About & Contact

SIC believes in encounter: in the empowerment of coming together, thinking together, exchanging generously. SIC functions horizontally. It aspires to be an open community and network. SIC is inspired by the bounty that comes from blurring boundaries: art/cinema, fiction/documentary, poetry/essay. SIC is a laboratory for projects that look consciously and ethically at their own conditions of existence. SIC puts a unique focus on challenging form and film language and facilitates a critical social discourse.

We believe this to be an urgency for the multicultural society we live in. We are committed to transmitting an intercultural ethic, alert to the problems of the present and sensitive to emerging artistic trends.

SIC supports projects that propose new sensorial and poetic ways of storytelling: films, which transcend the existing categories of the film industry: experimental or documentary, cinéma du réel or fiction, long or short. Films that are made in the here and now, outside the economic, logistic and administrative timeframe of a classic production. Films carried by the passionate desire of the author. Production-wise light films, where the maker is often the only captain on board. SIC gives opportunities to unconventional, socially meaningful audiovisual forms, that would otherwise struggle to find an audience or a sounding board, by providing a safe environment for them to grow.

Instead of following the traditional path of writing with the purpose of shooting and then editing, SIC encourages the process of shooting and then thinking through the materials obtained. Rather than using writing as an interface that creates a distance (of time and language) between the maker and its subject, SIC encourages a process where writing a film emanates directly from the artistic materials: images, sounds, time, space, memories.

The participants of SIC have different backgrounds, different ages, different cultures and baggage. Artists, filmmakers, image or sound technicians with a personal project, journalists looking for a new form of storytelling, writers and activists who want to continue their endeavours in an artistic way, academics, anthropologists/artists with a film project close to their heart, self-taught people. Often, the participants have already had some kind of training. SIC is more of a workshop and laboratory than a training course or a school. Participants are expected to be present at the sessions, they engage also with the other ongoing projects.

The process is structured through the participants’ journey along a series of collective feedback sessions where she/he/they receive feedback on her/his/their ongoing work.

Collective sessions reunite all the coaches and the participants.These sessions are unique and the core of SIC. Twenty people brainstorm over a project and follow it during a year, pointing at dead angles, creating new perspectives and richness. These collective feedback sessions are demanding and intense.

Being filmmakers ourselves and knowing the creative process from the inside, we are very well aware of the strength, but also the fragility of this path. We have created SIC to help a filmmaker push her/his/their unique vision to the limit, but we care to surround her/him/them with resources in a benevolent and safe environment.

SIC is made of asymmetries. People come from different places, inhabit different bodies, have different experiences, are situated differently in power structures and have different boundaries. Take this into account, challenge your own position and let it be challenged, while respecting other people’s boundaries.

Everybody, to a certain extent, partakes in multiple systems of inequality by inhabiting different positions, roles and narratives. SIC wants to be a space where this can be actively addressed, and where learning and change can happen.

Blind spots and biases are real. The fact that one does not see them doesn’t mean they do not affect or harm others. Everyone is accountable for their lack of awareness as much as for their conscious acts, so everyone is responsible for willing to explore what they may not yet be aware of and opening up to see things in a different light and perspective.

In creating a culture of awareness, we experience that the complexity of the conversations and the processes grows. We observe that a safe environment offers more space to express oneself and to develop. It is in these conversations that our differences become an instrument to stimulate each other, open perspectives and potential.

This means that listening, offering support and holding people to account in a compassionate way is favoured over shunning people without offering resources to learn and change.

This said, at SIC we care for a healthy working environment, respectful working relationships and we denounce any conduct or statements that may be intimidating, disrespectful or violent in anyway.

GUIDELINES:

• The collective is set up to create a space of confidence where participants share ongoing work.
• Social diversity is seen as a reality. Differences are positively welcomed.
• Everyone involved with SIC (coaches, participants, guests and organization) treat each other with respect, regardless of the nature of their working relationship.
• We all contribute to an environment in which no form of offensive behavior is tolerated.
• We understand offensive behavior as, but not exclusively to, bullying, racism, sexism, discrimination, (passive) aggression and unwanted sexual behavior both through words or images and through actions or behaviors.
• The rules equally apply to online conversations and exchanges.

If you wish, you can report wrong behavior to someone else, your peers, your coach, the coordinator.

When people work together, power relations are always involved, consciously or unconsciously. Under normal circumstances, people handle those relationships well without harming the dignity, job satisfaction or productivity of either party. If situations arise where you feel that your work or well-being is hindered by unbalanced power relations, it should be possible to find a way to address this constructively. This course of action can help us grow and learn. It is important to state that you are always welcomed to talk with one of the coaches or the coordinator about it. If you have the feeling that this coach might not have enough distance to the situation, we would like to encourage you to talk with one of the external parties we propose below:

At ENGAGEMENT ( contact@engagementarts.be ) where you can talk to one of the certified confidants (EN/NL/FR) or at the Genderkamer of the Flemish Ombuds Service (EN/NL). Nina Callens and Viktor Van der Veken have an ombudsperson function that specifically deals with offensive behavior in the field of culture and arts. They will listen to you, they will try to understand your situation, give advice or support negotiations and they have a mandate to file an official complaint. You can contact them via genderkamer@vlaamseombudsdienst.be.

When you witness offensive behavior, you try to stand up for the person who experiences this behavior. If this does not work or is not possible, you take the responsibility to report the behavior you witnessed to one of the coaches, the coordinator and /or ENGAGEMENT or Genderkamer (see contacts mentioned above)

The team of SIC will treat and examine every report of transgressive behavior carefully and in full confidentiality. We consider each report as a learning moment and engage to look together for an appropriate solution.

Mary Jiménez is the Artistic Director of SIC, Julien Chapelle the Coordinator, and Sophie Sherman is responsible for the Social Media.

Supported by the board members : Bénédicte Liénard, Marc Bouteiller, Julie Pfleiderer, Susanne Weck

SoundImageCulture association was founded in 2008 by An Van Dinderen, Didier Volckaert, Reinhart Cosaert, Laurent Van Lancker and Eric Pauwels.

SIC has wonderful friends and partners!
Here is a non-exhaustive list:

Atelier Graphoui , Dérives , CBA , Aaapa , PAM. , ERG Art School , ISELP Contemporary Art Center , Festival en Ville , Bozar , La Maison européenne des Auteurs et des Autrices – Scam , Courtisane – Film Festival , Beursschouwburg , Pianofabriek , VAF , ARGOS , Cinemaximiliaan , KASK , UGent , Constant , Festival Visite / Imagerie , PMMC werkleitz , Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL) , Visual Experiment Laboratory, Museum of Ethnology, Osaka // Itsushi Kawase , Visual Anthropology Department Goldsmith London // Chris Wright  , Social Anthropology, Oslo University // Arnd Schneider , Anthropology of the Image Lab, UC Davis, USA //  Tarek Elhaik , Visual Anthropology Department, Leiden University // Metje Postma