Karel Burssens - Currents
Karel Burssens & Tarek Halabi work on their new project Currents, which will be performed at STUK on Thursday 3 October.
Currents unfolds in two parts, as a durational installation and a performance. The installation explores the simplest of forms, a line, turned into a light sculpture. Through repetition, it defines not only rhythm, space and light, but also the movements of a dancer. He will meet and confront the moving sculpture in an effort to reconfigure the relationship between man and machine.
The initial state of alienation is pushed to reach a poetic realm, a layered landscape to dream into. As such, both installation and performance aim to reveal our contemporary position as entities forced to adapt to an ever-changing world on both a technological and socio-political level. How do we deal with these situations? How do we continually find a new balance within our own environment and how do we deal with this on a larger scale?
In September 2019, his project Currents will have its avant-premiere in Dommelhof and premiere at Vooruit crystallising Burssens' previous transdisciplinary experience and research into a sculpture-performance.
Karel Burssens is a transdisciplinary artist who trained as an architect and engineer, initially working with Bogdan-Van Broeck architects and Bureau Bas Smets. He went on to become Head of Architecture at villa eugénie, while working on a wide range of fashion shows for Dior, Lanvin, Kenzo, a.o. In 2010 he began to collaborate with Jeroen Verrecht as 88888, developing both commissioned and self-initiated international projects in scenography, installation art and architecture.
Karel Burssens' independent practice is currently evolving on the sidelines of several distinct artistic worlds: sculpture, installation, performance and scenography. On different physical scales ranging from independent objects and sculptures to complex collaborative performance-oriented projects, his work aims to initiate reflections on subjects as broad as society, systems, technology and human interactions therewith.