tele-present water in Writing the history of the future / The ZKM Collection
17.02.2020 - 28.03.2021 ZKM - Center for Art and Media
Karlsruhe (D)
tele-present water by David Bowen is part of the ZKM Collection and now semi-permanent on display in the exhibition Writing the History of the Future.
When artist David Bowen took a sailing trip on Lake Superior in Minnesota in 2010, he was fascinated by the waves’ movements against the boat and how quickly his body adapted to them. Even afterwards, with solid ground underfoot, he could still feel the water’s gentle motion. Bowen’s installation »tele-present water« attempts to recreate that effect of telepresence, the feeling of being present in a faraway place.
In his piece, a fragile lattice from wooden rods hangs from transparent nylon threads, seemingly suspended in space. The threads connect the lattice to a set of parallel rods. These, in turn, are connected to poles that move the whole installation by means of seventeen motors. Like the arms of a puppeteer, the poles rise and fall, setting off wave-like motions in the grid of parallel rods and the wooden lattice below.
tele-present water also links to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) buoy station 51003 in the Pacific, which records wave height and frequency data in real time and transmits it to the exhibition space. This means the installation’s movements correspond to actual information on Pacific Ocean waves. A computer translates the buoy’s data into mechanical movements for the wooden lattice to replicate. If the Pacific is calm, the installation moves in gentle waves, whereas stormy seas cause it to break into a wild dance.
tele-present water is an installation that fuses nature and technology, as well as indoor and outdoor space. In doing so, it grapples with questions of immediacy and involvement in a world where everything is connected to everything else. Author: Julia Ihls
New Publication. MACHINE MADE SILENCE. THE ART OF KRIS VERDONCK
15.02.2020 Performance Research Books
Aberystwyth (UK)
Machine Made Silence. The Art of Kris Verdonck brings together an array of essays written by leading scholars in the field of theatre and performance studies and a series of interviews, performance texts, notes on particular works, as well as an extensive overview of Verdonck’s oeuvre. Rich in images, the book also includes drawings and sketches, opening up the creative process. The question that fueled this book is that of how to make work today. How can we characterize ‘today’ and how can art relate to that? Looking at the work of Kris Verdonck, tensions come to the fore between humans and machines, between life and death, between the now and the end, between visual arts and performing arts, between something and nothing.
Machine Made Silence. The Art of Kris Verdonck
Edited by Peter Eckersall and Kristof van Baarle
With a preface by Guy Gypens and texts by Maaike Bleeker, Andy Lavender, Charlotte De Somviele, Peter Eckersall, Edward Scheer, Tawny Andersen, a.o.
Performance Research Books, Aberystwyth, UK
204 p. - 49 color images
Available here
ACT // A Production of A Two Dogs Company & Het Zuidelijk Toneel (NL)
06.02.2020 - 17.03.2020 On tour
BE / NL
In ACT, Kris Verdonck explores various aspects of the relation between the human on the verge of disappearing in the work of Samuel Beckett. ACT approaches Beckett in three ways: with a monologue with Beckett texts (Stories and texts for nothing), performed by Johan Leysen, with a scientist, invited to react to Beckett and with an autonomous scenography, a possible landscape for a Beckett text.
The variety and multidisciplinary approach reflect the complexity of Beckett’s work and are at the same time an attempt to literally take apart this complexity. The triptych of Science, theatre and high-tech show, as in three acts, each a different facet of the diamond ‘Beckett’. They deepen each other’s experience: a particular way of performing brings a scientific insight to life and vice versa, a performative scenography zooms in on the underlying world of or perhaps after the actor and offers a more contemplative experience.
A Two Dogs Company / Kris Verdonck
- 06/02/2020 Ainsi, Maastricht (NL)
- 12/02/2020 TR Schouwburg, Rotterdam (NL)
- 13-14-15/02/2020 Kaaistudio's, Brussels (BE)
- 18/02/2020 De Nieuwe Vorst, Tilburg (NL)
- 21/02/2020 Toneelschuur, Haarlem (NL)
- 26/02/2020 Frascati, Amsterdam (NL)
- 27/02/2020 Corrosia, Almere (NL)
- POSTPONED 17/03/2020 Het Nationale Theater, Den Haag (NL)
Shrink at Festival Out Of The Box 2020
25.01.2020 - 26.01.2020 whiteBOX
Munich (D)
Shrink 01995 - Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the flow of air. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body.
At Festival Out Of The Box 2020 there will be 6 Shrinks and the bodies of 6 performers.
USHER
16.01.2020 - 26.12.2019 Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Berlin (D)
'The result is fantastic… Everything is simply right in this production: the songs, the claustrophobic notes from the orchestra, the bleak set design and the special effects with smoke and lightning strikes that reinforce the fall of the house on many levels…”/Der Tagesspiegel
Since her 2015 opera "Private View" based on an Alfred Hitchcock film, if not earlier, the Belgian Annelies Van Parys has established her reputation as one of the most innovative composers of contemporary musical theatre. Her work is distinguished by a keen interest in the facets of the human singing voice as well as an idiosyncratic approach to instrumentation. Starting with the material of the uncompleted opera – Debussy left behind several libretto drafts, a musical fragment of about 20 minutes and some sketches – Van Parys develops in "Usher" a chamber music theatre that probes the category of the uncanny in a specific musical and theatrical way.
Music Annelies Van Parys / Claude Debussy
Text Gaea Schoeters / Claude Debussy based on "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe
Musical Director Marit Strindlund Director, set designer, light Philippe Quesne Dramaturgy Roman Reeger Roderick Usher David Oštrek L'ami Martin Gerke Le médecin Dominic Kraemer Lady Madeline Ruth Rosenfeld & Musicians of the Staatskapelle Berlin
Commissioned by Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin and Folkoperan Stockholm in co-production with Muziektheater Transparant (B), Opera Vlaanderen (B) and Nanterre - Amandiers centre dramatique national (F).
