Posted by
rita hoofwijk
performance art, installation
Posted byDanu
Posted by
Audio performance
From the Black Forest to the Black Sea, the river flows.
The river flows and meets a city on its way.
When the Danube’s waters reach Budapest, they are a little over halfway. They take ten days to reach us, and in another ten days, they will mingle with the salty waters of the sea.
The river has been making this journey for over a million of years and has seen Budapest many times.
‘Danu’ is translated as ‘the flowing one’ or as ‘she who came before everything else.’
During the performance, the audience, divided into two equal-sized groups, gathers on both sides of the riverbank. Step by step, in a single line, they descend toward the water simultaneously—to hear what the water has to say, to see if the river longs to speak.
Danu is an audio performance that makes use of earplugs, a voice from across the water, and tap water with a pinch of salt.
Reflection
Today, I’ve been thinking about ‘Danu’, a project I worked on last summer by the riverside in Budapest. The weekend of the planned premiere, the river flooded—more severely than it had in over a decade. Throughout the process, I tried to listen to her (‘she’ felt feminine to me), sit beside her, and get to know her as best I could in the time I had. ‘Danu’ is translated as ‘the flowing one’ or as ‘she who came before everything else.’ The river is over a million years old. Budapest is but a brief memory in the river’s lifespan. Time has a different meaning for her than it does for me. And yet, during those days in September, our timing strangely aligned. The premier was cancelled and the audience stayed inside, unable to reach the meeting point or descend the stairs as the work had planned. I cancelled the performance while the river was performing—something dangerous for humans, yet something very real.
Today I wonder: what does it truly mean to work from and with a place, a piece of land, a body of water. How could I have continued listening, even from afar? Wasn’t she speaking loudly?
In collaboration
Placcc Festival, SoAP Maastricht, Performing Arts Fund, Fanni Nánay, Andrea Lukács, Dorottya Biró
Presented
2024 14 – 15 Sept Placcc Festival, Budapest (HU) cancelled
2024 12 – 13 Oct Placcc Festival, Budapest (HU)
Before
Posted by
Performance
Before the Black Box begins an hour before the start, in front of the closed theater entrance. We are early. Earlier in the day, groups of tourists gather on this very square around their guide—not to learn something about the location itself, but because it is one of the few quiet spots in Amsterdam’s city center where you can tell a story, fill your water bottle, and sit down for a moment. Before connects the historical context of the square, once a marshland, and the neighboring former monastery to its current use. At the same time, it introduces a new story to the square: a legend set in an enclosed dark space, before the existence of the performing arts and the seasons, about the return of the light.
Eventually, the visitors are led into the theater through the back entrance to witness the final minutes before the performance begins, just before the doors officially open and the regular audience joins them.
Before the Black Box was developed for the Beyond the Black Box festival.
Press
The intervention produces an inverted spectacle, of being tolerated as a spectator in a room being prepared for something, with whispering staff and technical concerns, with again mere details, which, however, indirectly say a lot about what is to come and how things happen in a black box.
This final, extremely poetic move does more than asking spectators to look at details and realise that every location has a history, a context and conventions. Hoofwijk brings up the attention and circumspection of theatre-making itself – on location, in situ – as a highly relevant way of dealing with the surface, with the appearance of things and their surroundings, the current context or the underground. In that respect, she almost makes the distinction between theatre and other locations disappear, although she also very nicely indicates the distinction. In the story in the square at the beginning, Hoofwijk connected the myth of light to the magic of theatre, as light radiated from her hands.
Fransien van der Putt in Theaterkant | 5 febr 2024
Read the full review here.In collaboration
SoAP Maastricht, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, Beyond the Black Box, Ani Rose Deal, Juan Belmar, David Weber-Krebs
Presented
2024 01 – 04 Feb Beyond the Black Box, Amsterdam (NL)
2025 30 – 02 Feb Beyond the Black Box, Amsterdam (NL)
Threshold
Posted by
Audio
“There are seven more watchposts on the island and my feet cannot be everywhere at once – but my voice can.”
Spread across the island, visitors embody the seemingly invisible boundary between the festival and the protected natural reserve. “Think of it as a line in the sand: a boundary not meant to separate two parts, not to divide, but to forever entangle both sides.” (Karen Barad)
We now call this boundary the threshold. Visitors are welcome to approach and engage with this edge at a time of their choosing and take a post there. Rather than a limitation, the threshold serves as an invitation to stay (here).
