The Case of the Sea Dog

Graphic designer, filmmaker and percussionist Jérôme Lopez makes stories with a “video suitcase”: a device with a small glass table lit from below and the surface image filmed live, built into a suitcase. His practice is rooted in a low-tech, ecological and participatory ethos, but is every bit as virtuosic and rhythmical as music itself. Drawing on documentary, collecting and improvisation, Jérôme creates a live stream of images from photographs and objects, manipulating them at breakneck speed. The images are captured by a computer and sent on to a video projector, with or without digital processing. A member of the Lyon-based collective ARFI, À la Recherche d’un Folklore Imaginaire, Jérôme's stories often invite openness. He allows the narrative to bend according to what comes back from the audience who sometimes feed him, in real time, with phrases or scribbled drawings hastily made on scraps of paper.

The Echoes of Brussels concert series explores the history of our capital through the memories of its inhabitants and what they have created. The Case of the Sea Dog takes young pupils on a musical and visual journey through an imaginary Brussels. Seen through children’s eyes, the city becomes a place of fiction, in sound and image. Rue du Chien Marin: even the name of this street, running perpendicular to Rue de Flandres, is a mystery. According to an old Brussels legend, a seal was discovered here in the sixteenth century during building works. But why was it there? Time, surely, to put a children’s brigade on the case.

Students will have the opportunity to: 

• discover the video mallet, a tool for live audio and video production 
• relive the history of Brussels through music and images 
• invent an imaginary Brussels through a contemporary story 
• share a moving musical experience together