Guido Van Der Werve
Nummer acht - Everything ig going to be alright
Tom Morton on «Nummer acht»: “Here, we see the artist walking steadily across the frozen waters, while behind him looms a vast ship, its prow smashing through the ice, then rearing up like monstrous killer whale. Filmed in long shot, van der Werve seems frail and tiny, forever about to be swallowed by the abyss opening up behind him, forever hearing its great creaks, gulps and rumbles ringing in his ears. The icebreaker, though, lags continually behind, and we get to thinking about the effortlessness of his passage when compared to that of the behemoth to his rear.[…] This is not an image of man at one with nature, then, but of an excessive survival strategy, both sublime and ridiculous.”
Nástio Mosquito
Respectable Thief
We pick up where the last human has left it. We are in the business of making it our own. Downloading songs, films without paying artists and corporations for it; feel no guilt. We just dislike paying taxes. This ambiguous approach to both the good and the bad of our entitlement, appropriation, and evolution of our collective Robin Hood symdrome is where Respectable Thief has its foundations set on. Respectable Thief is a celebration of a productive, consequently articulate, eloquent anger. With immersive and visually eloquent moments the performance demands the audience to decide what’s important to follow, focus on and complete. It is a celebration of our individual limitations.
Multimedia artist Nástio Mosquito is known for performances, videos, music and poetry that show an intense commitment to the open-ended potential of language. Easily misread as a kind of world-weariness, it is the extraordinary expression of an urgent desire to engage with reality at all levels.
Pauline Curnier Jardin
The Resurrection Plot
Controversial German anatomist Gunther von Hagens meets philosopher Michel Foucault in Pauline Curnier Jardin’s idiosyncratic rescripting of the Renaissance.
In her Resurrection Plot the artist plays with the period’s emphasis on renewal, revival, and regeneration, and invites snails, cicadas, lizards, and snakes – all animals with the ability to don new skins throughout their lives – to join the dance.
Ignited by the artist’s fascination for the anatomical theatres that appeared in the fifteenth century and the era’s desire to enter and demystify the human body, The Resurrection Plot is a voyage amid freed écorchés, boogies, and a terrifying Medusa that exposes the audience to fantasies of plastination and petrification.
Pauline Curnier Jardin’s transgressive, camp, and idiosyncratic character-driven works have been presented internationally in the most important art institutions, like Musée d'Art moderne & Palais de Tokyo (Paris – 2010) and Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin – 2013); and, recently at Ellen De Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam – 2016). Pauline Curnier Jardin is currently resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.
Marzia Migliora / Elena Pugliese
Alta Tensione
The project investigates the working history related to the hydropower industry and the aspects of energy diffusion as necessary raw material for culture and progress, starting from the only-functioning industrial area of Centrale Fies. A worker wearing civilian clothes and his technical equipment, the one he uses every day to get on a high voltage trellis and secure his safety. As a technical handbook, a text spreads around the ‘norms’ regulating the necessity of men to be safe when facing the void, the insecurity, the risk, and falling down.
In her artistic endeavors, Marzia Migliora stem from careful observation of the individual and his everyday life to investigate themes such as identity, contradiction and responsibility, touching on present and past history and establishing a connection between places and narratives. Her projects ask questions aimed at actively engaging the viewer, without whom the work cannot be whole.
Elena Pugliese Write for theatre, cinema and radio, also in collaboration with archives, artists and art galleries. Her research follows several basic points: attention to personal and collective memories, archives as a real resource for the contemporary, poetry in objects and actions of everyday life, inheritance, immaterial legacies as a resource and bond.