Threshold (in Dutch: Raaklijn) is a multi-year collaboration between Oerol Festival, SoAP Maastricht and Rita Hoofwijk. Starting in 2025, we will invite a new artist and discipline each year, over a period of four years, to approach the threshold.
Press
Rita Hoofwijk, who conducts an investigation into the unlicensed parts of the nature reserve on Terschelling, places one visitor each time on the frontier between a licensed and an unlicensed area. Production-wise, her tools are minimal: she needs a shovel, a text and a piece of cloth to create a lasting experience. Working with and from the place where she finds herself is self-evident to her.
Theaterkrant | Evelyne Coussens
Read the full article here (NL).Inspiration
We try to understand ourselves not out of some narcissistic impulse, but because we know that self-knowledge and self-awareness, a sure sense of identity, are what allow us to create a path toward a full and generous life. To say ‘I am here’ or ‘I see you’ or ‘I love you’, to be ourselves to the fullest degree is what makes it possible not just to experience life at its fullest but to give ourselves most completely to the causes to which we are committed, to our children, to the people we love.
Yet I am astonished that our most affecting experiences so often have to do with a sense of psychic diminishment. The acceptance that each of us is a bead of mist in the weather of the world is what connects us most. The smaller we become, the less we are, the greater our sense of connection and our sense of humanity. It is almost as though finding our place is a matter of losing it first. Perhaps the ability to navigate our way through these twinned circumstances of exposure and erasure is what is required of us.
from ‘How to Disappear’ by Akiko Busch
Presented
2024 07 – 16 Jun Oerol Festival, Terschelling (NL)
Jean
Posted by
Installation
Jean can be visited on trains via traveller’s smartphones. The work is inspired by a manifesto by Jean Tinguely, in which he calls on us to throw away our watches and to put the minutes and hours aside. With railway time, a universal clock was first introduced in 1885 only valid on board the train, replacing local times. Today Jean acts as a timekeeper and travel companion, allowing us to forget about (clock)time for the duration of one journey.
It is still possible to experience the work by clicking on the link below (smartphone only).
Review
Today we do not tolerate someone just disconnecting, even if it is a fictional character. A blank screen makes us anxious, unsettled, uncertain. Because of this uncertainty (and my impatience), I initially fail to understand you. To understand what you are inviting me to: to deal not only with the other person sitting across from me, but especially with myself, with my own body. When we say that we want to “seize the moment,” what we really mean is: we want to feel our bodies, something that, because of the infernal pace we impose on ourselves, we rarely get to anymore. Our obsession with clock time actually leads to a lack of body. What you hold for me is not time, but state. As conceptual as that sounds, the effect is physical. Radical, too: you simply make it impossible for me to continue ignoring my body by, for example, texting someone. Your strategy is simple but brilliant. You add nothing to my travel experience, you fill in nothing. You only give me something in return. The opportunity not to render. Seizing that opportunity is an act of defiance.
(fragment of a text by) Evelyne Coussens
Read the full review here.Context
Jean was made in the context of EUROPALIA Trains & Tracks and in collaboration with the Dutch Railway company. Access to Jean could be found via the electronic billboards at the Dutch train stations and via the information screens inside the trains. On March 22, 2022, the project was launched in the Royal Waiting Room of Amsterdam Central Station. On February 1, 2023, Jean returned to the Dutch Railways and was launched with a lecture performance in the Royal Waiting Room.
In collaboration
Ehud Neuhaus, Yvonne van Versendaal, Elowise Vandenbroecke, SoAP Maastricht, EUROPALIA Trains & Tracks, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, NMBS, C-TAKT, Workspace Brussels, De Grote Post, Marie-Ève Tesch, Liz Morrison
Presented
2022 22 Mrt – 15 May Europalia Trains & Tracks, Nederlandse Spoorwegen, NMBS (NL/BE)
2023 31 Jan – 12 Feb Beyond the Black Box, Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NL)
Travelogue
Posted by
Audio installation
Travelogue is a description of the journey that Jean Tinguely’s artwork CHAR M.K made to become part of the exhibition ‘Inner Travels’ from EUROPALIA in Bozar. It can be heard in the museum and describes the journey from the depot of the Van Abbe Museum (Eindhoven) to the construction of the artwork in Bozar (Brussels).
