Split Subjects

An exhibition and programme of performances curated by Francesco Bernardelli and Theo Tegelaers. A closer investigation into the different areas of contemporary experimental performance art. Split Subjects offers a platform for artists and performers who use media, film, performance and theatre, and are deliberately working on a redefinition of disciplines in terms of their mutual cohesion. Far beyond the pure action of borrowing, and passing over all implications that have to do with long explored concepts such as authorship, signature, property and style, Split Subjects reveals that performative, theatrical and filmic practice has become an open field for interpretation and expression. Programme 10 May Alice Chauchat - Alix Eynaudi , Crystalll 11 May Alice Chauchat, Quotation marks me 12 May Christelle Lheureux - Oscar van den Boogaard, L' expérience préhistorique 13 May Rabih Mroue, Looking for a Missing Employee 14 May Mårten Spångberg - Tor Lindstrand, Artists'-talk 17-18 May Lovett/Codagnone, ASK; Anat Stainberg, The 'Falling In Love (This Time It's) For The Right Guy' Project 19 May Alexandra Bachzetsis, Gold 20 May Juan Dominguez, All good spies are my age 10 May: Alice Chauchat (choreography) - Alix Eynaudi (choreography & dance), CRYSTALLL, start: 8 p.m. CRYSTALLL scintillates as a jewel in a showcase. CRYSTALLL is about decoration and beautification as formalistic strategies. CRYSTALLL is a research on the glorification of the (female) body within conventional representations. Dance, dancer, lights and set are precious, decorative, exotic, objects. CRYSTALLL is a solo for a female dancer. Between attraction for aesthetic experience and rejection of an admirative position, CRYSTALLL proposes, without comment, contemplation as a critical experience. 11 May, Alice Chauchat (choreography & dance), Quotation marks me, start: 8 p.m. Quotation marks me questions the definition of what choreography is or ought to be. Based on two standard texts of modern dance practice - Doris Humphrey's The Art of Making dances and Yvonne Rainer's no manifesto - Quotation marks me embraces the notions advanced by the two texts. 12 May, Christelle Lheureux - Oscar van den Boogaard, L' expérience préhistorique, start: 8 p.m. A silent film by Christelle Lheureux ('One movie for several stories', 2003-04) with spoken texts by Oscar van den Boogaard. 13 May: Rabih Mroué, Looking for a Missing Employee, start: 8 p.m. A performance about the mysterious disappearance of a civil servant. On the basis of newspaper clippings, he tries to find out what happened. 14 May: Mårten Spångberg - Tor Lindstrand, Artists' Talk, start: 8 p.m. Spångberg and Lindstrand in conversation on their collaborations, careers, and the expression of form as speech: from interview to performance, on authorship, authenticity and historicity. 17 and 18 May: Lovett/Codagnone, ASK*, start: 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. In a dark space, illuminated only by a red light, stories derived from Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo (120 Days of Sodom) are linked to the smell of love. 17 and 18 May: Anat Stainberg, The “Falling In Love (This Time It's) For The Right Guy” Project, start: 8 p.m. A self portrait of a woman in search of the ideal man. 19 May: Alexandra Bachzetsis, Gold, start: 8 p.m. 'In her aptly titled solo performance Gold, Alexandra Bachzetsis continues to explore the proverbial gold standard of the libidinal economy that buttresses contemporary visual culture - the eroticized, empowered female body. Propelled, among others, by a riveting dance track - a potent symbol of sex-laden female power in her own right - Gold deftly plays around the ambiguous choreographic vernacular of hip-hop and R&B: a black-and-tan tits-and-ass show complete with the obligatory sprinkling of gold dust, Bachzetsis' solo piece offers a powerful and fully embodied reflection on dance culture, visual pleasure and the commodification of fantasy.' 20 May: Juan Dominguez, All good spies are my age, start: 8 p.m. All good spies are my age provides the viewer with insight into the time span between the creation of an idea for a choreography and the actual choreography of these ideas. Besides the performance programme, there will be an exhibition of video and photoworks by Brice Dellsperger, Wim Catrysse, Runa Islam, Chloe Piene and Viviane Sassen. Brice Dellsperger is fascinated by the film language employed by directors like Brian de Palma, Enrei Zulawski, John Badham and Gus van Sant. In his Body Double series he reconstructs fragments of film with all the characters acted out by himself or his permanent actor Jean-Luc Verna. Doubling the original gives rise to a shift that offers considerable space for posing questions about fact and fiction, authenticity and play. The video installations by Wim Catrysse appeal directly to the viewer's world of experience. Using simple means, he makes suggestive images that capitalise on the existential context of the individual, focussing in particular on body language. Runa Islam is not so much interested in the narrative lines that unfold in films but in their linguistic constructions. In a subtle way she creates ambiguous situations in which the language of film is coupled with that of theatre. Islam also investigates the relation between reality and acting. Her video Director's Cut (Fool for Love) shows images of an empty theatre alternating with close-ups of the director giving instructions to his actors on the stage. Chloe Piene is concerned with the extreme antitheses of the human personality. Her videos concentrate on eroticism and on physical conflicts between man and woman, touching on themes such as exhibtionism and violence. Piene uses the body as a medium to ask herself the question as to where her own individuality ceases and where the body merges into and becomes an instrument of an external force. Viviane Sassen's hyper-stylised style of photography is surprising and innovative and has been picked up by various international fashion and art magazines. Her work uses camouflage and choreographic compositions to display the body as an extension and tool of the photographer's will.