Working Title Platform #06: work in progress

(75 Watt)

The biannual Working Title Platform mini-festival presents nine events at the Kaaistudios and in the Brigittines. The work-in-progress performances, installations, and talks are the fruit of workspacebrussels residencies. “The artists believe it is of the utmost importance to get gut reactions from the audience.”

The biannual mini-festival is now on its sixth edition. Says artistic coordinator Charlotte Vandevyver: “I want to stress that we are not presenting premières, but work in progress, installations, and talks. We mainly attract an audience of professionals and of people who go to a lot of live performances. The conversations afterwards, our biannual publication, and the convivial atmosphere make it a multi-layered event. It is also a barometer of what is going on in the residencies at the moment.”
Between 13 and 15 June, at the Brigittines and the Kaaistudios, nine presentations will be repeated a number of times. It is noticeable that the artists often work in a site-specific way, in very diverse media, with a lot of sound in particular. Says Vandevyver: “The location of the Brigittines inspires them. The Sonic Theatres collective, for example, made up of two dancers and a sound artist, are working on a sound performance that takes place both indoors and outside. They explore the building and the surroundings of the Brigittines with the help of binaural headphones, a recording technology that picks up sound like human hearing does. As a spectator you hear, as it were, through the ears of the performer – a surprising experience. Niko Hafkenscheid will appear in the chapel. He is constructing a sound installation, on the basis of the adjacent bronze clock, that raises questions about the interaction between visual image, music, architecture, live performance, and the audience.”
“The Thing with a Hook is the first collaborative project involving the choreographer and dancer Salka Rosengren and the sculptor Nicholas Hoffman. Their performance interprets the audience as a score by magnifying what is present in the space.”

Loyal partners
Working Title Platform is a workspacebrussels project. “For us,” explains Vandevyver, “the residencies are at the heart of things. Every year we support about 50 artists and collectives, both from Belgium and from abroad. The average residency – often it goes from pure research to the first steps in creating a work – lasts for three weeks. Some people come back a few times. In Brussels we have four trusty partners: the Kaaitheater, the Brigittines, and the Rosas and Ultima Vez companies. Their infrastructure allows the residents to work in professional spaces with basic technical support. We provide financial support for half of our residents, which is often the initial impulse towards creating their work. Workspacebrussels pays a lot of attention to help with content, planning the steps to be taken, and the search for other partners and residencies. Because residencies are often pretty invisible and artists want to test their work on an audience, we go public twice a year with the Working Title Platform.”
“In close consultation with the artists in residency, we decide what is suitable for an audience. For the artists, the audience’s opinion is really important. For them, gut reactions and experiences are just as valid as the opinions of theatre people and professionals.”

Working Title Platform #06 • 13 > 15/6, Kaaistudio’s, Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van Vaakstraat 81 rue Notre-Dame du Sommeil, Brussel/Bruxelles, Les Brigittines, Korte Brigittinenstraat 1 Petite rue des Brigittines, Brussel/Bruxelles, www.workspacebrussels.be