Context
“On October 19, 2016, I read a manifesto by kinetic artist Jean Tinguely at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. It became an inspiration for many projects. For EUROPALIA, I reconnected with Tinguely’s work, this time by taking care of one of his moving machines. I visited CHAR M.K in the depot outside the museum and got to know the artwork in every possible way when a museum staff member unexpectedly asked me to officially become the courier for the artwork, as the museum was understaffed due to COVID-19. This journey became the foundation for the work I presented at Bozar.”
In collaboration
Toos Nijssen, Ehud Neuhaus, Yvonne van Versendaal, Charlie Cattrall, Marie-Ève Tesch, Liz Morrison, EUROPALIA Trains & Tracks, SoAP Maastricht, Van Abbemuseum, Full of tape, Van Kralingen
Presented
2022 01 Mrt – 15 May EUROPALIA Trains & Tracks Rinus van de Velde: Inner Travels, Bozar, Brussel (BE)
Finisterre
Posted by
Installation
Cape Finisterre is on the Spanish coast. The Romans believed that it was the end of the earth. The installation Finisterre takes place at sunrise and sundown at the water’s edge, as the viewer lies at an angle, their head tilted, and looks out across the water at the horizon and the sky.
The installation begins in an enclosed space and takes visitors to a spot about 30 metres from the water’s edge. Wearing headphones, visitors listen to the voice of a performer seated at the waterfront a few yards away. The voice transports them to the end of the world which, this evening, is here, just beyond the horizon. Eight minutes later—the time it takes the sun’s light to reach the earth—performer and visitor meet where the water meets the land.
When the viewer sits up straight, and their perspective shifts again, another person has taken their place in the distance at the same height. Both stand up and pass each other as they walk to, or from, the end.
Inspiration
“For this project I did some research into the concept of the ‘event horizon’, a term that describes the boundary of our perception. I thought it was interesting that this borderline is relative, not absolute, and shifts depending on the person, place and time. The first photo of a black hole was taken while Finisterre was being made. We can’t see any further than that yet. The Romans were once convinced that they’d found the end of the earth. I imagine it must have been terrifying to have known that ‘the edge’ was right there. At the same time perhaps consoling. Today, the zero kilometre marker is in Finisterre, but the thought of the scale of the universe is dizzying and the question of where – or what – the end is may be just as topical.”
Press
It is an experience lasting less than half an hour that totally changes how you see your surroundings – it truly feels as if you’ve never seen that stretch of water and that city before, and Amsterdam’s soporific skyline is instantly sublime.
(…)
Finisterre assails you with the beauty of everyday life and forces you to trust in something that initially inspires fear.
Sander Janssens in Theaterkrant | 8 July 2019
Read the full review here.The earth is round, it’s clear, as I get a sense of its sphere continuing on the other side. And I see the light slowly fading as the sun sets. When my guide lets me lie alone, but doesn’t completely leave me, placing a reassuring hand on my leg, I just look up at the sky and its clouds. A flock of birds flies across it, sharply outlined. I have rarely seen anything so beautiful!
(…)
With a simple twist, Rita Hoofwijk’s Finisterre literally turns our, the viewers’ perspective of the world upside down, making one acutely aware of nature’s grandeur and humanity’s vulnerable transience.
Mette Garfield in Bastard Blog | 20 Sept 2021
Read the full review here (Danish).In collaboration
Felix Schellekens, Erik van de Wijdeven, David Weber-Krebs, Annefleur Schep, Daan Simons, Tim Bogaerts, Charlot van der Meer, Julie Helsen, Hannah Boer, Eja Due, Annika Lewis, Morten Nielsen, SoAP Maastricht, Metropolis, IN SITU
Presented
2019 5 – 14 July Over het IJ Festival, Amsterdam (NL)
2020 canceled Theater Aan Zee, Ostend (BE)
2020 canceled Metropolis, Copenhagen (DEN)
2021 15 – 19 Sept Metropolis, Copenhagen (DEN)
Without | You | Us
Posted byWithout Us
Posted by
Audio
Without Us is an audio installation which stretches the restriction of the ‘now’ and takes the listener into the same room in another time. The work allows the listeners to witness what has already happened and is yet to happen here without us.
