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)