A Prior Magazine #10, 2004

A PRIOR MAGAZINE #10 is the first publication introducing Torfs’ versatile work during the 1993-2003 period. Essays by Jean Torrent, Dirk Lauwaert and Dirk Pültau are published in English, Dutch and French. Over the past 10 years Torfs’ work developed into a self-willed œuvre attracting more and more interest, also on an international scale. Ana Torfs investigates, among other things, the issue of the portrait. The relationship between text and image, between reading and representing, is brought up again and again in, among others, a 35 mm film, photo series, a video installation, various slide projection installations and autonomous artist’s publications. In A PRIOR MAGAZINE #10 Torfs presents an extensive visual portfolio, counting over 100 pages, covering her works IL COMBATTIMENTO (1993), ZYKLUS VON KLEINIGKEITEN (1998), DU MENTIR-FAUX (2000), ELECTIVE AFFINITIES/THE TRUTH OF MASKS & TABLES OF AFFINITIES (2002) and “à…à…aaah!” (2003). Additionally three authors elaborate on various aspects of her multi-layered body of work: in a wonderful literary text Jean Torrent outlines a number of mutual relations, ‘Correspondences’, between Torfs’ work and unnoticed relationships, unheard correspondences and new stories paired off with them by the author; Dirk Lauwaert approaches Torfs’ ‘Working with Texts’ in a very concise and refined text; and in ‘The Blind Singer and the Absent Composer’ Dirk Pültau analyses the use of music, voice and the interdisciplinary in two works by Torfs.

Ana Torfs is more than the central artist in the 10th issue of A PRIOR MAGAZINE. She also took up the part of guest curator for the magazine inviting Belgian artist Franciska Lambrechts (b.1967). With ‘Identity Crisis’ Lambrechts presents a new artist’s project. From the work of Belgian author Daniel Robberechts (b.1937), who passed away in 1992, Torfs opted for a thus far unpublished journal fragment from 1969.

(Els Roelandt’s editorial to the issue)