soul flashes is a programme of artist films presented in the IKOB black box over the course of 2026. The programme is divided into four cycles, each corresponding to one of the classical elements: water, air, fire, and earth.
The ancient concept of four simple substances – the liquid, the gaseous, the incandescently consuming and the solid – to explain the nature and complexity of all matter has been deeply influential across cultures and ages. Though modern science now classifies chemical compounds according to atomic theory, the symbolic power of the classical elements and their appearance in our everyday lives continue to resonate. soul flashes also attributes each element to a season: water for winter, air for spring, fire for summer and earth for autumn emphasizing the narrative and bodily qualities of each element.
Through the lens of these filmmakers, viewers experience different facets of human interaction with the forces of nature: attempts to control and exploit, to compound and embrace. Throughout cinematic history, the act of filming and the consumption of moving image has been riddled with fantasies and realities of power. With works spanning a period from 1928 to the present day, the programme shows the violence, beauty and comedy of our relationship to landscape and other living creatures.
In the films presented, elements can become characters unto themselves. soul flashes thereby proposes an underlying current of existence that escapes documentation and rational understanding, an expanded form of consciousness where we acknowledge a constant exchange with surrounding matter and energy. Viewers are invited to the depths of the ocean, to fly naked into the sky, drink from an oasis, or crack though the ice. When we are lucky, the soul flashes through.
21.06—20.09.2026
ঌ 3rd cycle: fire ঌ
Adrien Missika, Darvaza, 2011. HD video, sound, 8’30.
Courtesy of the artist
In Turkmenistan in 1971, Soviet geologists accidentally exposed a cavern of natural gas when a mining platform collapsed. Loathe to release the toxic emissions to the atmosphere, they set it aflame; and there it has burned ever since, nicknamed by locals ‘the door to hell’. Missika’s film explores this infernal portal through a series of long, slow takes, each around a minute in length, in reverse progression from a close-up of sulphurous clouds to a final shot of the barren surroundings – the pit a thick, red scar on a dead world. The film presents something so Biblical in its horror that we assume it must somehow be a fake, a miniature, a mock-up or some other special effect, but in fact it is terrifyingly real: an everyday, man-made Armageddon. (Text: Robert Barry)
Malena Szlam, ALTIPLANO, 2018. 35mm, color, sound, 15’30.
Courtesy of the artist
Filmed in the Andean Mountains in the traditional lands of the Atacameño, Aymara, and Calchaquí-Diaguita in Northern Chile and Northwest Argentina, ALTIPLANO takes place within a geological universe of ancestral salt flats, volcanic deserts, and coloured lakes. Fusing earth with sky, day with night, heartbeat with mountain, and mineral with iridescent cloud, ALTIPLANO reveals a vibrating landscape in which a bright blue sun forever threatens to eclipse a blood-red moon.
Coupled with a soundscape generated from infrasound recordings of volcanoes, geysers, Chilean blue whales, and more, ALTIPLANO creates evocative visual rhythms through the clash of color and form. Landscapes pulse and stutter, transmuting into spaces that exist in a multitude of times simultaneously. Located at the heart of a natural ecosystem threatened by a century of saltpeter and nitrate mining practices, and recent geothermic exploitation, ALTIPLANO reveals an ancient land standing witness to all that is, was, and will be.
Barbara & Michael Leisgen, Sonnenlinie, 1976. Black-and-white video, sound, 11’54.
IKOB Collection
Barbara & Michael Leisgen, an artist duo best known for their photographic work, experimented with the medium of video in the 1970s. Their conceptual approach to the camera—and its technical possibilities and limitations—is evident in these works as well.
Sonnenlinie was filmed here in East Belgium using a Sony U-Matic camera. At the time, this camera contained a light-sensitive element that caused direct sunlight to burn into the lens, leaving irreparable damage. The Leisgens exploited this sensitivity to use the sunlight to draw a horizontal line from left to right. It was not possible to rehearse the shot; it had to be done in one take. The ticking of a clock can be heard in the background, together with the movement of the camera and the resulting line, this emphasises the close connection between the sun, movement, and temporality, encapsulated in the moving image.
This film is being shown in parallel to the IKOB solo exhibition by Barbara & Michael Leisgen.
The films are screened consecutively and looped continuously during opening hours.
The first cycle, water, ran from 27.01-29.03.2026 and included the following films (more information here):
Jean Painlevé, Les Oursins, 1928. 35 mm, s/w, no sound, 10'
Alice Dos Reis, Mood Keep, 2018. HD film, 15’
Roman Signer, Einbruch in Eis, 1985. video, 1’7.
Eva Claus, To Be A Day, 2025. 16mm, 4:3, color, sound, 8’
The second cycle, air, ran from 31.03-07.06.2026, and included the following films (more information here):
Laure Prouvost, Every Sunday Grand Ma, 2022. HD video, 7’17.
Graham Stevens, Desert Cloud, 1974. 16 mm, color, sound. 17’34.
Viswanadhan, Air/Vayu, 1994. 16 mm, color, sound, excerpt from 27:19 to 47:34.
Luís Lázaro Matos, Super Gibraltar II, 2015. Video, sound, 10’34.
The fourth and final cycle, earth, begins on October 4, 2026.