Wout Vercammen

Antwerp original (1938-2018), self-taught painter, sculptor and street performer who organized Belgium's first happenings in the early sixties. Nicknamed the city's own Jekyll and Hyde, he was dandyish by day and unleashed howling, throat-singing, found-object percussion actions by night, close in spirit to Ludo Mich and the Vienna Actionists. Alongside letter paintings, latex word pieces and pneumatic sculptures, he left private tape recordings: "accidently recorded moments" of primitive punk noise and sound poetry, made with synthesizer and four-track, later compiled as a posthumous LP on Antwerp's Ultra Eczema label, cementing him as a forerunner of the city's noise underground.