Kris Verdonck Research Articles

Постгуманистические тенденции в современной театральной сценографии: от визуализации образов к материальным становлениям объектов

Posthumanistic tendencies in the modern stage design are viewed as a result of the transition from traditional theater to the postdramatic theater paradigm. Posthumanism entails rethinking of traditional principles of performing arts; it deconstructs humanistic values and challenges rational, self-sufficient subject and linear narration. Based on Karen Barad’s concept of intra-actions and the philosophical theory of New Materialism, the article analyzes such strategies in contemporary theatrical practice as the creation of stage assemblage bodies, the return of the “thing-power,” and the procedurality of actions and relationships. The directors stage non-linear, continuously unfolding and evolving events occurring between the various materials within the stage space, objects, actors, dancers, musicians, light, sound, text, etc., all masterfully equalized. The examples of the performances of Heiner Goebbels, Tadeusz Kantor, Kris Verdonck, and Kristina Zvykova help to study the spaces of distributed forces making the emphasis on the exploration of the potential, in which the human will is dispersed, relevant; however, the human presence and their ability to interact remain quite essential factors for the development and renewal of the artwork’s forms. Postdramatic theater and expanded scenography open up new possibilities for expressing the non-linearity, the dynamism of the world around, for comprehending and experiencing the involvement of human beings and non-human objects in the processes of co-construction of environments, spaces, and events.

Dramaturgy of Extinction: Sentient Landscapes, Spectral Bodies, and Unthought Worlds in Kris Verdonck’s Conversations (at the end of the world) and SOMETHING (out of nothing)

Among the challenges posed by the Anthropocene, perhaps none has been more central than redefining ‘the human’ that this epoch seems to name. It is no secret that the European liberal subject has been the directing force of the Anthropocene and the model from which a global humanity, and its globalising technology, has been envisioned. This essay begins by bringing together a diversity interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives to ask: does the Anthropocene mark the realisation of this homogenous human subject, or its end? Extinction seems constitutive of a climate narrative dominated by a Euro-American imaginary, wherein a fixation on endings suggests the anxieties – and the possibilities – of that imaginary coming to an end as a globalising worldview. Two recent performances by Kris Verdonck / A Two Dogs Company, Conversations (at the end of the world) (2017) and SOMETHING (out of nothing) (2019), imagine extinction through scenarios depicting human figures displaced and overtaken by sentient landscapes. Composed of synthetic materials and activated by bio-technical forces, these landscapes scale down a computational planet, embodying an accumulated history of technological progress and human interventions in environments. Extinction, in these works, is not the end, however, but rather the slow dying out of a singular idea of the human subject, if not its singular narrative of technological progress

Une lecture intra-active des dramaturgies robotiques

This article mobilises the theory of agential realism especially the notion of “intra-action” developed by American feminist physicist Karen Barad, to produce a reading of the intricacies between human and robotic cultures in theatre and performance. Although robotic imaginations and their underpinning ideologies, values and ideas first created a dichotomous relation between humans and robots, Julie-Michèle Morin proposes to focus not on the production of differences between human and non-human creatures, but on the intricate relations between nature, culture, and technologies, and their onstage materialisation. Drawing on two plays, Actor #1 (Kris Verdonck) and Sayonara (Oriza Hirata), she examines how human beings and robots are mutually constituted while reflecting on theatre as a means to question, criticise, or diversify the normativity of robotic imaginations.

Towards a Dramaturgy of Robots and Object-Figures

Robotic and virtual figures have become increasingly visible in live performance. How these figures/performative agents come into the discussion of dramaturgy is considered in reference to recent works by Hirata Oriza and Kris Verdonck.

Actors, Spectators, and “Vibrant” Objects: Kris Verdonck’s ACTOR #1

In contrast to much new media performance, Kris Verdonck’s ACTOR #1 does not attempt to accelerate time or to enhance the spectatorial experience by juxtaposing theatrical elements. Instead the work presents a three-phase meditation that strips back the tools and techniques of theatre to allow, or perhaps even compel, spectators to focus on a single element, to inhabit one state, or to consider a single idea at a time.

