The artist’s first comprehensive monograph, the book features works ranging from 1996 to 2007 and includes specially commissioned essays, as well as numerous reproductions and, for the first time, the preparatory drawings for the films and installations. Published for the exhibitions at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the MIT List Center, Cambridge; the De Pont Foundation, Tilburg; Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver; and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen.

David Claerbout’s large-scale film projections are characterized by their extremely slow-motion image sequences that are created using computer-generated methods. Moving images freeze into still images. The themes of transience and stasis, and above all the majestic, unwavering nature of time, take on their own aesthetic in Claerbout’s visual language. Based on this, the American art historian Russell Ferguson analyzes David Claerbout’s relationship to contemporary photography in his essay and explains his extremely precise working process, which often takes years. In a conversation with Thomas D. Trummer, David Claerbout talks about his philosophy and his perception of the world and the present, in particular against the background of the installations shown at the Kunsthaus Bregenz.

David Claerbout is one of the most important video artists of his generation. Internationally acclaimed and exhibited in major institutions, he has developed a filmic body of work that combines a sense of beauty with an extraordinary sense of time. This publication reviews the works presented in the exhibition devoted to him at the Frac Auvergne.

The highly anticipated sequel to The Silence of the Lens by video artist David Claerbout

Birdsong brings together three video works by David Claerbout – The Woodcarver and the Forest, Birdcage and Backwards Growing Tree – each a meditation on time, perception and the poetics of the natural world. In an era dominated by speed and distraction, Claerbout reclaims the longue durée, offering a contemplative, detoxed form of filmmaking.

Accompanied by a poem by Stefan Hertmans, this volume explores the myths of digitisation, the rhythms of nature, growth and degrowth. Birdsong is a visual journey through the imaging ideas that the artist has developed over the past decade.

This publication coincides with Claerbout’s exhibition At the window at Gaasbeek Castle.

Trilingual edition English–Dutch–French.