Just like any other form of transport, the train has altered our perception of distance and space: speed makes distances shorter. Moreover, with the arrival of the Internet, the entire world is just a mouse click away: it comes to us in real time via all sorts of screens. Conversely, we go out into the world with a screen in our hand to record, edit and share landscapes, monuments, and other landmarks. How does that affect our experience of the here and now? Can we still distinguish the ‘real’ world from the virtual one? 

For SCREENS, you get on a train and find yourself in another world: the windows of the carriage turn into high resolution screens showing images created in a model train landscape. As you travel along the Belgian railway network, you feel like you are rolling through toy versions of other landscapes and cities. From the ‘real’ world to an unreal, virtual world. As if you are travelling inside Google Maps, or appear to be in the Caribbean, thanks to a filter on Zoom... 

Kris Verdonck perfects the illusion in this new immersive video installation. When you get on a train in SCREENS, you sit inside a real carriage and at the same time you are elsewhere. You are really in an artificial toy world. Both here, and not here: an ultimate form of being in transit?  

Immersive video-installation on a train
Aboard different trains in Belgium (last car)
Free, with train ticket
TRAIN ROUTES

EXTRACTIONS 22 is an exhibition that brings together different artists who work along the themes of extraction and landscapes. The selection of installations, new and mixed media, photographs, paintings, drawings, sculptures, performances and music, sketches an image of humankind that seems to have no other choice than to exploit its environment. Extraction does not only mean destruction, or at least not right away. It can also mean cultivation, making land available for growing crops. Nowadays, extraction has degenerated into consumption, a devastating process that is wreaking havoc at micro and macro levels, from our intimate thoughts to the layers of the Earth. EXTRACTIONS 22 is the second edition of this annual exhibition organised by Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company and takes place in the company’s atelier.

EXTRACTIONS 22

Muziekcentrum De Bijloke, Gent (B)
27 May 2022 - 20:00
Koningin Elisabethzaal, Antwerpen (B)
28 May 2022 - 20:00

Commissions by, among others, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Concertgebouworkest Amsterdam, rave reviews in the Financial Times and all sorts of awards: Annelies Van Parys is one of the most important Belgian composers of the moment. Commissioned by Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, she composed a new piano concerto for maybe the most adventurous and versatile Belgian pianist: Jan Michiels.

In addition to this unique world premier, Luciano Berio’s groundbreaking Sinfonia is on the program. With welcome guest conductor Martyn Brabbins, both works are in a safe pair of hands.

CREDITS
Martyn Brabbins conductor
Jan Michiels piano
HYOID ensemble

Bernstein Divertimento
Van Parys Pianoconcerto (world creation)
Berio Sinfonia

Antwerp Symphony Orchestra - TICKETS

SEAGULL FOUNTAIN, a living monument at the edge of the man made world. 

Seagulls are intelligent, organised in social structures and real cosmopolitans like us humans. But they are also loud, aggressive and shameless like us. They thrive with homo sapiens expansive behaviour: the more outdoor cafés and snack bars, the more seagulls. Often hated and chased away, they are the last guerrilla of nature that manages to live so close to humans. 

SEAGULL FOUNTAIN is a new outdoor project, an installation that will be placed at the end of a pier at the outskirts of a city. It reflects on the urban expansion and increasing pressure on nature in general. The Seagull Fountain is a machine that will shoot up food for the seagulls in order to gather a large cloud of screaming birds above the water. We choose a relatively safe distance from the city. 

Hermann Nitsch passed away in peace on April 18, 2022 after serious illness at the age of 83.

Therefore, the artist could no longer personally experience one of his great successes – the exhibition of the 20th 20. Malaktion, which opened during the 59th Venice Biennale on Easter Monday.

„alles, was je war und je sein wird, ist sein.“

This intense, life-affirming philosophy has accompanied Nitsch throughout his life, it will keep his work alive in eternity.

The first part of the 6-Tage-Spiel will be performed in Prinzendorf on July 30 and 31, 2022; due to pandemic, the Aktion had to be postponed for two years. It was his specific wish that his total work of art „Das Orgien Mysterien Theater“, will continue after his passing.

„das 6 tage dauernde spiel des o.m. theaters soll das grösste und wichtigste fest der menschen werden (es ist ästhetisches ritual der existenzverherrlichung).“

We deeply mourn the death of Hermann Nitsch. With him not only has a performance artist, painter, graphic artist and composer passed away, but also a husband, father, friend, mentor and companion.

https://www.nitsch-foundation.com/en/event/in-memoriam-hermann-nitsch/
https://www.nitsch.org/