Pieter-Jan Verheyen, Chickens; Scared by Torpedo

Pieter-Jan Verheyen (1993, Turnhout) is a multidisciplinary artist graduating in Photography. With a broad interest in researching the medium’s heritage and far-reaching influence he questions notions of history, politics and science, often resulting in critical, yet playful presentations. In visualizing these hermetic systems he attempts to deconstruct the dominant strategies of the camera apparatus and it’s mechanical objectivity.

In his master-project “Chickens Scared by a Torpedo”, Pieter-Jan Verheyen researches the ability of the photographic medium to represent scientific systems. With this specific project he aims to focus on the scientific phenomena of Ballistics: the study of the propulsion, flight, and impact of projectiles. To do so he has created an extensive archive from which he draws to create presentations consisting of (photo-) installations, videos and happenings that strongly reference photo-history and the medium of photography itself, in a speculative and often playful manner. These presentations cumulate in a dialectic play inviting the observer to reflect on the apparatuses of (photo-) history, science and politics.