The rooms in some museums are like cathedrals, their dimensions seemingly chosen to intimidate us. Or, at the very least, to highlight our humble condition. It is true, for instance, of the Rubens room of the Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts, faithfully recreated by FC Bergman, who can't resist the pleasure of having the audience sit in it. It has visibly just been emptied of the works usually on display there; only Le Coup de Lance, too big to go through the door, remains. Deprived of its raison d'être—to house the Flemish master's paintings—it could be an Ark, a peaceful and quiet refuge in a troubled world. Yet this haven is inhabited by characters haunted by loneliness and absurdity. The watchman doesn't have much to watch over anymore; a guest faints in front of the remaining painting; a group of technicians and a curator desperately try to get her out... FC Bergman came up with the idea for this situation in 2015, when the renovation of the Antwerp museum was announced; they learned that the Rubens room—to which, like many of their fellow Antwerpians, they feel intimately connected—would be closed for about ten years. The shock caused by this vision inspired them a show of grandiose proportions, defined by its wordless atmosphere, in which the astounding differences of scale and the poetry of the situations sketch stubborn, fragile, and deeply moving human beings.
Distribution
Conception FC Bergman : Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Bart Hollanders, Matteo Simoni, Thomas Verstraeten, Marie Vinck
Sound FC Bergman, Diederik De Cock
Lights FC Bergman, Ken Hioco
With FC Bergman : Stef Aerts, Joé Agemans, Bart Hollanders, Matteo Simoni, Thomas Verstraeten, Marie Vinck
Production
Production Toneelhuis
With the support of gouvernement of Flanders and Antwerp City
With the help de PRG Belgium, AGFA Graphics, Musée royal des Beaux-Arts Antwerp