Onto the Exhibit Floor

This Het Toreke project had its scheduled opening on April 10, 2001 in the Het Toreke Museum, of Tienen Belgium. It ran through June 10, 2001. A comprehensive anthology of Jan Mensaert's work, including biography and criticism, was published under the title of Life, Page One on CD-ROM. (The three CD-ROMs, music and one book, can be ordered from the museum). 

The project took five years to put together. The subject (Flanders poet and visual artist Jan Mensaert) had an impetuously sensational biography, as well as a profound and humanitarianly focused subjectivity用lunging into universally archetypical focus, that included sublime heights and suicidal plunges.

Original "Variations," composed by NYC School of Visual Arts graduate chair, computer art department, Bruce Wands, are based musically on sheet music and reel-to-reel recordings composed and played by Jan Mensaert. Restored cinematic slides of buildings, sometimes photographed in strange, Orson Welles-style angles, were part of the book and exhibit, as was a multimedia sculpture by Bruce Wands (see cover of music CD above). In the Visual Artists category at the Storm King Music Festival, 2000, you will find a reference to Bruce Wands' high-tech creation, resulting from a collaboration with the Jan Mensaert exhibit materials.

The editing coordiator of the retrospective for the museum was Margaret A. Harrell. The team included Ph.Ds in literature, science, and psychology; licensed psychologists, Light Body teachers預s well as a Doctor of Law, and life-taught degree holders. From the expertise in dreams of Dr. Robert L. Van de Castle, to the expertise in literature of Drs. Adam Sorkin and Eugene Van Itterbeek, to the transpersonal psychological expertise of Dr. Russell Park, to the Light Body inspiration from the Belgium/Ibiza/Surinam teacher Roland Verschaeve, assisted by Luc Bille; to the poetical-and-translation fame of Mircea Ivanescu in Romania, nominated for the Nobel Prize, though he insists it should not be mentioned (as far-fetched); to the Amsterdam original psychological program of Chris Van de Velde, to the Hawaii-backgrounded learning of Jungian Dr. Pui Harvey, to the Zurich multifarious training of Harsha Adler, of the King-Adler Institute; to some unusual scientific insights (as well as a poem of homage) from brain scientist Dr. Norman S. Don, this retrospective was conceived with the idea of bringing new approaches to the multi-disciplinarian experience of life. It aimed at passing some of the wisdom揚arnered in all the above disciplines by these well-tutored spokespeople熔nto the next generation, who will do well to listen carefully to their treasure bag of teachings.

The Museum Director, Staf Thomas, and co-workers (photographer Hari Spelman, layout artist Jos Heeren, secretary Arlette Bruynickx, and a computer expert, Mark Kempeneers ensured a lively book production and exhibit). To view some of the images and text from the exhibit materials, click here.

Jan Mensaert: "I'm not understood because I'm unique. But then everyone's unique . . . They just take the first scrap that comes along."

LIFE, PAGE ONE

$Take away all preconceptions, and this is where the project starts. It is its name. Its teaching is to think originally.