From the laboratory that tested F16 fighter plane engines, which fascinated the son of a military engineer during his childhood, Kris Verdonck has kept his taste for the humming machine. Today, at the age of 34, this Flemish artist invents other mechanical devices, which he tries to tune bodies to and to compare sensorial logics. In his Brussels workshop, he designs these strange installations that, on each occasion, are used to make what he calls “the puppet's spirit” appear and come to life. It is this dual training (closer to the stage: he began with directing; but attentive to images: he has a master's in visual arts from the University of Antwerp) that he intends to place at the service of robots and cyborgs, while attempting to grasp what, in the human being, goes beyond the mechanical object or the digital connection. Kris Verdonck presented his first installations at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts of Brussels, in two series of five plays, in 2003 and 2005, seven of which the artist has revived for the Festival d'Avignon.
In this itinerary inside the Chartreuse of Villeneuve lez Avignon, the spectator is invited to an initiation of nearly two hours, blending participation in cybernetic experiments and the contemplation of the extreme states in a deeply human progression. In the installation Heart, a young woman dressed in white looks at the spectators. A machine interacts with her every 500 heartbeats. Who holds the power, the machine or the human being, the artist seems to wonder before the spectators. The entire itinerary however seems to reserve a very subtle answer because the stage asserts the presence of the actor, the interpreter, who is merely a docile guinea pig subjected to the all powerful mechanization of contemporary life. He knows how to resist and finds the tricks of the body to often snatch power away from the machine. As in Duet, where the circular motion of a mechanism creates the energy of the two weightless bodies, which are caught and caught again, undoubtedly letting us perceive what there is that is most human in man: those gestures that go beyond the power of the object to trust only the other. It is to this constant interaction that Verdonck's installations invite us, as on each occasion man adapts himself to the mechanical power to better counteract it: sunglasses let him look at the light of the apocalypse (Box), impulses guide the woman laying down on thin metal bars (Patent Human Energy), the human being seems to be reborn through a single steel rod shaken by a turning movement as though “danced” (Dancer). What, all things considered, seems the essence of this tension, ever palpable, sometimes panicky, or on the contrary reasoned, is a form of unstable equilibrium: Kris Verdonck's installations are located very precisely on the balance point between the very old and the overly modern, between life and inertia, light and shade, machinery and the body, the stage and society, that is to say, the very space of disquieting strangeness.
Distribution
spectacle déambulatoire déconseillé aux personnes à mobilité réduite
installations présentées Box, Dancer, In, Heart, Patent Human Energy, Duet, Rain
conception: Kris Verdonck
avec: Carl Vermeersch et Sanne Wutzke (Duet), Karolina Wolkowiecka (Patent Human Energy, Heart), Kaja Kolodziejczyk (In)
costumes: Ann Weckx (Duet, Patent Human energy)
lumières: Luc Schaltin (Duet, Patent Human Energy, Rain), Danny Vandeput et Kris Verdonck (Heart)
son: Bart Aga (Duet, Patent Human Energy), Media Chris Musgrave/iMal (Heart)
dramaturgie: Marianne Van Kerkhoven (Kaaitheater)
production déléguée: Margarita Production
Production
production: Margarita Production pour Stilllab vzw.
coproduction: Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Box, Duet, Patent Human Energy, Rain, Dancer, In), Kaaitheater (Box, Duet, Patent Human Energy, Rain), Festival La Batie (Box, Duet, Patent Human Energy, Rain), Philips Lightning (Box), Beursschouwburg et kc Belgie (In, Heart, Dancer)
avec le soutien: du Vlaamse Overheid, Vlaamse Gemeenschaps commissie (Box, Duet, Patent Human Energy, Rain)
avec le soutien: des autorités flamandes