Context
“Without Us was first created in the ‘Tearoom’ of KANAL-Centre Pompidou. The museum was allowed to open its doors, but the Tearoom remained closed due to Covid-19. The abandoned Tearoom looked like an art installation within the museum, a piece that served as a reminder of ‘the café’. At that time, cafés and restaurants had been closed for months in Brussels, and it was forbidden to sit at any of the Tearoom’s tables, though they were still there. I replaced the existing QR codes from the Tearoom’s menu with QR codes for the audio work, allowing visitors to listen to the piece on their smartphones.”
In collaboration
Guy Gypens, Magali Halter, Hannah de Meyer, Hannah Loewenthal, Sébastien Perreux, SoAP Maastricht, KANAL-Centre Pompidou
Presented
2021 22 – 25 Apr It Never Ends, KANAL – Centre Pompidou, Brussels (BE)
2021 17 – 21 Aug Clash, Noorderzon, Groningen (NL)
2021 24 – 25 Sep Openbare Werken, Kunstencentrum Viernulvier, Gent (BE)
Without You
Posted by
Installation
Without You is an auditory installation that takes place both in a dark space the size of a phone booth and in the city. Through a phone connection, contact is made with the visitor. The connection is one-sided, and for the duration of the call—determined by the visitor—a live report is given of what is happening outside, without the listener’s presence. The report gradually shifts from a true-to-life description to a point where the visitor becomes merely a listener to events unfolding on the other end of the line, without being involved.
Studio K, KANAL – Centre Pompidou
For Studio K (the webradio of Kanal – Centre Pompidou) the performance was turned into a radio programme consisting of four episodes. During one day, in the morning, the afternoon, the evening and at night Rita Hoofwijk walked the streets of Brussels. She returned with a notebook and a recorder filled with images to listen to, through a live mix in the studio.
Inspiration
“For the specific context of the Beyond the Black Box festival, I wanted to make an installation that takes place in a black box and on location at the same time. An inspiration for this was a telephone booth with a ‘wind telephone’. It is located in Japan and was installed there after the tsunami in 2011. The use of this disconnected phone offers a unique way of dealing with grief. The spoken words are brought to the absent other through the wind. For this installation I wondered what it would be like to use this telephone, and to listen in on the other side of the line. “
Domain for Art Criticism
Hoofwijk describes a world that continues – also without me. Her returning ‘without you’ is like a spell that confirms my temporality. But while Hoofwijk keeps speaking about where I’m not, I am constantly there. Strangely enough, she makes me more present in my absence.
(…)
While I’m hiding in my black box, Hoofwijk meets coincidence. She walks into shops, stands in line for a club, takes a picture of a tourist… I am always her secret listener. The passers-by she describes become performers in a location performance with / without me.
(…)
In Without You I cannot intervene or do anything, I’m completely anonymous and yet I’m central to this performance. Because although Hoofwijk cannot see or hear me, I am still the one who determines the time we share together. For a moment time seems to be mine.
Lies Mensink | Apr 7 2020
Read the full text here (Dutch).<-
Missing presupposes an object or subject of lacking. To be without yourself sounds like a contradiction in terms. The performance Without You plays with this reversal.
(…)
Although at first sight a listening phone seems to be a one-way communication between the performer and the visitor, it does not feel that way. After all, the narrative always appeals to me as a listener. Maybe listening is the essence of meeting the other.
Siebren Nachtergaele | Apr 7 2020
Read the full text here (Dutch)In Without You Rita Hoofwijk takes her audience one by one over the phone into a reality in which the spectator is absent, but is described what happens on the other end of the line. In my case/feeling, the absentee did not become myself, but someone else. It is that it felt exactly like this when my husband passed away years ago: the world kept turning, he would continue to watch behind the scenes. Something like that. In any case I talked to him all these years. How much more personal can a performance be?
Mia Vaerman | Apr 7 2020
Read the full text here (Dutch)In collaboration
Breg Horemans, Vinny Jones, Tim Bogaerts, David Weber-Krebs, Guy Gypens, Magali Halter, SoAP Maastricht, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, KANAL-Centre Pompidou
Presented
2020 5 – 8 Feb Beyond the Black Box, de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL)
2021 4 – 7 Feb Studio K, KANAL – Centre Pompidou, Brussels (BE)
Without
Posted by
Route
Without is a route through a shopping street at night, outside opening hours. We pass twelve vacant buildings. Each empty space has its own choreography in the form of a lighting plan. Two performers walk ahead of the spectators. They enter some of the buildings and illuminate the emptiness, using flashlights or, where possible, the lighting within the buildings themselves. Meanwhile, an audio recording is played over the city center’s speaker system, describing present and absent elements from the surroundings in which the visitors find themselves at that moment.
Context
“In the fall of 2018, I was invited to return to the city where I grew up to create a work in public space. A week before the residency period was set to begin, my niece tragically passed away in an accident at the age of twenty, in Sittard. I encounter her everywhere in this place I had left behind, but where she will now forever remain.
The city center of Sittard, like many small and medium-sized towns in the Netherlands, struggles with vacant premises. What stands out is how attempts are made to conceal the emptiness: shop windows are filled with large posters, the lights in the buildings are turned off, and curtains are hung to make the spaces appear smaller, less deep, and less empty. Without attempts to confront this emptiness, the void.”
In collaboration with
Antwan Cornelissen, Hidde Aans-Verkade, Charles Pas, Ron Bernstein (Jan van Eyck), Hannah Loewenthal, Studio Noto, Gemeente Sittard-Geleen, SoAP Maastricht, VIA ZUID
Presented
2018 15 – 17 Dec Sittard (NL)
223m
Posted by
Performance
223m is a repetitive walk through the city, beginning in a cool, white space; a station where visitors can step in and out of the performance as they please. A white dot is placed on the collar of each participant. During the walk, visitors are asked to focus on the white dot on the collar of the person in front of them, serving as the access point into the experience. You can opt to stay for an interim session of 223m in the white space, or walk for up to a maximum of four continuous hours as part of a changing line of visitors and creators, united by concentration.
Context
223m was the outcome of a onetime collaboration between five transdisciplinary makers: Johannes Bellinkx, Breg Horemans, Nick Steur, Benjamin Vandewalle and myself.
Pers
You concentrate on that dot in front of you. You focus. Don’t let your focus stray. Outside, it’s still light. The dot becomes light, or even air. The sky is almost white, the dot becomes sky, a line joins up the dots of air. But no, the dots—now empty inside—don’t just form a line, they’re connected to everything around you, to all the negative space, and this is how air flows through the line of people.
The back of the man’s head in front of you now seems more familiar than that of a good friend. Now, you are one with those in front of, and behind you, the air connects you to the others as if you are vacuum packed together. Pure concentration. That is the astonishing effect of the work 223m.
Josje Kerkhoven in Rekto:Verso | 26 Feb 2019
Read the full review hereIt’s an excellent example of how a simple but carefully conceived action can have enormous impact on everyone who perseveres with their engagement as a spectator.
Fransien van der Putt in Theaterkrant | 9 Feb 2019
Read the full review hereIn collaboration
Johannes Bellinkx, Breg Horemans, Nick Steur, Benjamin Vandewalle, SoAP Maastricht, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond
Presented
2019 7 – 9 Feb Beyond the Black Box, de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL)
2020 5 Feb Beyond the Black Box, de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL)
Can’t Stop Motion
Posted by
Installation
In Can’t Stop Motion the spectators are split into two groups and asked to perform a walk, one by one, while focusing on a person in the distance, as if watching their mirror image. The installation can be read as a monumental metronome. A form is created in the landscape that appears to be static but in fact changes with the movement of the audience.
The design of the installation is inspired by the ‘sjouw’ / time ball that is located on Terschelling.
Press
Everything is in motion yet at the same time nothing changes—it almost sounds like a reassurance in today’s world, which many people feel moves ‘too fast’. Time, space and encounter intermingle here gently and unspectacularly and with that, Can’t Stop Motion truly offers a sense of place-time-connection – something many theatre makers aspire to, but few succeed in.
Evelyne Coussens in Theaterkrant | 11 Jun 2017
Read the full review here (at the end of the article)Context
Can’t Stop Motion was created on Terschelling as part of het Atelier, a project of Oerol and Over het IJ Festival in collaboration with Felix Schellekens. Inspiration was a manifesto by Jean Tinguely about ‘static movement’.
In collaboration
Felix Schellekens, Erik van de Wijdeven, Maurice Bogaert, Alexandra Broeder, Oerol, Over het IJ Festival
Presented
2017 9 – 19 Jun Oerol, Terschelling (NL)
2017 14 – 23 Jul Over het IJ Festival Amsterdam (NL)
facing faces
Posted by
Installation
facing faces is an installation with a roll of portraits that unwinds like an analogue film. The portraits closely resemble the passport photos required for official documents. Each photograph is given one or more (sub)titles that tell how the face was read. These descriptions provide a framework, direct the gaze to the viewer, and remain incomplete.
The second part of facing faces consists of an archive that shows the visitors’ faces, along with descriptions of how they saw each other and were viewed themselves.
Reflection
“The idea for facing faces came from a stranger’s passport photo that I found. What intrigued me was the sense of disinterest conveyed by the photo. The sitter must keep their eyes open but isn’t really looking. In facing faces the people in the first photos on the roll gaze into the distance but as the performance progresses, the faces seem to make contact, or seek it. It’s as if the camera caught them blinking or in mid-sentence.”
In collaboration
Vivian Keulards, Milan Meeuse, Jasper Delbecke, Studio Noto, Tim Bogaerts, SoAP Maastricht, Atelier Provinciaal Domein Dommelhof, Festival Cement, VIA ZUID, Stichting Brand Cultuurfonds
Presented
2017 21 – 26 Mar Festival Cement, Den Bosch (NL)
2017 25 – 26 Apr Ainsi, Maastricht (NL)
2017 16 – 19 Aug Zomerparkfeesten, Venlo (NL)
2017 20 – 27 aug Cultura Nova, Heerlen (NL)
2017 14 – 17 Sept Grand Theatre, Groningen (NL)
2018 14 – 17 Dec Winternights, Maastricht (NL)
2018 5 Feb Het Huis Utrecht, Utrecht (NL)
2018 2 – 12 Aug Festival Boulevard, Den Bosch (NL)
2018 22 – 23 Sept C-TAKT Festival, Genk (BE)
2018 27 Oct Brainwash, Brakke Grond, Amsterdam (NL)
2018 22 – 24 Nov Jonge Harten, Groningen (NL)
2019 11 Nov Full Moon Focus: In Frames, Brussels (BE)
printed, written
Posted byHere (not anywhere)
Posted by
Publication
Here (not anywhere) forms the second edition of A Series of Suggestions by researcher Leonie Persyn. The publication is a search towards an artistic recipe, averse to ingredients, that allows us to question what exactly makes Hoofwijk’s practice her own. The publication contains five small folders that unfold unto one large poster.
The first one discusses the places, contexts, locations: here.
The second one speaks of the working method: listening.
The third one is for the work itself: it.
The fourth folder is dedicated to the audience, the perceivers: us.
The latter is about the aim of the work and where it is trying to lead us: nowhere else.
Context
A Series of Suggestions explores how suggestions can function as a possible research output. It reveals a collaborative thinking practice between the academic and the artistic realm. It shows how the dramaturgical practice of an academic researcher stimulates a re-evaluation of the research process. Suggestions are never clear-cut answers or solutions for a problem; they hover between a recap of what has already been done and a forecast of undiscovered paths. They affirm and question at the same time. Suggestions highlight the strength of (past) fragilities and uncertainties and feed future dialogues and explorations.
Each edition of A Series of Suggestions exhibits a constant dialogue between practice and discourse; between researcher and artist. It gives an insight to a particular collaboration at the base of the research project The Sound of a Shared Intimacy (S:PAM – Studies in Performing Arts & Media, Ghent University). One edition contains five small and thematic folders.
In short, A Series of Suggestions is an attempt to bring the constant dialogue between academia and artistic practices forward and aims to bridge the gap between working process and end result. It is a look behind-the-scenes for academic and artistic audiences, which celebrates collaboration and shows how artist and academic doubt and search together.
