With The Physical Mind, Teun Vonk seeks to let participants experience the relation between their physical and mental states by applying physical pressure to the body. The installation consists of two inflatable objects. The participant lays down in between, is lifted up and gently squeezed between the two inflatable objects. The lifting creates an unstable feeling, a slightly stressful sensation that is directly contrasted with a secure feeling of being gently squeezed between two soft objects. Paradoxically, this forced physical stimulus reduces feelings anxiety and paradoxically stress and the flight- or fight-response disappear. The participant experiences and increased sensitivity to stimuli, normalised alertness and a calm state of mind. The positive effects of this increased receptivity can continue for a few hours after the experience. The installation evokes empathy in bystanders who witness a participant undergo the experience.

Betweter Festival
Teun Vonk

MASS #2  is a poetic, moving landscape. A graphite-grey mass flows slowly as if it was water. The matter appears light and yet heavy at the same time. And, as if tectonic plates are interacting, the spectator sees mountains and valleys created before his eyes, only to dissolve in the next instant. A living landscape, geology in a time-lapse. 

Nuit Blanche
Kris Verdonck

The title of Kiki Smith’s exhibition Entre Chien et Loup refers to that particular hour when day becomes night, that moment when the dog must protect the sheep and when the wolf makes use of the darkness to come out of the wood!

All of Kiki Smith's art works oscillate between light and darkness, evolve from the quiet nature towards the untamability of certain animals, enter the world of the night, that particular moment when pleasure and fear come together.

Sometimes, the artist speaks without any taboos of the bestiality hiding in humanity. She reveals our unfathomable fears, what is haunting the depths of our intimacy and what we would like to keep hidden. Sometimes, she juxtaposes fragments of images of her body in disturbing positions or of female organs, in an attempt to undermine the traditional representations of the stereotypical image of a woman.

However, by screaming at the moon, the wolf - just like Kiki Smith - also refers to its strength; that of the spiritual energy and of the unconsciousness to which universal knowledge is accessible. They both get connected with the world, its myths and symbols, as well as with the laws of nature.

After all, the blue hour, another metaphor of this uncertain interval between day and night, is also considered the best hour to smell the scent of flowers and to hear the birds sing. In many of her most recent works, Kiki Smith tries to capture and translate this ephemeral symphony; it’s an allegory of a world in which concord and serenity would reign for a brief moment.

Entre Chien et Loup

Composers: Wim Henderickx (Atlantic Wall , 2012), Annelies Van Parys (Histoire du Soldat Inconnu, 2008), Vykintas Baltakas (Neon Sea, 2019)

Italian première of HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT INCONNU (2008), a score by Annelies Van Parys. The music by Annelies Van Parys is a commentary to the film 'Histoire du soldat inconnu' (1932) by Henri Storck, a powerful protest against the obscenity and hypocrisy of militarism, based on the atmospheres inspired by the sequences and their sarcastic and aggressive editing, and sometimes relying on citations.

This concert program is also performed by HERMESensemble at Transit Festival in Leuven, conducted by Manoj Kamps.

Annelies Van Parys
HERMESensemble
Biennale Musica
Transit Festival

tele-present wind, 2019 consists of a series of 42 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows, it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore, the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.

Saint-Ex
David Bowen

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.
(Samuel Beckett, Murphy)

In the installation DETAIL, a large and massive boulder hangs on the ceiling. It is hanging on a steel cable, on a ball bearing, allowing it to fully turn around its axis. The ball bearing is put in motion by a steel wheel rotated by a motor which takes its energy from solar panels. The whole chain leads to a relatively simple situation: whenever the sun shines, the boulder turns around its axis. Once the sun shines, and therefore the stone starts to revolve, the mechanism is simultaneously unrelenting: the fatalism of a world that has to and will turn. A mobile with sunlight. A surreal image with an undertone of danger and yet fascinating at the same time. 

