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Playground 2016

  • Exhibition
17.11.16
20.11.16
Afbeelding
Playground 2016

Playground 2016

10th edition of the arts festival

Playground in STUK and M Leuven

A blend of performance and visual art: that’s been the successful formula of Playground for ten years in a row. This year’s full and fascinating programme includes several premières and a performance by Mary Reid Kelley.

 

For this birthday edition, Playground launched a call for various national and international arts programmes that have visited the festival over the past ten years. A number of current students and alumni submitted projects tailored to Playground. On Sunday 20 November, we are presenting an exciting selection of these proposals in Playground Platform. The programma features a series of installations, five live performances and a film at STUK, in addition to a continuous artistic intervention at M.

Artists: Alex Cecchetti, Alex Reynolds, Anna Barham, Benjamin Verdonck, Dora García, Emily Mast, Hugo Roelandt, Israel Galván, Pedro G. Romero, Filiep Tacq, Lisa Vereertbrugghen, Liz Santoro, Marge Monko, Marnie Slater, Mary Reid Kelley, Michael Portnoy, Nastio Mosquito, Paul Hendrikse & Sarah van Lamsweerde.

A small selection

Exhibition

Mary Reid Kelley

A minotaur, a 19th-century French prostitute. These are just a few of the characters in the work of Mary Reid Kelley (°1979, Greenville, South Carolina) and her partner Patrick Kelley. She plays these historical figures in her videos, and uses costumes, masks and poetic wordplay to create a black and white parallel world.

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Installatiezicht Mary Reid Kelley © M-Museum Leuven | foto: Dirk Pauwels

Mary Reid Kelley & Patrick Kelley

This Is Offal

A pathologist examines the body of a woman whose own organs demonstrate their confusion and misunderstanding of her suicide. The actual speakers in the drama – the liver, heart, brain and other organs – signify the ‘offal’ from the work’s title and the ‘awful’ irrevocability of the act. But while even her own organs argue about what exactly took place, there’s certainly no hope of finding a rational, scientific explanation for this most tragic and complex of human actions.

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This Is Offal, Mary Reid Kelley & Patrick Kelley © STUK - Huis voor Dans, Beeld & Geluid | foto: Joeri Thiry

Marnie Slater

By Written I Mean Made

Through the voices, bodies and actions of four performers, the lives of two characters, Peter and Mary, and their domestic world are conjured and disrupted. In the form of a 19th-century drawing room play, this performance questions notions such as friendship, language and gender.

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By Written I Mean Mad, Marnie Slater © M-Museum Leuven | foto: Robin Zenner

Hugo Roelandt

Aeromatic Art Project

From Bruegel to Leonardo to Panamarenko. Flying is a popular theme in art. But art never really flies: line, structure and form are all suggestive of flying. In Aeromatic Art Project the roles are reversed: model helicopters make simple move- ments in the air before returning to their plinths, their helipads.

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Aeromatic Art Project 1, 1982, Hugo Roelandt © M-Museum Leuven | foto: Robin Zenner

Anna Barham

A sentence can be ours and ours

In Anna Barham’s live production reading groups, meaning proliferates from the physical surface of language - the sound, rhythm & cadence of the voice. The audience is invited to join a circle of readers where a text repeatedly mutates through the participants’ readings and speech recognition software, slipping from version to version over several hours until it falls apart.

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A sentence can be ours and ours, Anna Barham © M-Museum Leuven | foto: Robin Zenner

Paul Hendrikse

Procedures For Underground

In this new work Paul Hendrikse investigates what happens when everyday poses and gestures are taken out of their original context. Procedures For Underground is a movement archive that exists of short series of politically, socially or normatively 'invisible' postures. All postures arise from a sort of crisis moment.

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Procedures For Underground, Paul Hendrikse © STUK - Huis voor Dans, Beeld & Geluid | foto: Joeri Thiry

Marge Monko

Don't Wind it up, Turn it on

Advertising photography plays on our desires. The performance is inspired by wrist watch print ads depicting male and female hands. The visual language of these advertising photos are carefully composed and contain implications to love, desire and luxury.

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Don't Wind it up, Turn it on, Marge Monko © M-Museum Leuven | foto: Robin Zenner

Alex Cecchetti

Tamam Shud

A man has been found dead and his identity is unknown. The label from his clothes, his fingerprints, his shoe size, none of it can be used to identify him. His only connection with the rest of the world is a small scrap of paper hidden in a secret pocket sewn into his trousers. It contains the last words of a Persian poem: Tamam Shud.

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Tamam Shud, Alex Cecchetti © M-Museum Leuven | foto: Lisanne Valgaerts

Benjamin Verdonck

One more thing

In one more thing, Benjamin Verdonck unpacks a miniature theatre from a suitcase. Based on a line from Il diavolo sulle colline (The Devil in the Hills) by Italian author Cesare Pavese, he uses passing letters to assemble a graphic-abstract fantasy about the relativity of things.

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One more thing, Benjamin Verdonck © M-Museum Leuven | foto: Lisanne Valgaerts

This was Playground!

More about Playground? Surf to the webpage and discover the latest updates on the arts festival.

Meer over Playground? Surf naar de website en ontdek de laatste updates over het kunstenfestival.