Scenographic materialism, affordance and extended cognition in Kris Verdonck's ACTOR #1

This article addresses the theme of the ‘scenographic turn’ from the perspective of a spectator's experience of scenography. By focusing on the materiality of scenography, I intend to draw particular attention to the role of the spectator's body in the perception and reception of performance. The expansion of scenographic practice to incorporate forms where objects and materials are central to the audience experience requires us to rethink the ways we account for scenography. Recent interest in the use of concepts from cognitive science as a means of analysing theatre might provide some help with this. In this article I consider concepts of affordance and extended cognition to see how they might be useful in thinking through an experience of attending Kris Verdonck's ACTOR #1.

The critical aesthetics of performing objects – Kris Verdonck

On a small theatre stage, an L-shaped iron bar that is attached to and powered by a grinding wheel's engine begins spinning around. The engine starts to overheat and eventually burns out. Applause....

Editorial: The Importance of the Astonished Eye

The four articles in this first issue of 2014 could not have, at first glance, less in common. The first piece, ‘Zooësis and “Becoming with” in India: The “Figure” of Elephant in Sahyande Makan: The Elephant Project’ by Ameet Parameswaran, examines the theatrical adaptation of a 1944 Malayalam poem by the company Theatre Roots and Wings. In ‘The Dynamics of Space and Resistance in Muhammad ‘Azīz's Tahrir Square: The Revolution of the People and the Genius of the Place’, Salwa Rashad Amin discusses the importance of ‘Azīz's play in the context of Egypt's recent and historical revolutions. Ketu Katrak takes up the performance of affect and its implication for social justice in ‘“Stripping Women of Their Wombs”: Active Witnessing of Performances of Violence’. Finally, Katia Arfara explores the work of a performance artist in terms of early twentieth-century precedents for European performance art, ‘Denaturalizing Time: On Kris Verdonck's Performative Installation End’. Theatre Research International readers will find much of value in each article, and they represent the kind of broad international focus our journal endeavours to provide.

Denaturalizing Time: On Kris Verdonck's Performative Installation End

Originating from the avant-garde's attempt to supplant the structural limitations of perspective which ‘bound the spectator to a single point of view’, installation art emerged during the 1960s and the 1970s as a critique of the pure, self-referential work of art. Belgian artist Kris Verdonck integrates that modernist debate into his hybrid practice of performative installation. Trained in visual arts, architecture and theatre, Verdonck uses sophisticated technological devices in order to blur binary distinctions such as time- and space-art, inanimate and animate figures, and immateriality and materiality. This study focuses on End (Brussels 2008), which shows the possible final stages of a human society in ten scenes. I analyse End as an echo of the Futurists’ performance tactics, which prefigured a broadening of the formal aesthetic boundaries of performance art under the major influence of Henri Bergson's theory of time.

Virtual dramaturgy: Finding liberty in the virtual machine

In ‘M, a reflection’ (2012), a performance conceived and directed by Belgian theatre and visual artist Kris Verdonck (°1974) based on texts by German playwright Heiner Muller (1929–1995), an actor ...

Kris Verdonck's Garden Installation EXOTE: Ecozoic wanderlust at the edge of Eden

Thomas Barry, author of The Dream of the Earths, suggests that our civilization is moving into an ecozoic, rather than an ecological era. While ecology merely refers to an understanding of our life systems and their integral relations, the term ecozoic (zoic bering derived from the Greek zoe meaning life) also conveys the feeling of an immediate, biological reality. This paper puts EXOTE (2011), the latest creation of Flemish theatre maker and visual artist Kris Verdonck, within the context of ecozoic art. EXOTE is an indoor garden that has been planted on the first floor of the Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt. It houses species that have been defined by the European Union as ‘invasive alien species’; they thrive outside their natural distribution area, threaten biological diversity and hence have a devastating impact on ecology. Verdonck selected a number of these species and brought them together in one big luminous garden. The garden of Eden that turns ‘sick’ in the end – putting together invasive species in a confined space is an experiment of biological wars and battles of survival – is a metaphor for sick contemporary humanity. Intense worldwide trade has introduced several species into new habitats, allowing them to invade the local fauna. In this sense, this interactive installation and the performative walking of its visitors allude to the malaise of overproduction and consumption. Verdonck's garden is in that sense a hortus contemplationis: a garden that triggers a reflexive response to utilitarianism and resource exploitation, communicating an ecological consciousness, by means of conveying an immediate, biological reality.

