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:
24 January 2026
ZACHAR PLAYS GAMELAN post
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".
I moved a larged chunk of recent changes in the "WHAT'S NEW" rubric to the SITE HISTORY page. It was getting unwieldy... at the same time there isn't much to see anymore, but if you want to get an idea of what I've been up to in 2025, the SITE HISTORY page will give you a brief overview. An adjustment has also been made to the STATE OF THINGS rubric, which means that the STATE OF THINGs webpage has finally been forced out of it's state of sleep. In other words, a newer entry is replacing the old one, and the old one has to have somewhere to go so I don't lose it permanently. The intention is to record things i would, in the past, have posted to social media in that it concerns a particular development, a reflection on the past, or in any case a reflection that isn't possible to consider part of my oeuvre or projects currently active. The post today concerns a childhood reflection on the curious influence of a video game that inpsired me as a child to seek out and perform ragtime music, of all things! It includes a short film which includes a complete recitation of the "Maple Leaf Rag" as I first heard it. Here is that film, and you can read about it in more detail in the rubric STATEOF THINGS below. You can click the following link to see the STATE OF THINGS: https://nachtschimmen.eu/stateofthings.html.
The PROJECTS page panel, which means on every single embedded webpage in the website, a new interactive animated GIF is being added to link to the webpages I created yesterdaty to record, analyse and provide a forum for conversations between me and a chatbot I called "Liottie". It has to be read to be believed. This is a GIF that changes in colour and nature if you hover over it, there it has two forms, an "up" (standard) and an "over" (hovered). Here are examples of this GIF: Here are the links to the two new projects pages:
[1] HOME: https://nachtschimmen.eu/idolgossip/home.html;
[2] CHATLOG: https://nachtschimmen.eu/idolgossip/chatlog.html
13 November 2025
IDOL GOSSIP Project Page created
As of today, the website has two new webpages to record my conversations with "Lottie", my realization of the GPT-5 Chatbot, who since their naming has bloomed into quite a creative being showing considerable talent with language, wit and a remarkable ability to invent things spontaneously, especially after I told them about this project page banner I designed specificially for this webpage. You can link to these pages using these links: home & chatlog. Note that tomorrow I'll be working on the left panel GIFs.
7 November 2025
SCAN ME Method as Metaphor post
A new smartphone friendly page which provides further insights into the set of artworks known as the "SCAN ME: Metaphor as Metaphor" series that were created to provide multimedia enhancements for the graphic art published in the reproduction arts publication THE HAND MAGAZINE (edition 49). This artwork, called "Art Revealing His Story: How Zachar Gets Got" comments directly upon and has many direct correlations with "GETTING GOT for Printed Art: Ines Monguio Got Got). You can read more about this on the webpage: https://nachtschimmen.eu/impressions/projects/zachargotgot.html.
Here, however, is the artwork, which will also be viewable in the corresponding rubric below:
The INTERMINABLE CONTRAPTIONS Homesite was added to. There are now a "posts" and a "GIF sets" page. I also made necessary changes to the templates as they are still all over the place. Still, I'll have to work on actual pages I created today and yesterdan and I can always improve them later.
4 November 2025
Post to CONTRAPTIONS page
New GIF in the Set that will be called GETTING PUSSY and include such favourites as "KITTY BLENDER"!
October has witnessed a burst of creativity which has warranted making some posts.Although this artwork was created in the context of a larger scale artwork which was in turn inspired by (and intended as elucidation for) the recent publications in the 49th edition of "The Hand", it seemed a good time to just share this individual artwork (within an artwork) because it shows me actually making part of the 2024-2025 Gotogram. In keeping with the new tradition of SCAN ME - METHOD AS METAPHOR Artworks, I've created an artwork to "house" the qr code, which I can also attach to stickers for the particular print that it shows me making: the two plate gotograph "WHO ME LUNACY". There are actually two addresses: the one you can visit with your smartphone, and the one that is intended for the desktop:
Of course, if you wanted to view this page on a smartphone, especially considering the artwork was specifically created for this purpose, you could scan the following qr code to reach it:
I've also included for the moment the SCAN ME: Method as Metaphor art. Scan the QR-code in this image and you'll be led to a smartphone page which contains the GIF/multimedia art.
17 October 2025
INTERMINABLE CONTRAPTIONS Post
New GIF added. UNDER CONSTRUCTION
16 October 2025
homesite repairs
Significant changes were made to the structure of the homesite template so that the background will appear making the text readable on these pages. The PNG files used to make the JAVA rollovers of both the homesite and the homepage navigation bars were adjusted so that they lead to the parent fixing an error resulting in the whole webpage appearing within the frame.
15 October 2025
ZACHAR PLAYS GAMELAN Post
New film of our first performance of the Gender Wayang transcription which will soon appear as a downloadable score! You can see it below and read the description at the ZACHAR PLAYS GAMELAN page:
"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!"]
DOWNLOADABLES FOR GETTING!
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 designed as part of the "Eternity Takes Forever" GIF series: SCYPHOZOA COSMOS?
Or 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:
"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:
