German Staatstheater

In This is NOT what I want to tell you: she looks at the many attacks carried out by teenagers in Palestine in 2015 and 2016. The teens, all children aged between 10 and 15, were shot dead or sentenced to years in prison. The series of almost daily knife attacks by these lone wolves reflected the hopelessness and despair among the young people of Palestine. They wanted to send a message to the world, but were unable to convey this in ordinary language.

In Two Ladybugs the fates of three characters, a Belgian woman, a Palestinian girl and an Israeli soldier, are closely intertwined. The players don't feel comfortable in this new, strange world and they don't hide that from the public.

Broken Shapes: A young woman in a city that has been occupied for decades, on the day of her father’s funeral, discovers his architectural drawings. Overcome with grief, she slips into the dream worlds and imagined places that he created.

Rimah Jabr Rimah Jabr (Nablus, Palestine, 1980) is a theatre director, playwright, screenwriter and Ph.D. candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at York University. She completed a master’s degree in theatre-making from the RITCS in Brussels. She wrote and directed several plays produced in Belgium, Canada, and Palestine. She actively collaborates with visual artists to craft unique performances. Her doctoral research is a performance ethnography research-creation with Palestinian Designers from Hebron, examining the impact of confinement on the creative process involved in set design. Broken Shapes is a collaborative project co-created by Toronto-based theatremaker Rimah Jabr and Brussels-based visual artist Dareen Abbas.

Edited by Astrid Kaminski, Jeroen Versteele, Julie De Meester. A personal and intimate look behind the scenes of Meg Stuart's creative process over more than a decade. 

Since the early nineties, Meg Stuart, and her dance company Damaged Goods, based in Brussels, have produced a remarkable and audacious body of choreographic work. In 2010, Damaged Goods published Are we here yet?, which spans the first twenty years of Meg Stuart's career. In the follow-up book Let's not get used to this place, the choreographer looks back on more than a decade of works through reflections, interviews, scores, and notes on the practice of creating, performing, teaching and living dance. These are mixed with reports, essays and poetry by collaborators and other observers, photos, performance texts and archive material. The book's title, gleaned from one of Stuart's recent video works, ties together these multifarious sources in a desire to discard tried and tested strategies, explore new contexts, and transgress the edge of what we (do not) know. 
Let's not get used to this place gives a sense of the plentitude of motions, inspirations and personalities that energize Meg Stuart's creative cosmos. It offers a personal and intimate look behind the scenes of the creative process, and expands this to include the world around it. As a journey through her more recent career, an inspiring manual and a work of art in its own right, it has a wide appeal to an international base of artists, students and peers, and to anyone who is interested in performance.

Contributions by Jean-Marc Adolphe, Preethi Athreya, Mariana Tengner Barros, Sandra Blatterer, Esther Boldt, Márcio Kerber Canabarro, Varinia Canto Vila, Descha Daemgen, Jorge De Hoyos, Igor Dobricic, Brendan Dougherty, Doris Dziersk, Tim Etchells, Moriah Evans, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Jule Flierl, Alain Franco, Davis Freeman, Ami Garmon, Philipp Gehmacher, Jared Gradinger, Ezra Green, Claudia Hill, Maija Hirvanen, Elise Misao Hunchuck, Astrid Kaminski, Kiraṇ Kumār, Göksu Kunak, André Lepecki & Eleonora Fabiano, Jean-Paul Lespagnard, Marc Lohr, Matthias Mohr, Anne-Françoise Moyson, Anja Müller, Kotomi Nishiwaki, Jeroen Peeters, Alejandro Penagos, Léa Poiré, Leyla Postalcıoğlu, Ana Rocha, Tian Rotteveel, Hahn Rowe, Isabela Fernandes Santana, Maria F. Scaroni, Bernd M. Scherer, Kerstin Schroth, Gerald Siegmund, Charlotte Simon, Mieko Suzuki, Claire Vivianne Sobottke, Poorna Swami, Meg Stuart, Margarita Tsomou, Kristof Van Boven, Elke Van Campenhout, Myriam Van Imschoot, Jeroen Versteele, Doug Weiss, Stefanie Wenner, Jozef Wouters, John Zwaenepoel.

Moments Before the Wind is a heterogeneous collection of notes on scenography that offers a glimpse into the poetics and artistic practice of Jozef Wouters. These reflections on space, scenography, art making and institutional critique have developed over the years as they were written out loud in various contexts. Now settling on the page among built and unbuilt spaces, they’re an invitation to the reader to think along or against, and think up space for oneself. Edited by Jeroen Peeters; graphic design by Filiep Tacq.

Jozef Wouters is a scenographer and theatre maker based in Brussels, who develops work in collaboration with his Decoratelier. Decoratelier is also a workplace for set designers and artists, and provides room for cross-disciplinary ventures and social experiment.

17 Mouvements collects traces of a project that Decoratelier - the workspace and arts platform of Jozef Wouters - did in the fall of 2022 around the ‘5 blocs’ area in Brussels (Rempart Des Moines/Papenvest).

When Nuit Blanche invited them to build a gym, Camille Thiry and other Decoratelier associates did not want to design another generic muscle cage. Together with the neighbourhoods inhabitants, they built 17 distinct movement spaces, each tailor-made to an individual’s size, needs, dreams and aches. The gym equipment has meanwhile been removed from public space, but this eponymous book (ed. by Jozef Wouters) combines notes and reflections (language: French) by Camille with beautiful photography by Enzo Smits, documenting the ingenious and unique negotiations that were a part of this collaboration.

A performance text by Jozef Wouters, The Soft Layer traces and proposes visions and words that enfold the historic building of Dar Bairam Turki in Tunis like a cloak. How can we imagine possible futures for such a place and the community inhabiting it, beyond nostalgia and the spectres of the past? Several voices muse in three languages (Tunisian, French and English) on renovation and history, destruction and cleansing, the limits of science-fiction and the soothing quality of aloe vera.

Published by Varamo Press in the essay series Gestures
First edition May 2022
48 pages, 11.0 x 16.5 cm, sewn perfect binding
ISBN 978-82-691492-4-1

Schismatics consists of 10 short stories, in a fictitious way dealing with forgotten historical personas. Among them, artist Goda Palekaitė includes Mary Anning –– an amateur discoverer of dinosaurs, Emanuel Swedenborg –– a mystic who empirically explored the architecture of heaven, and Essad Bey –– a Jewish-Muslim writer and orientalist. Here their lives are revived and balance between the lines of history and story.

The book fuses elements of fiction, academic writing, and artistic research, and intertwines with rumors, forgeries, and inventions. Previously, its characters and narratives have already appeared in Palekaitė’s performances and installations, which are presented in the middle of this bilingual edition. In the introductory essay, Valerio Del Baglivo analyses the author’s exploration of facts and fiction, the mechanisms of knowledge production, and the trans-chronological perception of time. At the end of the book, Monika Lipšic ‘Riddle’ reflects on a ‘schismatic poetics’. 

Goda Palekaitė is a contemporary artist and researcher whose work combines visual, literary, performative, and anthropological practices. Exploring the politics of historical narratives, the agency of dreams and collective imagination, and social conditions of creativity, her work evolves around long-term projects that manifest as performances, scenographies, installations, and texts. Her performances, solo and group shows are being presented internationally. In 2019 Goda Palekaitė received The Golden Stage Cross and the Young Artist’s Prize for her artistic contributions across disciplines.

Published September 2020

Un essai consacré au travail de la chorégraphe et danseuse Jennifer Lacey et de la plasticienne et scénographe Nadia Lauro, qui rend compte de l'univers visuel des deux artistes au travers de nombreuses illustrations.

Dans cet essai, Alexandra Baudelot s'attache à saisir l'ensemble des œuvres co-écrites par la chorégraphe Jennifer Lacey et la plasticienne et scénographe Nadia Lauro, en observant de quelle manière elles s'architecturent les unes aux autres pour constituer des extensions inédites d'une forme artistique vers une autre.

Elle les observe à la manière de parcours envisagés comme des supports d'expériences cherchant à déborder constamment ses propres cadres de représentation. Ceci afin de saisir les politiques mises en jeu pour penser le corps, sa place dans un environnement fictif ou quotidien, son impact dans les enjeux chorégraphiques contemporains et ses liens avec notre époque.

L'espace de cet essai se prête également à l'univers visuel des deux artistes qui se livrent ici à un jeu de construction entre l'exploration d'images d'archive, de déclinaisons de projets inédits et périphériques aux pièces publiques, d'illustrations, et d'exposition d'un portfolio de dessins.

