TRACÉS. Similarities and dissonants  was the upshot of a recycling project that started in 2010 in the recycling centre of Merksem. The centre is the happy recipient of all kinds of end-of-life items collected in and around Antwerp.  There, they are sorted and repaired before they are further distributed across the Antwerp Recycling Stores.

Bie Michels (born in 1960, Kimwenza, GC) examined the interaction between man and object. How interested are people in the objects that pass through their hands? Are they intrigued by a scratch or a blood stain? Have they become immune, has overconsumption blunted their powers of perception or are they simply absent-minded in the presence of all those veiled intimacies?

In TRACÉS. Similarities and dissonants, different storylines of the project came together: stories of people who worked in the recycling store (through interviews and portraits), moving images and pictures about the process - from owner to recycling store to new owners – which certain objects followed, and the registration of a house being emptied following the death of the owner that had lay untouched for one and a half years.

Additionally, Bie Michels selected a number of works from the collection of the M HKA about which the staff at the recycling store asked a few questions, such as: does a work of art, as an object, have more soul? Does an ordinary object that is transformed into a work of art or ends up at an exhibition immediately gain more soul?