In Traveling without Moving, artist duo Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot takes you to an in-between space where we can break away from the current world and dream a new future. After the performance installations with which they conquered the theaters, Traveling without Moving is the first major exhibition, for which they developed multiple multimedia installations that unfold as a layered total experience.
An old world is dying and a new one is struggling to be born. In order to rise from the crumbling structures around us, we must first find a new direction and choose what this new world will look like. To dream it into existence, we need another story, another image of our heroes and gods, another source of inspiration.
Deeply hidden in the body of the earth and in our own psyche, other stories await, older than the patriarchal worldview that has led to our current impasse. It is the stories of the Great Goddess, in all her manifestations, that are a great source of inspiration for Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot. Their exhibition unfolds like a sanctuary, in which you are taken on an imaginary journey to an alternative reality—at once a spiritual origin and a possible future. As if we fall out of all frameworks into a deeper place, which the spirit has not forgotten.
The heart of the exhibition is a temple of sleep, where sleepers receive information from the goddess about other realities in lucid dreams. Arranged around it are spaces in which you—guided by virtual voices, in the safety of a tent, refreshing yourself by a digital campfire, or with your hands in the clay—are invited to slow down and dream for yourself.
In this setting you can also participate in three sleeping ceremonies.
About Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot
From their roots in the anarchist tradition of Dutch Mime, artist duo Suzan Boogaerdt and Bianca van der Schoot developed a cross-disciplinary practice—a synergy between the performing arts and the visual arts. In the twilight zone between the black box and the white cube they stretch the rules and conventions of both settings to build a gray space.
In this twilight zone Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot creates intermediate spaces where homo digitalis have an updated can train physical awareness and get tools to to connect with new worlds. Through a gender-conscious lens, they explore how virtual realities and dream worlds interface with the human user.
Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot poses the question of who or what controls the apparatus of the human body, how that influences the nature of consciousness, and consequently the creation of different realities. The duo explores corporeality in all its manifestations, and plays with the alienation effect of masked figures, cybors, dolls, avatars and semi-mechanized characters. In this way, Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot raises the question 'What makes us human?' and facilitates a reconnection with the creative force of life itself.
Credits
Traveling without Moving is a coproduction between Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot, TENT and Theater Rotterdam. This project is made possible by the generous support of the Mondriaan Fund and the Fund for the Creative Industries.
English: In co-creation with Alexandra van den Akker, Rodrik Biersteker, Florentijn Boddendijk, Anne van Buuren, Renske Ebbers, Mikko Gaestel, Lotte Goos, Lene Grooten, Inez Ishizaki, Remco de Jong, Mala Kline, Theun Mosk, Lena Newton, Martijn Nieuwenburg, Jaap Schledorn, Siemen van der Werf.