Originaire de New York, la chorégraphe et danseuse Jennifer Lacey est établie à Paris. Depuis 1991, elle a développé son propre travail chorégraphique qui a été présenté aux États-Unis (P.S. 122, The Kitchen) et en Europe (Klapstuk Festival, Vienna Festival, Danças na Cidade, Biennale d'art contemporain de Lyon, Big Torino). Depuis qu'elle réside en France, elle a créé et présenté plusieurs œuvres : $Shot (Lacey / Lauro / Parkins / Cornell), Châteaux of France no. 2 et no. 3, un projet conçu en collaboration avec Nadia Lauro, et Prodwhee!, une série de courts modules. En 2002, elle a été accueillie en résidence aux Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers. Jennifer Lacey a collaboré à différents projets avec de nombreux artistes : Loïc Touzé, Boris Charmatz, Emmanuelle Huynh, Benoît Lachambre, Catherine Contour et Latifa Laâbissi. Elle développe actuellement ses créations au sein de l'association Megagloss.

Nadia Lauro est artiste visuelle et scénographe basée à Paris. Elle développe son travail dans divers contextes et conçoit des environnements, des installations visuelles et des costumes pour différents projets chorégraphiques. Outre Jennifer Lacey, elle collabore notamment avec les chorégraphes Ami Garmon, Vera Montero, Benoît Lachambre, Frans Poelstra, Barbara Kraus, figures de la danse contemporaine en Europe. En 1998, elle fonde avec l'architecte paysagiste Laurence Crémel l'association Squash Cake Bureau – scénographie et paysage au sein de laquelle elle conçoit des installations paysagères et du mobilier urbain. Elle a également créé la scénographie de plusieurs défilés de mode.

Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine Appendix #3 Orality includes contributions by Simon Asencio, Bruno De Wachter, Peter Szendy, Clara Amaral, Itziar Okariz, Jude Joseph, Léa Poiré and Mette Edvardsen.

Time has The Appendixes #1–4 is an editorial series by Mette Edvardsen, Léa Poiré and Victoria Pérez Royo that developed out of the project Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine. For a two-year residency at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers* (2022–23), they came together as a small work group, shaping the work process, hosting presentation formats and making this publication series on paper as four cahiers.

The cahiers comprise a collection of commissioned texts and contributions created for this context, selected documents and traces from work sessions and encounters organized during their residency, texts read together and republished for this occasion, a collection of references, notes in progress, unfinished thoughts and loose fragments – on paper, between pages.

The Appendixes are organized around four themes: (1) The gesture of writing, (2) How to organize a library, (3) Orality and (4) Translation. In addition to being published on paper, the editorial series also consisted of other formats of presentations, exchanges and meetings organized as workshops, fieldwork, performances, conferences, collective readings and oral publications, taking place during their residency at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers and in the vicinity.

The Appendixes is the work that continues, material that adds on, some of it perhaps too long or too detailed, unfit or unfinished. The four themes that their research is formulated around originate in specific experiences and questions from the practices of Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine (2010 – ongoing), and also the large publication on the project ‘A book on reading, writing, memory and forgetting in a library of living books’ (2019). The research was both a means of exploring these themes in greater depth and also of bringing them into contact with other artists and researchers working on similar or related subjects. The Appendixes offered them both the contexts and the pretexts for things to happen (in time, in space, on paper).

The Appendixes #1–4, published in these cahiers, do not present an overview or a summary of all of the activities and presentations that took place during the two years at Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. What these cahiers offer is a space in which to hold some thoughts together and to share them in this form. It is one more step along the way, extending the research and work already begun and that will now continue.

Visit [country] is an artist’s book that brings together texts taken word for word from official government tourism websites and state-produced promotional videos from every UN-recognized country in the world. Stripped of the usual accompanying imagery and inspirational music, what becomes clear is how tourism feeds on — and is fuelled by — nationalism, chauvinism, and the invention of identity.

Much like a “choose your own adventure” book, the reader is guided by a series of questions that connect one country to another through recurring ideas and clichés, and must decide whether to visit the destination with “the best food”, “the most beautiful women”, “the friendliest people”, or “the most authentic history”. The book also includes an extensive concept index that maps the thematic and linguistic patterns linking the nations’ self-descriptions. It is a journey where every country is the best.

The project grows out of The Complete National Anthems of the World, a durational performance first presented in 2023, and stands as a parallel, autonomous, yet complementary work.