My name is Zachàr Laskewicz and I'm an Australian neurodivergent creative artist living in Belgium. I've been a composer, a performer and a lecturer in places as diverse as China, Finland, Indonesia and Denmark. Art has always been my way of interfacing with reality, and I've always been experimenting as I discover continually new and exciting ways to express my vision.
I've settled permanently in the beautiful and ancient Belgian city of Ghent where I live at the following address: NIEUWLAND 70 bus 201, 9000 GHENT, Belgium.
... My life, however, has seen dramatic changes since my academic career was cut short by a burst cornea and an existential crisis more than a decade ago...
Since a period that began just before the pandemic, I am currently undergoing an overwhelming and herefore unimagined period of artistic creativity and I've since started an array of projects, the results of which seem to lead me to astounding insights into myself, the world and my own creativity. As such, I've radically redesigned this website to reflect these relatively recent developments.
In the panel to the left, you can find links to current projects and aspects of my recent work. My old website tells a story of my accomplishments - the person I wanted you to imagine I was. The intention here is to show you the person I actually am, the good, the awful and also the hideous... and to get you excited about participating in it!
If, for reasons of nostalgia or an interest in discovering factual information about what I did and where, you can always click on the link right at the top of the left panel.
"I am as frenetically creative as ever. In retrospect, I've always applied my creativity to sculpt a sort of lens through which I can gaze at the world in an attempt to understand it better. The bitter pill of experience has taught me that this sword cuts on both edges; although on the one hand I long for people to return my gaze, I always fear that the focus-providing glass on my side will not produce the desired effect in reverse. All the same, I've realised that those who find what they see unusual would probably understand me better if they realised they were looking in the wrong end of a telescope!"
- Zachar Laskewicz, 4 August 2011 Ghent.
This site contains a lot of personal property over which I maintain the ultimate copyright. I kindly request that you credit any references you make to my compositions, writings or films. Telling me about how you may have interacted with my work or this site would be an extra added bonus. My email address is zachar@telenet.be.
My life often involves a battle between the part of me which sees everything in a positive light and tries to use art to make sense of an absurd world. However, I have a far less pleasant Evil Twin who tries to bring me down; he very rarely shows his face (as I keep him locked up in a "Little Green Box"), but still he longs to be heard. To partially appease him, I often include texts boxs which describe the worst possible way I could experience something. I never want to become like him, but showing how he responds to things could help you get an insight into my character, as well as provide a humourous backdrop to this site's structure.
The major intention of this radical new update to my website is to involve YOU in my creativity. Rather than reflect only what I'm getting up to and my personal accolades, the intention is to provide lots of different ways for you to have access to and to participate in my creativity: things to watch, download, make yourself, and in particular how you can get in contact with me.
You can use the navigation bar above to navigate to the major locations in this website. There are three different tiers to it, is divided into the three levels: insite links, inpage links and external links.
You can visit the SITE MAP page for a more detailed description of exactly how the website is structured. Below you will find a simplified summary.
INSITE LINKS are largely referring to pages that are interchangeable at this level and they concern site structure, general and contact information as well as a few pages to record additions to the website. A list of these links follows:
ANECDOTES & APHORISMS - things I am purported to have said or that I ascribe to myself...
DOWNLOADABLES - record of pdfs, svgs, pngs, pdfs and other shareable products of mine to be downloaded... free!
HISTORY & OEUVRE - this one of the parts of the old website I will transfer here - a summary of my "accolades" - high points from illustrious academic career (which was far less impressive than I may make it sound) and other important waypoints.
POETRY & PROSE - my collected poetry and tiny tales is included here, including ones I wrote in the distant past and are viewable in alphabetical order. These can also be highlighted in the "Word Play" rubric below or the "Dreadful Little Nightmares" projects page.
SITE MAP - a more detailed description of how exactly the website works, including the old website which has more information about my history.
SITE HISTORY - a record of the important changes made to the site.
STATE OF THINGS - as each description of recent ecstatic joys and desperate miseries is replaced by a an ever newer calamity, the old ones are recorded here.
ZACHAR UNEXPURGATED - links to the parts of my creativity that you wouldn't like to discover by accident seeing that its contents may genuinely disturb you.
INPAGE LINKS are major waypoints on this page. The liste below includes a more complete list than is in the navigation bar, and you can click on any of them to move automatically to that page division:
Immediately below this, however, you will find two major subcategories. The first is under the heading WHAT'S NEW and is basically the changes I have made to the site as I update it. As this list gets too long, I transfer older entries to the SITE HISTORY page which has a complete record of all changes.