Conversations (at the end of the world)
14.01.2020 - 24.02.2020 On tour
BE / NL / FR
What do you say, do or make when the end is nigh? In Conversations at the end of the world, a new piece by Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company for large auditoria, five figures find themselves in an empty theatre space. They have only their bodies, their capabilities and the time that is left to them. Together these five figures, played by Johan Leysen, Jan Steen, Jeroen Van der Ven, José Kuijpers and the renowned pianist Marino Formenti, create a portrait of humankind in the crazy twentieth century – a century in which man’s image has been significantly eroded and whose wounds we still carry with us today. Waiting for the catastrophe that is inevitably coming, or in the midst of it, they welcome the audience to ‘a last evening’. When faced with death, the characters react with boredom, panic, madness, lethargy, nonsense and absurdity. Their absurdity is fed by the crazy logic of the war, ecological disasters, and all kinds of crises. Despite being in shock, they try to understand what is going on outside, and it is this absurd reaction to a cruel reality that lies behind this project.
- 14/01/2020 Cultuurhuis De Warande, Turnhout
- 24/02/2020 SPOT/Stadsschouwburg, Groningen(NL)
CONVERSATIONS (at the end of the world) // a production of A Two Dogs Company (BE), Het Zuidelijk Toneel (NL) and a coproduction with Kaaitheater (BE), Rotterdamse Schouwburg (NL), Fondation d’entreprise Hermès within the framework of the New Settings program (FR)
Something (out of nothing) // A Production of A Two Dogs Company & ICK
10.01.2020 - 08.02.2020 On tour
BE / NL
What is the place of the human in a world in which ecological catastrophe and technology are fundamentally challenging this position? The new performance by Kris Verdonck explores the physical and mental state of being in the face of an impending extinction.
The combination of a merciless desire for profit and growth with technological developments, has reduced the human to a disposable object. Making the landscape in which we live inhabitable is the next step. What remains after social, economic and ecological elimination? The dancers wandering around in Something(out of nothing), are oftentimes not more than silhouettes or shadows. They are the ghosts that are the consequence of the destructive dynamics between humanity and the landscape, which in the performance is evoked by large inflatable sculptures, noise cello player Leila Bordreuil and a robot drum.
- 10/01/2020 De Meervaart, Amsterdam (NL)
- 01/02/2020 CC De Adelberg, Lommel (BE)
- 08/02/2020 Westrand, Dilbeek (BE)
Thesauros, The Treasury.
04.01.2020 - 18.01.2020 SomoS
Berlin (D)
As the debut exhibition on SomoS’ 2020 program, between January 4 and 18, the results of Belgian visual artist Jan Verbruggen’s three month artist residency are presented in his solo exhibition Thesauros, The Treasury.
Traversing the fields of painting and installation, Verbruggen brings together an extensive collection of acrylic, oil, watercolor and alkyd lacquer paintings on wood in the interactive exhibition; Thesauros, The Treasury. Viewing his artistic role as similar to that of a cartographer, Verbruggen’s paintings establish what can be thought of as an associative, whimsical map, that can be shaped and reshaped by viewers.
Photo: Studio view 'Thesauros installation' at SomoS, Berlin, Germany
Kris Verdonck at Klinkende Stad 2019
22.11.2019 - 08.12.2019 Muziekcentrum TRACK
Kortrijk (B)
Human emotion and the capacity for abstraction are possibly expressed most powerfully in music and the playing of an instrument. Music is also of the gods, from the heavenly sounds on Mount Olympus to the harmony of the spheres that resounds in the universe.
BRASS is a ghost orchestra. The three sousaphones play themselves, and appear to be floating. The machines, automated instruments, are the source of the music in a place where man and the gods are no longer around. These sousaphones were developed by Decap, specialists in the creation of automated musical instruments. They ‘play’ passages based on a theme from the Japanese anime film Ghost in the Shell and works by Erik Satie. Their rotating movements create a slow-motion Doppler effect, whereby sounds sometimes come together and then move apart again. In BRASS, Kris Verdonck continues his research into theatre without performers. Given the increasing technologisation of society and the destruction resulting from war and climate change, the possibility of a world without people has never been so likely. The sound nevertheless has human features: breathing, blowing, ‘practising’ and warming up. The instruments are suspended in a dark room, in a perpetuum mobile – their material gleams, but the body they normally rest on is no longer there.
Kris Verdonck at November Music 2019
02.11.2019 - 09.11.2019 Werkwarenhuis
Den Bosch (NL)
Human emotion and the capacity for abstraction are possibly expressed most powerfully in music and the playing of an instrument. Music is also of the gods, from the heavenly sounds on Mount Olympus to the harmony of the spheres that resounds in the universe.
BRASS is a ghost orchestra. The three sousaphones play themselves, and appear to be floating. The machines, automated instruments, are the source of the music in a place where man and the gods are no longer around. These sousaphones were developed by Decap, specialists in the creation of automated musical instruments. They ‘play’ passages based on a theme from the Japanese anime film Ghost in the Shell and works by Erik Satie. Their rotating movements create a slow-motion Doppler effect, whereby sounds sometimes come together and then move apart again. In BRASS, Kris Verdonck continues his research into theatre without performers. Given the increasing technologisation of society and the destruction resulting from war and climate change, the possibility of a world without people has never been so likely. The sound nevertheless has human features: breathing, blowing, ‘practising’ and warming up. The instruments are suspended in a dark room, in a perpetuum mobile – their material gleams, but the body they normally rest on is no longer there.