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 lense 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.
RECENT CHANGES TO THE SITE:
change date
primary adjustment in the description
Description of adjustments made.
21 January 2025
homepage template & stylesheet adjustment
The embedded system has been completely replaced with divtags. It's been a wucking fightmare for the last week trying to create a new webstructure after noticing, of course as was inevitably going to show itself as a reason to explain why no one uses embedded websites anymore, YouTube refuses to allows its films to be shown in the archaic form which is for some reason less secure. Building the same embedded pages as div tags on a single page was enormously time consuming and has prevented me from making the photos and films I wanted to about the package that was sent by Max Brooker. Now that it has been successful, I'm going to move onto that and upload this version of the site which hopefully will allow the whole contents of it to be viewed now. I just have to change the interactive..
New posted added to the Mantel Marvels Project page. It is a short film that highlights the Art-Deco clock A-011 that is also used in the title of the "Interminable Contraptions page. You can reach the link here. Below is a preview of this film:
GettiStyle sheets and project home & post pages were created and finalized for the "Getting Got" and "Glorious Illusions" projects pages, which means I'm now ready to upload posts for each of these new areas. The Getting Got page has existed for awhile but in the meantime I've changed basically everything about the project pages so I had to start from scratch with that one. Fortunately all the assets were ready and I could just transfer the texrt to the new template. Below you can find the title header to the Glorious Illusions page:
10 December 2024
project page post & homepage addition
The first image intended to present prints I made of a recently completed three plate gotograph. This cover is included below and also in the hand impressions rubric of this homepage. The post at the Making an Impression website is at the following address: http://nachtschimmen.eu/makinganimpression/20241210
Getting Got The "Make-it-yourself AT YOUR OWN PERIL"stylesheets have been prepared and a first post made, although it's a rough version of the pae title which I have decided to work on step by step. The templates followed and I hope to get a single first page to make this short introduction.
30 November 2024
style sheet adjustment
The Mantel Marvels first post made in which I discuss the beautiful art-deco marble clock B-01... and a little "glorious illusion" I incorporated it into. I can share it now to the "Mantel Marvels page... but not to the Glorious Illusions page... or the Interminable Contraption page (GIFs)! ...This will mean sudden urgency to get the other complex animations ready for each of the project pages. There's no way around it. I will include below an example of the div tag and the html codethat can be pasted onto any project page.
29 November 2024
projects stylesheet & template adjustment
Based on the stylesheets and the templates of the "Making an Impression" page, I created the "Mantel Marvels" webpage templates and stylesheets and adjusted them so it is now possible to make new posts. This includes the titlepage extended GIF and the GIFs that are used in the page and div tag backgrounds. One of these background GIFs, which are possibly the most exceptional of them and were certainly the most complex to animate, is included below:
25 November 2024
leftpanel content addition
All the buttons on the left panel have been placed as well as the behaviours that belong to them meaning that visitors can make them change their identity by hovering over them before they click on them. The intention is just to inform the guest that they are indeed about to press the button. Zachar, of course, had to subvert this to his own ends! All of my little rollover buttons have a surprise... Some of them are, like, VERY surprising, embracing my "Evil Twin" theme at present where my website has to represent both the positive and the negative sides of my personality, like BOTH the baby eating and the mouse squishing. Oh, wait, neither of them are the slightest bit positive! Oh well, as I've always said: I'M BOTH EVIL! Here are the last two I placed: the "Zachar Plays Gamelan" buttons in the up and over states. I'd also like to state here that these buttons at present won't take you anywhere meaningful, although the "Making an Impression" button should work although I haven't tested it yet. Needless to say, they all have an individual style sheet and a template bonded to them: I just have to make the animated GIFs now for each of the 10 remaining pages ("Getting Got" is ready, and should be the first up):
Just uploaded it all... Hopefully it will be first step towards web freedom!
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!
WIZENED WEB WIZARD WONDERS WHETHER WORK WILL WEAN WINNERS
My decision to work on this website has been a challenging one... but it's really been a creative success for me! After all this time - like about 15 years - I've going around pretending that I could make websites when in truth I didn't have downpat the basic concepts. I managed to avoid learning about the complexities of CSS style sheets hoping that software would do it all for me WYSYWYG style. I mean, I could make snazzy interactive multimedia java rollovers and I understood all that, but when it came to pasting them in the website, I used templates and sort of hoped for the best. I was so wrong about that. I knew when i finally decided to start on this particular task that I would have to go back to the beginning and learn it from scratch. And I did it. Patiently and step-by-step I learned the basics of CSS style sheets so that I would finally understand how to set up a page using div tags as these tags are the basic foundations for page layout. It was an eye-opener! Now having the freedom to place anything wherever I want around the webpage, especially now that I'm serving it myself from home, has made me an actual web wizard rather than a half-baked wanna be. It feels good to be at last at one with a type of programming or markup language that I did my utmost best avoid learning about. In my defence, I was learning a lot of other things at the same time, and the updates to HTML that resulted in these developments actually happened after I'd finished university, so there's that. And if you haven't learned about it yet, it's no way near as hard as you may thing it is if you're anything like me. So now onto filling this website with content now that I've got the basics down!
20
December 2024, Ghent (Belgium)
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?
Things I may well have said and you would almost invariably love to have said yourself. Don't think I don't your type! Why don't you just go quote me, now: I dare you!!! Ha! Just as I thought! People like you never had the guts to undertake such a majestic endeavour...
"Want to know the awful truth about me? Greedy and self-serving, I was basically born evil and am rotten to the core, but then again I am well-intentioned, generous and I always endeavour to help others...
...Let's try again shall we?! Although I'm utterly untrustworthy and could well be working against your interests, you can absolutely rely on my discretion...
Oh God! Furthermore, I am unkempt and messy with a nasty tendency to lash out at others, but I despise chaos and I endeavour ever so hard to be neat and fastidious in keeping my affairs in order!
Let's call a spade a spade, shall we? No matter the cost to your sanity and well being, I will do almost anything to stand up for my own right to be different... while at the same time I care very deepful about what you think of me and I deplore the fact that me insisting on being myself would ever upset you in any way...
Oh, what a bundle of contradictions I am!
- from "The Awful Truth about Me", Vol 21, Ch. 4, pp 72-73
Zachar Laskewicz, 19 November 2024
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?"
...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!
Films that will basically 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 I'd suggest: why don't you just go and do something else. I mean, why have you, in the name of Jesus, bothered reading this far?! What exactly is wrong with you?!?
Well, since you clearly don't intend to follow my well thought out advice, you could watch this irritating and extremely obnoxious short film which parodies the surrealistic work of a similar name by some Spanish dog...