Samuel Beckett et La Tension Homme-machine Dans De Kris Verdonck

The paper aims to study the Beckettian lineage that can be identified in by the Belgian artist Kris Verdonck. Beyond the core reflexion on the relationship between man and machine, this performance, inspired by Beckett's , renews many questions dear to the Irish dramaturg: the manipulation of language, the intermediate status of existence, the separation between subject and object. In an aesthetic approach to , the theme of the homunculus, an artificially-created human prototype, is questioned in particular.

Locations of Dramaturgy – Kris Verdonck

Drawing on training in visual arts and theatre studies, Kris Verdonck creates arts works using spatially transforming elements such as light, haze, water and projections. His works combine elements of installation and performance art and utilize high definition video and machinic objects. In this essay I will consider how Verdonck explores ideas of theatre as a way of framing a sensible encounter that combines physical properties and metaphorical aspects. Verdonck creates situations where acts of watching and experiencing his performances are embodied and self-reflexive; where a memory of theatre (in contrast to Camillio's ‘theatre of memory’) as a primary experience is always evoked. At the same time, his ‘theatre’ often questions the very idea of liveness and is presented in various stages of redundancy and reinvention: to act is useless, but to act is to go on, to paraphrase Samuel Beckett, whose texts are sometimes adapted in Verdonck's performances. Cohering his work is the notion of ‘figures’: forms and objects manipulated in the artistic process and ‘acting’ (‘figuur’ from the Dutch can be translated to mean a character or personage) while also having a conceptual focus on the changing purview of figures in the context of expressive media. I argue that this encounter is productively seen as dramaturgical in the sense that Verdonck uses and subverts the vocabulary of performance making in expressive ways. Thus, I focus on the question of dramaturgy in Verdonck's work and think about the ways that his dramaturgy refashions ideas of theatre. In an exploration of two contrasting arts works made by Verdonck in 2011 aided by an extended consideration of the idea of the figure, I aim show how Verdonck's work is proposing an experimental dramaturgy and a memory of theatre as a transforming medium.

Relive the Virtual: an Analysis of Unplugged Performance Installations

Can retro media make us relive the virtual from digital media? Following McLuhan's thesis that the proper characteristics of a medium are revealed through remediation, it could well be that retro media re-enacting digital media can make explicit what the concept ‘virtual’ entails. Two recent works analyzed in this article take as their starting point antique theatrical techniques (the ballet pulley, the panorama) to evoke optical illusions, not to stage another illusion but for other purposes. Both works, which have no actual connection with cyberspace, include non-narrative interplay with antiquated technological installations that generate a challenging experience for the contemporary spectator in a digital era. The performance-installation I / II / III / IIII by Kris Verdonck stages a repetition in time in which the viewer gets trapped. By reviving virtual features into real ones and presenting them in replay-mode, the viewer discovers how a variation of sameness can evoke significant differences, or how identity arises due to a repetition in time. Hans Op de Beeck's installation Location (6) displays an all-round view in a real but generic space that induces the spectator's performative power – like an avatar, able to dwell in the virtuality of personal imagination. Robrecht Vanderbeeken has published on a variety of topics, including metaphysics, philosophy of technology, and aesthetics. Formerly a researcher in the Theory Department of the Jan van Eyck Academy, he now teaches at the Royal Academy of Fine Art at University College Ghent (KASK), and is currently researching the philosophical implications of technological innovations in art and culture.

Telling, Showing, Showing off

Outlines how New York City sets an image, using nature as a sign. Its very layout demonstrates the importance of a balanced intercourse between background and figure, between plan and details, between chaos and organization. Central Park, the domesticated preserve of nature-within-culture; Exhibits; Floor plans; Demonstrations; Conclusions.