All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
(Richard Brautigan)
In All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, visual artist Ezra Veldhuis and performing artist Bosse Provoost explore freedom and unfreedom in relation to technology, by staging Richard Brautigan's 1967 poem of the same name.
The performance oscillates between utopia and scepticism, between ecstasy and disillusionment: we see a "cybernetic ecology" in which it is not always clear whether the entanglements between people, materials and devices are symbiotic or conflictual. The light seems to want to deceive and hypnotise, the music asks us to trust and let go. The question is not whether we are entangled, but how we suffer, dance and waver within that entanglement.
At last I am free, I can hardly see in front of me!
Credits
Choreography, light and scenography Ezra Veldhuis & Bosse Provoost | Choreography Nathan Ooms, Bosse Provoost, Ezra Veldhuis | Performance Estefanía Álvarez Ramírez, Jayson Batut, Nathan Ooms | Costume design & objects Carly Rae Heathcote | Sound Design Benne Dousselaere | Execution set Sibran Sampers | Head of technical production Wim Bernaers | Outside eye Marc Vanrunxt | Internship dramaturgy Cesar Vromman | Production Hiros | Co-production C-TAKT, NEXT Festival, auawirleben Festival, Kunstenwerkplaats, SPRING Performing Arts Festival, CAMPO, Perpodium, Kraagsteen | With the support of Kunstencentrum BUDA, De Grote Post, Le Bamp, STUK, Kunst/Werk, Stad Gent, the Flemish government, taxshelter of the Belgian Federal Government via UfundLocatie
Prijs
€ 18/14
Tags
stuk residency
Ezra Veldhuis & Bosse Provoost - All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
Ezra Veldhuis and Bosse Provoost work on the scenography and light design of All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, a staging of the eponymous poem by Richard Brautigan.
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