Stephan Vanfleteren - Transcripts of a Sea
Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
For the exhibition Transcripts of a Sea, MSK Ghent wanted a film that could go beyond the museum context and offer viewers a deeper understanding of Stephan Vanfleteren’s long, intense engagement with the sea. From the outset, it was clear that this story needed to be told close to the places that shaped it.
In close collaboration with Vanfleteren, his inner circle, the curator and the museum’s communication team, we shaped a format built around a thoughtful, in-depth interview. One of the key considerations was versatility: the material had to work both as a standalone portrait and as a series of shorter, social-media-ready deliverables. That editorial structure was built into the concept from the very beginning.
To reconnect the film with the origins of the project, we travelled with Vanfleteren to the Northern French coastline — a landscape that accompanied him through five years of looking, doubting, and returning. There, we captured a conversation about his kinship with painters, the discipline of repetition, and the pull of the horizon.
Working on a windswept beach demanded precise attention to every detail. Ensuring clarity in both image and sound required careful preparation, subtle control of the environment and a flexible, unobtrusive way of filming that allowed the natural elements to remain present without overwhelming the story.
The final film complements the exhibition with a quiet, honest portrait of an artist in dialogue with a landscape. It reveals not just what he sees, but how he returns - again and again - to a sea that is never the same twice.
