Elective Affinities is a project started in 2012 by Jasper Rigole, in collaboration with Egon Van Herreweghe. The project is inspired by the visual associative methodology developed by the German art historian Aby Warburgin his Mnemosyne Atlas. In each “edition” of this project, two artists use a photocopier to create various visual ensembles based on a supply of found imagery. A temporary studio is set up for this purpose where the images can be collected, combined and finally reproduced. In the process, a visual dialogue develops in which the artists react to each others proposals by adding images and revising existing ensembles, or by following lines that emerge in the course of the process. Since the interpretation of these actions does not turn into a verbal discourse, it creates room for an intuitive process that facilitates rapid, direct interaction. At the end of the project, the image ensembles are reproduced as a magazine. The number of copies of the magazine is identical to the number of pages created.
The sixth edition of Elective Affinities was a dialogue between Jasper Rigole and Dušica Dražić and took place in 2021 at OUT OF SIGHT in Antwerp during the exhibition Symptoms of the Future: CAMERA — IMAGE — CAMERA. The production process was exposed to the visitors of the exhibition, making performative, ephemeral and collaborative aspects of the artists’ practices more tangible. On the closing day, on 21 November at 17h the sixth edition of Elective Affinities magazine was presented and distributed.
