ANDER WERK

DE TAFEL/HET SLAPEN/HET WASSEN

(The Table, The Sleeping, The Washing)

DE TAFEL/HET SLAPEN/HET WASSEN

In our daily doings, many of the movements of our body make themselves: we unconsciously perform bodily actions and gestures that come out of the memory of the body. Our physical experience goes before the thinking. These movements, the way we perform them, unaware, are our nature, our signature. This work takes our human actions as an exploration of our reality. We transform our human actions into a ritual. We can find trust in this base, in the instinct. We can lean on it.

This is a triptych, each part linked tot the other two but at the same time each movement stands on its own.

THE TABLE is a silent ritual inviting you to perform a ritual involving a soap table that you clean with a wet cloth, resulting in a print of your signature movement. It can take place in a more public setting.

THE SLEEPING/WINTERSLEEP

a ritual performed during all of the winter season that takes place in the intimacy of one’s own commitment to the question: what would a human hibernation mean? For Winterslaap (Winter:sleep) a small group of people makes a pact: we think about what to do in that dark period (because darkness has to find its space) and try it out. Each participant sleeps on it during 92 nights. As a reminder of the pact every night, in the dark, in bed, we make a sketch of our sleep position. The first day of spring we gather and and share possible proposal for the winter sleep. We finish the cycle with the reassurance that there is another winter to try on.

THE WASHING is a performative ritual inviting two participants to draw each other’s washing movements. When we wash ourselves, we align ourselves. We draw patterns on our bodies. We draw ourselves. Washing is respecting the body, your body but perhaps also the body that made your body and the body that made that body that made your body. A possibility of contact with your ancestors.

DON'T EAT THE MICROPHONE

For 5 days I nonstop braid the grass at the Guislain Museum in Ghent. Sometimes people come to join me or to lie or sleep next to me. Then go to eat and come back. The continuity of the act offers peace and place. The non-stop braiding became a condition that seemed worrisome or questionable. The boundary between patient and non-patient faded.Who is useful to whom in this economic system? Who gives peace to whom?

HET SPUWEN
(The Spitting)

HET SPUWEN

The unspeakable becomes visible

from the physical act of spitting.

A cloth is involved and milk.

The cloth is spat upon and afterwards put into the ground to ferment. Unearthed, the markings are revealed from the dark again.

'I MISS YOU'

An absence, a person or an area. Embroidered on the inside of a favorite coat, close to your skin.

Just for yourself, to always carry it closely. Nobody notices.The act of embroidery provides space in time.

HET KLAGEN

Healing through lamenting. The collective holds space for mourning, no judging on the timing of our grief, about ourselves, the world, life and death, the impossibility the knowing, and not knowing, the love and the missing of love. Letting go offers transformation of the wailing energy. It starts with one person laying down a lament which is then picked up by someone else using the same words, it goes round while transforming or being cast aside for a new lamento. There is no set timeframe for the lamenting estafette - it goes on as long as needed until all that doesn’t serve anymore has been emptied out or transformed like tears transform into a tap of pure drinking water that helps us bottle a new homeopatic remedy and brew new beginnings.