Narcissus (working title) - This installation by David Bowen consists of a computer, a robotic arm with a camera attached and a mirror mounted to the wall. The computer is running a custom trained artificial intelligence object detection model at the same time it controls the movements of the robot. The AI model is trained to recognize the robot. The robot looks in the mirror with its camera attempting to recognize itself. If it does, the computer draws an annotation box around the image of the robot with the label of “me”. When the box is drawn, the robot moves in relation to where the box is located within its field of view. In this way, the robot is essentially looking for and attempting identify itself.

This project will be completed during an artist residency at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA, USA. And supported with fellowships from the Artist Communities Alliance and the McKnight Foundation.

Is what we see really what it seems? In BOGUS I, four large-scale inflatables appear and disappear, like a jack-in-the-box. They are the ghost of growth, industry, entertainment and destruction. The performative scenography for a disappearing humanity, and the traces that remain.

The name BOGUS is reminiscent of the word ‘bogey’, an evil spirit, a source of fear; BOGUS is a materialisation of the false ghosts that pursue us. BOGUS I – a synonym for ‘fake’ – has a mysterious, ghostlike appearance. It grows and then shrinks until it fits back into the box it came from. The birth and disappearance of a twinkling sculpture; this is the ultimate magic.

Kris Verdonck
Biennale Chroniques

An ageing robot is trapped in a room filled with reindeer hair. The machine struggles to raise itself, loses balance and collapses violently. Millions of hairs fly up and temporarily fill the air. They descend quietly and the machine starts another attempt in a long Sisyphean cycle. Is it a state of conflict or an attempt for symbiosis in the eternal drama of order and chaos?  

Lawrence Malstaf has developed various projects exploring the clash and symbiosis of technology and nature. In the dark cage of Flood the wild animal is replaced by a trapped robot. Clouds of pure delicate reindeer hair effortlessly escape the machine. 

Its purpose or problem is unclear. Does it need help with its renegade neural network? Some say AI technology will soon be a much bigger challenge than the current environmental crisis. Yet techno-enthusiasts argue it’s precisely AI that can solve… everything. 

Lawrence Malstaf
Biennale Chroniques

FLOOD is a new installation in coproduction with CHRONIQUES CREATIONS PLATFORM, supported by la DRAC Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, la Région Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, la Ville de Marseille et l’Institut français à Paris. In coproduction with iMAL.
With the support of the Flemish Community.

The sculptures in the series ENTITIES are performative machines, objects that move by virtue of their own independent energy source. They perform without any interaction or connection with people. These autonomous mobiles are powered by solar, wind or residual heat energy and follow the rhythm of the natural element that sets them in motion.

In ENTITIES #1, two hollowed-out halves of a boulder spin silently opposite and around each other. The motor that drives them is connected to solar panels. Heavy material is thus connected to "light." As with the planets, the sun here too sets a rock in motion - albeit in a different way and on a different scale. 

The ENTITIES series is an investigation of energy as an ever-changing, unstable natural phenomenon. The machines powered by such a source consequently follow a similar unstable rhythm. This goes against how almost all appliances and devices work: they need a continuous, stable supply of energy. Electricity producers therefore generate much more energy than is actually needed or consumed. The study of unstable energy thus poses a fundamental question: what if our technological environment were not based on continuous and instantaneous efficiency and instead operated rather like an irregular ecosystem? 

One immediate consequence of this research is that it goes back to the basics of modern technology. The way almost all machines work today needs to be reconsidered. The mechanical elements of ENTITIES are very similar to Leonardo Da Vinci's mechanics, such as hinges, levers or pivots. This kind of mechanics gives the installations something magical, as if the moving objects are not real, as if gravity does not exist.

One could argue that "performance" in an artistic environment is something exclusively human, or at least reserved for living beings. However, the relationship between performance and unpredictability could be even more essential. When an object and its energy source are completely self-sufficient and its movements unpredictable, it becomes an entity with its own independent cycle. It is no longer just "serving" or performing for people, but has a life of its own. Between old and new techniques, old materials and science fiction, between heaviness and lightness: the entities are hybrid sculptures for a time in search of a new balance.

Kris Verdonck - ENTITIES
Panorama 24 - Le Fresnoy 

SHRINK 01995
Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body (in this case the artist himself) vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the flow of air. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body.

The future is
Today, you can choose your social media pronouns and decide how you want to be defined. It hasn't always been that way. It was not until the 1970s that homosexuality was decriminalised in Norway. Sexual liberation was connected to the student revolution that raged throughout the West. It was a time for new ideas and utopian visions of the future. The exhibition seeks to find a way back to this optimism of the future – a non-binary society – where anything is possible and where everyone can fly. What might a non-binary society look like? The exhibition is a laboratory, an investigation, a thought experiment over a utopian future society.

Lawrence Malstaf - SHRINK 01995
Trondheim Kunstmuseum - The future is

PREY is a new music theatre production by Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company, in co-production with Muziektheater Transparant and in collaboration with ICTUS Ensemble. 
Annelies Van Parys is writing a new composition.

“We are food” (Val Plumwood)
A new humility

How can we change the way we view being human from a radical ecological perspective? What stories help us to better understand the disruptions caused by the climate crisis? These questions are at the heart of PREY. And perhaps our own mortality and vulnerability provide a good starting point for the search for an answer.

PREY will consist of three solos by three generations of women. Each has its own focus: text/language, song/music and dance/performance. With every solo, the tension between the human and the landscape, performer and scenography, becomes more intense and intimate. The essence of PREY is finding solace in the frightening fact that we too are food, that we too belong to an ecological cycle of life and death.

Kris Verdonck has gathered an extraordinary group of people around him for this performance: composer Annelies Van Parys, ICTUS Ensemble, actress Katelijne Damen, singer Anna Clare Hauf and dancer Mooni Van Tichel. Verdonck is responsible for the scenography, a multimedia landscape in which the performers increasingly disappear and are swallowed up.

The premiere is scheduled for 25-26 March 2023 at Théâtre Varia as part of the Klarafestival in Brussels.

We are all food.
Interview with Kris Verdonck and Annelies Van Parys