The DSCTHK collective was founded in 1999 by Thibaut Blondiau, visual artist and programmer at Jeunesse et Arts Plastiques (born in Mons in 1973, graduate of the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Mons – ARTS2), and Jérôme André – art historian and now curator and exhibition co-designer at Mac’s – Musée des Arts Contemporains du Grand-Hornu (born in Mons in 1972, graduate of the Université Libre de Bruxelles).

DSCTHK, een discotheek, un mot “zonder muzik”. The eccentric name of this collective sums up the very object of its work. A world in itself, “discothequism”, as a mannerist digression, a pseudo-scientific stroll, which harvests the party to its ultimate stage, its exhaustion.

The duo shoots in daylight. Clubs and nightclubs for over 20 years. Each of these photos catches our eye, and prompts us to wonder about this aesthetic dedicated to dazzling the night, which, unplugged in daylight, reveals itself to be wonderfully disenchanted. Today, the photographs form an archive comprising several thousand images developed over several hundred sites in Belgium, which we consider to have a dual virtue: analytical and poetic.

The imaginary places we observe in turn generate derivative fictions, a second-hand or reused imaginary that feeds our work: mannerist, often critical, always self-indulgent. Here, the object once again becomes the subject. DSCTHK also create installations and performances that hijack architectural constructions and historical references, vernacular and Renaissance aesthetics, festival atmospheres and intimate illusions. Their work, which could be likened to an archaeologist’s approach insofar as they investigate, document and compile the places and events of contemporary leisure, is an uncompromising, yet not uncompromising, look at popular culture and the settings that shelter and stimulate it.

Very quickly, the creation of installations and performances came to the fore alongside the development of this photographic archive, drawing inspiration from it. They have exhibited at Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris, Galerie Mélange in Cologne, Confort Moderne in Poitiers, Space Collection and Triennale d’art Public et Art au Centre in Liège, Villa Arson in Nice, BAM – Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Mons, Komplot and MAAC in Brussels, and Fluide (Thuin – BPS22 – Mons 2015).