The exhibition project Middle Gate II – The Story of Dymphna is a collaboration between M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp) and the cultural centre de Werft in Geel. Middle Gate II is the follow up to the exhibition Middle Gate, curated by Jan Hoet in Geel in 2013. The exhibition concept is closely tied to the legend of the holy Dymphna, saint of the possessed, the mentally ill and patroness against epilepsy and insanity. The legend of Dymphna shares a strong connection to the identity of Geel, "the charitable city".

Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven / AMVK

(c)video still: AMVK
Verdeel en Heers, 1989
Video

"My starting-point for the installation “The 5th Force” was the making of a cult-room in which various and supplementary moral survival systems exist simultaneously. The presence is continuous and complete, so that anytime one enters the space, an ethical overall picture is impressed, a picture of what defines us Westerners, wittingly or unwittingly, in most of our behavior and rational development. The information-currents happen in certain rhythms and contain atheist as well as religious ideologies, rosicrucians, black magic, freemasons, information-cults, evolutionary cults, pagan incantations, popular culture, artificial intelligence. I call it a mystic work because my main motive is the liquidation of adversary, the re-unification of what was torn apart in the beginning of mankind. 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 halves of the brain, 2 hands, 2 feet. One always needs 2 to experience depth, to enter anything profoundly, including consciousness. The pain which removes the Self from oneself is called consciousness. By showing all this together I try to liquidate these divisions which refrain us to exceed certain limits. More specific the limits which refrain us from feeling the unity with all that’s been created. This is a work in progress, in other words, this work evolves every time it is shown, it is refined, replenished and amplified, it becomes clearer and completer.  I see this work as a melting pot of all elements I’ve been working with in the past 20 years."

− AMVK