EXTERNAL LINKS are to other websites that represent my work such as various social media sites and YouTube. Where they lead is pretty evident.
Above the first level of the website, there are 12 "home locations" for each of the different areas of my work. I refer to these as the "Current Projects" and you can read a brief description of them (with links) below or go to the SITE MAP or the CURRENT PROJECTS page for a way more detailed explanation. There is also the entire left panel which is viewable on every page! Each of these interactive buttons willl take you to these individual home sites. Want to learn more about them? Hover over the buttons and find out!
These items change depending on recent uploads, and there is a page to view all currently downloadable material (DOWNLOADABLES FOR GETTING) and where you can get them. These include, for example, svg templates for your vinyl cutter, sewing patterns or links to books or articles I wrote that you can download for free).
These are things that could help you not only understand me better but gain an insight how I experience art in an active, participatory way.
I share these things and ideas because that is why I make art: so that other people can interact with it. You are free to use any of my ideas, although I do maintain copyright over them and I request kindly that you acknowledge how I influenced you when you made use of them.
Needless to say, I adore it when people make use of my ideas, but I appreciate it if I'm told about it and that reference be made to my input. In other words, I would adore it if you told me about how I influenced you!
WHAT'S NEW
Here's a record of recent changes to the site. You can view the complete history, at least of this newer version of the site, at the SITES HISTORY page. Below you can find a template I use to structure each new change so I can record what I've done and how I've done it for future reference.
TEMPLATE FOR ENTRIES:
change date
primary adjustment in the description
Description of adjustments made.
RECENT CHANGES TO SITE:
04 February 2026
subject
This is the first of a set of comprehensive represetations of the printed/impressed aart I've been making. The intention is to provide a basis for collecting information about these artworks; the image sets are intended to introduce not only the images, but links to the environment in which they were created, in other words - not only the "plats" and films of me making these artworks, but links to texts and films related to the context in which the art was created. These image sets are a good starting point for these collections of recent artworks. This is the first set: ALL THE WILTING PETALS.
Yes! It's the new GIF Clan "WATCH OUT FOR PATTERNS" ! These GIFs are now uploaded to GIPHY, TENOR & IMGUR, and you can find them with the standard tags, using the CLAN Tag #WATCHOUTFORPATTERNS
Two new music-theatre-film posters added to as OUTRAGEOUS TRAVESTIES for the films I'm making for the credits and titles of a music-theatre film of a performance I recorded at the PKB in Bali. Here is a link to the post.
Click here for a link to the poem/children's object lesson "Tree Wraith: Now You're Stumped!". To introduce and accompany the written work, I made this variation on a GIF series currently in development. I I mean... who reads text these days if it isn't accompanied by an image? Nobody does!
Follow this link for my new filmdemonstrating prints of plates I made using the "incision edging"technique I recently invented as part of the Excision Plate Engineering experiments.: http://nachtschimmen.eu/impressions/20260417.html
New film with me singing "Pakang Raras" with Made Agus Wardana in Denpasar, Pegok. You can also watch it here: zacharplaysgamelan/20260409.html
30 March 2026
New Post to MAKING AN IMPRESSION
This post concerns the experiments I'm currently conducting on harnessing PVC Composite Laminates as printing plates; t; concerning a particuarl design to test the first of these experiments involved with membrane-sealed excision plates. The print is called " Finger Print: Ob scene of the Crime". You can link to this post here which has a description of these experiments in considerbly more detail: https://nachtschimmen.eu/impressions/.202160330
Yes! The SLAGGY TRAMP GIF Set is finally downloadable by anyone, anywhere, from GIPHY or tenor. You can find the post concerning this GIF Set a at the following link:
In order to reduce the size of the website, in one single swoop the background GIFs were reduced to single frames, saving in total 800MB. *
12 February 2026
New Post to ZACHAR PLAYS GAMELAN
The preview for "Crane Gang Quavers" can be viewed below. It is the film that shows me learning the polos part through playing it with the sangsih I had recorded earlier. You can learn more at the ZACHAR PLAYS GAMELAN Webpage: https://nachtschimmen.eu/20260212.html.
04 February 2026
subject
Here's the preview for the new GIF Set - GO STOP GO: A Traffic Jam! which I've also added to Rubric 3: Interactive Design below:
New Post to the ZACHAR PLAYS GAMELAN website: https://nachtschimmen.eu/zacharplaysgamelan/24012026.html. It's the complete Sangsih part to my interpretation called "CRANE GANG QUAVERS" of the amazing Balinese composition "CANGAK MERENGANG".
