CHIPKA

Chipka is the name of an artificial island that was created in Alost (BE) by the straightening of the Dender, at the end of the nineteenth century. Its history inspired sixteen visual artists and architects for a group show in Netwerk, a center for contemporary art based in the same town.

Soon after its creation Chipka was to be swallowed by fast growing industries and its host city, Alost, a rural town, was suddenly agitated by the rhythm of the early, uninhibited capitalism. It was catapulted, head over heels, into the twentieth century. Like the exhibition, the catalogue CHIPKA plays on the contemporary symbolical meaning of this story and links it with the globalised reality of the twenty-first century. Essays and short stories by James Burt (GB), art critic