Kris Verdonck
SOMETHING (out of nothing)
Past dates
The future may be dark, but it comes with arresting visuals and powerful sounds: a synesthetic theater shock in the time of climate change.
Few in recent years have created disconcerting stage landscapes with as strong images as Kris Verdonck. The Belgian visual artist and theater maker has often been interested in existential questions and post-apocalyptic scenarios (at Kampnagel most recently in 2008). In his new intense and contemplative theater experience, he tackles the question of what it means to exist while awaiting an impending ecological catastrophe. What if nature becomes a nightmare and the quiet becomes endless? When we are actually gone? This work is thus a perfect sensory counterpart to our focus on climate-change-related cultures and ideologies.
In the transit zone between visual art and theater, installation and performance, dance and architecture, Verdonck embarks on a synesthetic trip to the end of the world with, among others, long-time ROSAS dancer Mark Lorimer, performer Ula Sickle and noise-cellist Leila Bordreuil. Like ghosts, they populate a magicbox-like theater landscape of impressive visual power – and, in our era of climate dystopia, remind us of the frailty of art and of human existence. A synesthetic theater shock in the time of climate change.