EVIL TWIN said: "Seeing that I'm naturally greedy and determined to never give anyone anything for nothing, this space will almost inevitably remain completely empty. There'll never be anything here, I tell you! Nothing!!
- Zachar Laskewicz, 4 August 2011 Ghent.
Here you'll be able to find links to places where you can download films, templates and make-it-yourself projects.
In an effort to prove my Evil Twin completely wrong and to dash his efforts to confound me, I've included already a link to the gallery on my IMGUR profile where you can download PNG _images and upload them directly into the CRICUT software, or to your laser engraver, to cut into a sheet of vinyl to make your own prints with this design!
I mean, it's what you've always wanted!
...a brief description of the links to the 12 major subdivisions of the website which reflect the work I actually do, with links to the insite homepages for each of these projects...
...moving and still images refracted recently from the one remaining lens...
STATE OF THINGS
My Evil Twin said: "In this rubric I record the miserable things I put people through, the disgusting and terrible traumas they almost inevitably undergo and the personal sense of superiority and satisfaction this demeaning of other people brings to me!!!"
...But in all honesty, you should never listen to Evil Twin. He's the worst side of me I would way prefer to keep in the Little Green Box I'm normally able to banish him into. He believes the worse things about other people's intentions. He's my lizard brain. He's my mother demeaning me and the voice of every school bully assuring me that I'm worthless and will never come to anything. Fortunately, I'm usually able to ignore his desperate cries. Most of the time... Nonetheless he often pops into the website to point out how awful he feels about everything. It is the absolute opposite of what I am and what I aspire to.
...In any case, you can see a complete record of the terrible, disgusting and frightening things I get up to while I am trying to do my best to confound your best interests at the STATE OF THINGS page!
INVENTIVE PLATFORM GAME "CHINA MINER" ENTRANCES PERTH TEEN
...leading him to develop a fascination with ragtime music...
CHINA MINER was a video game from the eighties that was shared among teenagers on first the VIC 20 and later the Commodore 64. It was enormously imaginative... and notoriously difficult and unrelenting.
The most surprising thing about it is the amazing soundtrack. So this is the video game that inspired me to learn to play the Maple Leaf Rag. This extremely imaginative realisation of the on what must've been quite meager means at the time, was incredibly striking to me.
I adored it. What was that crazy, dipply music? I had to learn to play it... I had no idea what is was or where it came from, of course, and that took a little investigation (and I don't remember how I ended up working it out).
If you're wondering why I even thought to encounter it again: it's because I was beginning to worry that I'd got the music wrong and that it hadn't used a Joplin theme at all. I thought it was a game by the legendary game designer Jef Minter who was all the rage when I was a kid. He is remembered for games like "Hover Bover" (about lawn mowing for some reason) and "Attack of the Mutant Camels" (about... well... mustant camels!).
People like Jef - and Ian Grey who designed this game - were writing for the Vic 20 and Commodore 64. We used to upload the games from cassette tapes; and they were easy to illicitly copy and share if you could copy cassettes!
...But... I mean... you didn't hear that from me, alright?!
Through the years I've never heard this game associated with Jef Minter, but I went on believing it to be true anyway, assuming that this was a lesser game he didn't want to be associated with or because of it's inappropriate representation of Chinese people or something. When it finally came around to looking up a list of games he designed, I was horrified to discover that it wasn't there at all! Scared that my memory was so bad that I'd got the music mixed up, I finally found the game on YouTube, and I wasn't disappointed. The striking bell like resonance of the rhythmic electronic sounds ring today as they did when I was a child: insistently and player piano like.
But why would I so closely associate this game with Jef Minter? I thought at first that it was just carelessness. But then I was genuinely surprised to discover that my mistake was much more understandable than I had ever imagined.
If you hang around to hear the whole of the "China Miner Rag", you'll discover why: one of the levels is actually called "Minter Madness"!
I remember now that the game maker was actually referencing one of the platform games created by Jef Minter of the same period.
Anyway this is the reason I fell in love with ragtime music... and platform video games.
My Evil Twin said: "None of these projects would ever be of the slightest bit of interest to you or your friends and family so I don't even understand why you are reading this text!"