The whole (complicated) technical construction has no other goal than to have the “poetry” of a heavy colossus float and turn around. DETAIL is in this sense a pointless use of knowledge and material which makes it even all the more alienating. The question can also be put forward as to whether many other developments that we call ‘technical progress’ really do help the world. The destructive potential of ever greater, faster, more efficient and automatic algorithms, processors, motors and fire power assert their influence on a daily basis in wars and in the depletion of our planet. Where is technological knowledge taking us and does it make us able to handle the problems of our age for the most part caused by ‘technological progress’? DETAIL is then also a stationary situation: frozen, hanging in the air, turning in circles in a vacuum.

Kris Verdonck
JRSLM

tele-present wind, 2018 - This installation consists of a series of 126 x/y tilting mechanical devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in a gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting the motion to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space move in real-time and in unison based on the movement of the wind outside.

Halle aux Sucres
Projet COAL
David Bowen

MURMUR was nominated for the 2019 Engine Room International Sound Art Competition, and will be shown at the finalists’ exhibition at IKLECTIK Art Lab in London in October 2019.

MURMUR is a collaboration between filmmaker Jan Locus and sound artist Stijn Demeulenaere. On two occasions they went to the swamp in the late hours of the night, just before first light, to record the dawn chorus. A dawn chorus is the awakening of the world, or the biotope. Just before dawn, the animals wake up, almost one species at the time, and start making their presence known, creating a lush symphony like soundscape that lasts till the sun is well up in the sky. At the same time one hears the city awakening in the distance, the continuous bass drone gets louder, the traffic picks up, the overtones of people waking up and getting to work start to disturb the night’s calm.

The city drone permeates the sound of the swamp, and a strange mix enfolds between the sound of an awakening nature and a very human presence. It gives the place a very otherworldly atmosphere during the twilight hours of the morning. MURMUR is a study in sound and image of this place during this blue hour of the morning.

Stijn Demeulenaere
Jan Locus
2019 Engine Room International Sound Art Competition
IKLECTIK Art Lab

11 Oct - at Arctic Circle, Reykjavik, Iceland
12 Oct - at A! Performance Festival, Akureyri, Iceland
22 Nov - at Anchorage Museum, Anchorage, Alaska (US)

The Northern Assembly is at the same time both a performance project dealing with politics, and a political movement using art as a tool and a strategy for public interventions.

With an ambition to question and change both the present
narrative of the North and the power regime of the North, The Northern Assembly
has the last years traveled extensively in the Arctic region. With the help of
marching bands, stockfish, Powerpoint and political analysis, 46 assemblies
have been held. Tonnes of t-shirts have been sold. Gallons of vodka have been
drunk. Songs have been sung, prayers have been made and people have voted for
independence for the North - time and time again.

The North is an area with classical colonial traits.
Political and economic power is located far away, always in the south. The
economic and developmental discourse is describing the land as an 'arctic
frontier', a liminal zone, a tabula rasa, a land of possibilities for
conquerers and investors. The Northern Assembly claims that it is time for the
people of the North to fight back.

NORDTING
Amund Sjølie Sveen

31 Oct - LV21 The Red Ship, Gravesend, UK
1 Nov - Media Factory UCLan, Preston, UK
2 Nov - Northern Stage, Newcastle, UK
3 Nov - The Holbeck, Leeds, UK

Change is possible. Change is inevitable. Change is necessary.

The future is cancelled. We are stuck with reality. The UK is leaving the EU. Donald Trump is leader of the free world. Facebook is telling us which way to vote. The 8 richest people in the world own as much as 3.5 billion others.
We need to move forward.

Commonism is a meeting of two people from different countries in search of some common ground. It’s a performed conversation – a dialogue that asks questions about nationality, internationality, theatre and politics. Join two award-winning theatre makers – the UK’s Andy Smith and Norway’s Amund Sjølie Sveen, as they discuss who they are, who we are and where we are going.

COMMONISM
Amund Sjølie Sveen