“In the work of Stefaan van Biesen an associative solidity has arisen between thinking, acting, environment and well-being. Formulated as a question: how do our thoughts manifest themselves via acts in our environment and to what extent do they contribute to our well-being?” (fragment from ‘Dots’, Stef Van Bellingen, 2006).

The body is experienced as an influential instrument, a subject that feels out its environment and resonates out of a sensitive thinking. The body thus moves in an optical and emotional field out of a panoramic perspective, a sanctuary.

“Today we discover that thinking is a physical matter (…). Nowadays the embodied nature of subjectivity is emphasized. The body is thinking. I do not stand knowing, distant in this world. Through the body I rather have an understanding, a proximity with this world.” (Fragment from ‘The anarchistic body’, Francis Smets, 2004).  

Stefaan van Biesen’s way of thinking is in a current way in keeping with the nomadic aspect of the renaissance artists, who travelled all over Europe. Dürer is a striking example of this. These journeys were art projects, in which streams of thoughts, drawings and other artefacts arose from encounters. These journeys were laboratories of thoughts. Knowledge transformed into an impassioned knowledge. Stefaan van Biesen shows this lab. Notes, artefacts and drawings embellish his journey.

Van Biesen is a landscape artist. This does not mean that he spends his days painting idyllic nature scenes. No, the landscape artist works with the landscape, the environment. He integrates nature in his art or communicates with it by means of his art. In his artistic vision concepts like body-mind, nature-culture, ecology-economy, are no longer considered to be irreconcilable.  

The title ‘We are travelling spaces’ points to this philosophical track. ‘Nature’ is all what ‘man’ is and this puts everything in a wider context, a fact that is also important in an urbanized landscape.

Stefaan van Biesen has been working for some years now on several parallel projects in his own country and in Europe, among others:

'Spaziergangwissenschaft' [ walking as an absolute Science ]: a project which, through drawings, models, video, performances, photographs and texts, a discussion forum is created around sociological, ecological and social concepts. Within this project, there are also references to: Alfred Dürer [1471-1528], Caspar David Friedrich [1774-1840], Friedrich Nietzsche [1844-1900], Fernando Pessoa [1888-1935], Joseph Beuys [1921-1986], Luis Baragan [1902-1988], Willem Schinkel [1976], ...

- A number of readings, performances and instant in situ-installations in the Milena principle art project ’Gepäckträger’ (Weimar, Berlin and Kassel, Germany) with old friends and fellow workers of the late Joseph Beuys, among others art historian Dr. Rhea Thönges Stringaris, an intimate bosom friend of this deceased German artist. 

The Milena principle works as an European organisation and realized art events in countries all over Europe. Within the projects of the Milena principle various international artists, writers, scientists come together and cooperate, create with a multi- and interdisciplinary attitude and reflect about the border crossing aspects of culture, art, science, ecology and health. One of the important aspects of the Milena members is their individual research in various fields such as art, philosophy and science.