CURRENT PROJECTS provides the links to 12 different pages. I've found in the last years that if my work is to be divided into categories, this is the best way to go about classifying it. The purpose here, however, is to provide people with the chance to interact with my work, and by exploring each of these projects you can see how you can involve yourself in my creative universe. I'd certainly glorify your willingness to participate. The following navigation bar that appears on each of these projects pages is a good introduction to each of these areas. there are twelve little symbols eacch which provides a different link and I'll provide below a broad summary of how these divisions work - and what you can do to take part in them.
Project 1: AT YOUR OWN PERIL - Make-it-yourself Art Projects
Project 2: DREADFUL LITTLE NIGHTMARES- Tiny Tales of Terror (and other fiction)
Project 3: FICTIVE PROTOLINGUISTICS - Imaginary languages and invented terminology.
Project 4: GETTING GOT - Because interactive art needs you!
Project 5: GLORIOUS ILLUSIONS - Films and images of music and performances.
Project 6: INFERNAL RUCKUS - Musical compositions and scores.
Project 7: INTERMINABLE CONTRAPTIONS - GIFs and ztickers.
Project 8: MAKING AN IMPRESSION - Printed and Impressed Art.
Project 9: MANTEL MARVELS - Art Deco clock collection & clock art.
Project 10: NEW USED PUBLISHED - Published articles and other recent writing.
Project 11: OUTRAGEOUS TRAVESTIES - Graphic art and film posters.
Project 12: ZACHAR PLAYS GAMELAN - Interculturality.
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My Evil Twin says: "Whirring and buzzing contraptions moving interminably that you won't be able to stop moving no matter how hard you try?! Let's call a spade a spade: you just couldn't deal with that loss of control... Maybe just leaving this website would be the ultimate release to your suffering, dear?"
Seeing that you refuse to listen to my evil twin's well-thought out advice, perhaps you'd like see this GIF I recently designed for the new GO STOP GO: A Traffic Jam! GIF Set?!
Alternatively, you could also take a look at the GIF below this which was designed as part of the "Eternity Takes Forever" GIF series: SCYPHOZOA COSMOS. This is then followed by GIF 2 in the "BETRAYAL OF THE MOON Series.
Scan the GIF in this artwork to reach the multimedia artwork/GIF called: GETTING GOT for Printed Art - WHO ME LUNACY: Postal Art 2024-2025:
My Evil Twin said: "...And so what?! Maybe I did go and say these things, alright?! I know that YOU would almost invariably love to have said them yourself! Don't think I don't know your type!! Why don't you just go quote me, now: I dare you!!!"
... But in all honesty, who listens to him? He's clearly an idiot... Anyway, for the moment you can console yourself from his unpleasant jibes by reading one of my recent quotations, aphorisms, word plays or poems:
"It's all well and good to create a new universe to inhabit, only to discover that you're trapped there, alone!"
"Don't panic, little Johnny! Who knows? Maybe one day, with time, you too will follow the path I took and also become an ancient evil malevolent deity!! 'Cos eye believes in you!!!"
- Zachar Laskewicz, 7 April 2025 (Ghent, Belgium)
[to John Kamp (@kamperpants) in reaction to him saying "aw shucks, but I'm just a guy!"]
"No, I did not devote myself to art and then become an artist...
...I was always an artist, and I devoted my life to being myself..."
- Zachar Laskewicz, 9 March 2025
Ghent (Belgium)
EVIL TWIN said: "What follows are some recently made mutilations where I've pressed the fuck out of paper until it is covered with blasphemous scrawls or pushed so badly out of shape that you'd never be able to use it for anything as gauche as writing or painting. But, I mean, who does those types of things anymore anyway?"
Below is a gallery of recent prints I made as I attempted to use the last remnants of the first oil-based engraving ink I've
made:
...Since you've hung around despite my Evil Twin's warning, you can enjoy the first gallery for one of the prints on the inside of the 2024-2025 New Year GOT-O-GRAM I have only just sent off!
My Evil Twin said: "These are basically films that will be too long for you to possibly have the patience to sit through, or too short for you to consider anything but irritating fluff. So perhaps you'd just be better off doing something else entirely? I mean, why have you even bothered reading this far?! What exactly is wrong with you?!?"
Well, since you clearly don't intend to follow my Evil Twin's advice - and fortunately for me practically no one does - you could watch this film I finished on the 8th of May 2025 based on the premiere performance of a new music composition which I composed for the robot orchestra here in Ghent. It is called RETURN OF THE SUN:
You can also watch this film: GAMUT THEATRE - a surreal film music video from a film I made of me singing in Pegok, Denpasar (Bali):
