Choreographer Benjamin Vandewalle sees trains as huge analogue cameras that film the landscape they move through. In our era of portable devices, these ongoing landscape films remain ever more often unnoticed. For EUROPALIA, Vandewalle designed four periscopic devices that offer different perspectives on the landscape passing by. With these analogue machines made out of wood and mirrors, he choreographs the spectator’s gaze rather than trying to choreograph what is seen. Flipping your body upside down, making you dive into a blurred field of colour, or making you witness the dancing cables above you.
Benjamin Vandewalle studied at the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp and graduated from P.A.R.T.S., Brussels in 2006. Since the beginning, a central theme in his work has been 'perception'. He creates movement — not only in the performer’s body but also in that of the spectator. His work is about sharing new experiences and perspectives with a large audience. For the performances Birdwatching (2009) and One/Zero (2011), he worked closely with visual artist and scenographer Erki De Vries. In 2012, he stepped out of the black box and into the public space.
His mobile performance Birdwatching 4x4 was a festival favourite amongst audience and critics and toured for several seasons. Later on, he created new works for the black box such as point of view (2013) and Commonground with platform-K (2018), which got selected for the Theaterfestival. Another work that he created is HEAR (2016), which is a sound choreography performed by a choir of 30 volunteers for a blind-folded audience. Right now, Benjamin Vandewalle is touring with his traveling art-fair called Studio Cité (2019), which is a collection of 8 performative installations for the public space that he has been creating the past 6 years.
Practical information
07 05 22
IC 530: 08:56: departure in Brussels-Central - 10:30: arrival in Ostend
IC 511: 11:17: departure in Ostend - 14:43: arrival in Eupen
IC538: 15:17: departure in Eupen - 16:56: arrival in Brussels-Central
Credits
Concept and creation: Benjamin Vandewalle
Fabrication: Étienne Pinsky
Technical support: Gert Aartsen
Music: Yoann Durant
Coproduction: EUROPALIA TRAINS & TRACKS, SoAP Maastricht
Executive production: Caravan Production Brussels
Interview
Both the performance Derailed and the installation Off-track fit the festival’s theme
perfectly. Can you elaborate on that?
Unconsciously, a daily choreography occurs in a station. Derailed is an artistic answer to break that pattern and even derail it. Off-track reflects the train’s potential as an installation: passengers take their places in a gigantic camera that allows them to observe the landscape from their individual perspectives.
What associations does the ‘train’ evoke in you?
The train is also an installation, a kind of enlarged camera obscura. In addition, time stands still. It’s an in-between space.
With Derailed you perform in public space. What’s the appeal?
It offers the possibility of creating a direct but unexpected effect. You reach people from different social strata, some of whom know nothing about contemporary art. Moreover, this kind of interaction deserves a place in our society. At this moment, I even believe it’s my role as an artist: to unfreeze public space after the corona crisis.
Off-track plays with people’s perceptions, why the interest?
We perceive life from our own perspective, but I strongly believe that it’s good to show that different realities exist side by side. It can even be refreshing to turn our day-to-day view of reality upside down for a moment or create an ‘overview effect’. You will also find a connection to dance in all my installations. It’s always about physicality, about the connections between the spiritual and the physical.