Leonie Persyn
Read moreIn collaboration
Leonie Persyn, Laura Broux, S:PAM – Studies in Performing Arts & Media, Ghent University
Being Here for You
Posted by
Performance & Text
Being Here for You is an exchange between Rita Hoofwijk and South African artist Hannah Loewenthal. When travel become impossible in 2020 and the distance between them became fixed, they began an exchange of written requests and embodied responses.
Can you experience the world through the eyes, ears, hands of another?
Can you see, hear, touch your everyday for another?
In 2023, the archive was shared on coinciding dates, corresponding with the texts sent three years earlier.
> Visit the written exchange here: Being Here for You
In collaboration
Hannah Loewenthal, Felix Schellekens, Ehud Neuhaus, Yvonne van Versendaal, Emke Idema, Naja Lee Jensen, SoAP Maastricht, IN SITU, Østfold Internasjonale Teater, Oerol, C-TAKT, Vlaams Cultuurhuis de Brakke Grond, MU Hybrid Art House
Continuation
The project continued by connecting two new artists with each other and two distant places. The artists worked (for each other) on location, without relocating physically. Being Here for You thereby raised further questions about distance (& proximity), travel and making site-specific work. The exchange took place consecutively in both participating places, on Terschelling at Oerol Festival in the Netherlands and in Fredrikstad at Østfold Internasjonale Teater in Norway.
On a Monday
Posted by
Publication
A paper booklet showing all surfaces walked upon one Monday in November 2020.
Edition of 100 pieces.
Printed in Brussels, December 2020
Context
“After a long time of preparing projects in the (far) future and digital meetings, I had the desire to make something concrete and hold it in my hands. This small work arises from that wish and from the specific living conditions in times of pandemic.”
Article
The paper band holds together an accordion of images. As I touch the paper, I am moved by this small gesture of art. The gift makes me smile, I feel like receiving a love letter. I feel oscillation inside my body, excitement and curiosity mingles. I slide the paper band to the top. A sidewalk appears.
(…)
I turn the last page and I am back at the beginning. This booklet turns just like the earth we are walking on.
(…)
Hoofwijk’s On a Monday I walked on the same Earth as you demonstrates such an attitude of walking and thinking that enables us – both artist and spectator – to acknowledge, express, experience and resonate (with) certain elements of the current situation, that cannot be grasped in concepts or even words. It reveals how we are condemned to slowly move, in order to cope with the motionlessness of the societal situation.
Leonie Persyn, the Sound of a Shared Intimacy
In collaboration
Felix Schellekens, SoAP Maastricht
A Way of Seeing
Posted by
Text
John Berger’s ‘Ways of Seeing’ shows how what we see is influenced by where and when we see something. A Way of Seeing is an artistic research project into the where and when of the spectator. Each text reports on the context of a visitor’s theatre visit. These gazes, directed from different circumstances, combine to form a collection of ways of seeing and give an image that reflects the theatre visit after the lockdown.
Written
2020 het TheaterFestival
ALL. – Lisa Verbelen / BOG. & Het Zuidelijk Toneel
Het dier, het dier en het beestje – Theater Artemis & Het Zuidelijk Toneel
Dagboek van een leeg bed – Mokhallad Rasem / Toneelhuis
Jezebel – Cherish Menzo / Frascati Producties
Screws – Alexander Vantournhout / Not Standing
+ Act – Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company & Het Zuidelijk Toneel
2020 Winternights
Gathering Ground – Salomé Mooij / SoAP Maastricht
–
2021 Beyond the Black Box
Triptiek van voetperspectieven – Johannes Bellinkx / SoAP Maastricht
Lourdes – Paulien Oltheten / SoAP Maastricht
HALL12 – Encounter Activism – TAAT / SoAP Maastricht
2021 Over het IJ Festival
MISSIE OPERATIE EXPEDITIE (M.O.E.) – Firma Draak / Feikes Huis
THE SHEEPTOWN PROJECT – Alexandra Broeder
FOREST – Emke Idema
2021 Festival Boulevard
Born to Protest – Joseph Toonga
REGENBOOG – Benjamin Verdonck / Lucas van Haesbroeck / Toneelhuis
ELISABETH GETS HER WAY – Jan Martens / GRIP
2021 Expeditie Cement
A MA ZON EN – Marijn Graven
Oxygen Debt – Werkplaats van de Woestijne