The Act of Dying (2017) was the concluding piece of three pieces that performatively explored the physicality of animated figures. It was also the first performance of artist collective de polen. In The Act of Dying, we see three figures reenacting their own brutal death over and over again. They are accompanied by a wooden rectangle on strings and Henryk Górecki’s Third Symphony (“Symphony of Sorrows”).
Whereas Herberg focused on rhythm and clear, “drawn” lines, and Moore Bacon! exhibits a body seemingly escaping the constraints of its anatomy, The Act of Dying explores the extreme violence to which animated characters expose themselves and each other (not infrequently with unbridled joie de vivre).
‘They don’t know death, they don’t know sexuality, they don’t know suffering, you cut them into pieces, they’re reconstituted. There is no finitude, no mortality here. There is evil, but a kind of naive, good evil. You’re just egotistic, you want to eat, you want to hit the other, but there is no guilt proper.’
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24.11.17Jonge Harten Festival, Groningen (NL)
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14—15.09.17Love At First Sight Festival, Antwerpen (BE)
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09—10.08.17Boulevard Festival, Den Bosch (NL)
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31.07—01.08.17Theater Aan Zee, Oostende (BE)
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13.04.17De Werf (KAAP), Brugge (BE)
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30—31.03.17Kunstencentrum Vooruit, Gent (BE) (première)
© Pieter Dumoulin
© Pieter Dumoulin
© Pieter Dumoulin
© Pieter Dumoulin
© Pieter Dumoulin
© Stine Sampers
© Stine Sampers
