© Nicolas Roseeuw
Charlotte Bouckaert / Platform 0090 - THING
For Playground, Charlotte Bouckaert creates THING, an installation in motion, a choreography of banal objects and a body, carried by a large table, as an arena of imagination. For a moment they are there, then they slip over the edge and disappear into nothingness. What are the contours life leaves behind: "It is the fate of things and of all that one can possess to be born of darkness to know an inexplicable and brief existence in little light." (Bart Verschaffel)
Charlotte Bouckaert is fascinated by still life in painting. By what is depicted but even more by how things are represented. In 16th-century still life art, objects were imitated as reliably as possible; in the 20th century, they have become the starting point for plastic and conceptual experiments. After 11 seconds, her most recent theatre performance that brings a photograph to life, Bouckaert now makes everyday objects move and evolve. In order to challenge stillness and lifelessness and focus on looking as a conscious and animated action.
CREDITS
Concept: Charlotte Bouckaert
Performer: Marie De Corte
Artistic collaborator: Bart Van den Eynde
Technician: Stan Wannet
Production: Platform 0090
Co-production: Playground (STUK & M,Leuven)
Charlotte Bouckaert (1983) studied sociology at KU Leuven, photography in Ghent and followed a post-graduate performance and scenography at A.PASS. In the last 15 years she developed a visual language on the border of visual arts and live performance. Her werk takes on diverse shapes such as performances, installations and videos. Her visual work is regularly used in collaborations, such as the scenography for Antigone in Molenbeek and Tiresias by Guy Cassiers in 2020.
She started her theatre practice in Brussels in 2012, in collaboration with Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek and Beursschouwburg, with the performance The photographer left, he told the truth, awarded with the Dioraphte Prize at Festival Cement in Holland. From 2014 to 2019 she was part of the collective Atelier Bildraum, creating several theatre performances; Bildraum, Between violet and green and Icon, produced by Lod Muziektheater (Ghent, Belgium). The performance Bildraum won the 2015 Big in Belgium Award at Theater aan Zee and the Total Theatre Award at the 2016 Fringe Festival in Edinburgh.
In 2020 she created and toured the performance 11 seconds where the audience watches 1 picture for 55 minutes. Since 2021 she is developing work on the theme of still lives. She presented the online live performance Still life with Chair, and in the Groeninghe Museum in Bruges she explored the museum as an open atelier, placed in front of their collection of still lives.
On March 22 and 23 2024 she premiers her theatre performance You are an object to me in première in KVS. During Playground festival 2023 she will present a performance installation around still lives in a museum context. Where 11 seconds focused on the static image, You are an object to me challenges everyday objects and their starting point of stillness and immobility.