This chapter of Info~Angel, a series of archival presentations about NW, Aalst and the Dender Region, revisits Viewmaster (2007), an early collaboration between choreographers Ula Sickle, Heike Langsdorf and architect Laurent Liefooghe. Presented alongside Sickle’s live exhibition at NW, this presentation reflects on the intersections of performance, installation, and film in Viewmaster, an approach that remains central to the artist’s practice today. At the same time, the work signals NW’s early engagement with film and performance—an interest that continues to inform its programme.

Originally created for the very space now occupied by NW’s cinema, Viewmaster employs the 19th-century illusion of Pepper’s Ghost, with its flickering images produced by reflections cast onto an unnoticed pane of glass. In this work, bodies dissolve and recombine, their contours smudged by the mechanics of projection, an aesthetic of crossfade rather than continuity.

While Viewmaster represents an early stage in Sickle’s practice, it anticipated her lasting engagement with the cinematic, a preoccupation she further explored during her studies at Le Fresnoy in France. Its choreography-as-editing approach—seen in live crossfades and dissolves—remains integral to her work today. By revisiting Viewmaster, Info~Angel offers both an institutional reflection and a disruption of Sickle’s exhibition’s flow, prompting audiences to consider the broader frameworks in which artists operate.

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Drawing inspiration from the Info~Angel group and the Centre for Societal Renewal, Info~Angel is a series of exhibitions that illuminate the history of Aalst and the Dender region. What lies concealed in our local past? What provokes (or ‘stings’) us? And what captures our attention?