artistic and collaborative research, including a contribution by Lisa Jeannin, a custom made font, moving image, and an audio work.
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works

  • The Compositor/Composing (18/11/2020)
    Art object: Sound, The Plot, Moorsel, Lierop, artist(s)/author(s): Ips typographus, Alexandra Crouwers
    The Compositor / Composing 12″ 180 grams black vinyl record, recto: 33rpm/45rpm audio, verso: engraving. Sewn felt sleeve, 60×60 folded poster, 30×30 inlay, 2020. The Compositor / Composing sound file was produced using an image sonification process, which translates images into audio. I traced a fragment of spruce bark bearing beetle tracks onto paper. The drawing was then digitally processed, resulting in a melodic lament. In the early 1960s, my grandfather acquired a plot of land filled with young Norway spruces. The trees were left alone for decades, growing tall and transforming the land into a small family forest, which my mother then inherited. By September 2019, all the trees had died and the forest had to be cleared. This became known as 'The Plot', a gateway for ecological grief. The preceding springs and summers were marked by extreme drought, while the winters were unusually mild with barely any frost. This prolonged drought weakened the trees and the warm winters caused an unstoppable infestation of spruce bark beetles. The beetle lays its eggs in tree bark. The larvae then eat their way out, leaving behind intricate tunnel patterns that resemble alien alphabets or hieroglyphs, giving the engraver's beetle its name: Ips typographus in Latin, or Letterzetter in Dutch, which translates as 'composer' in English. This is the compositor, composing.

sets