Oef!

is a visual performance for 4+

in which one person

another person

and a mystery

encounters.

To kill time and escape boredom, they teach each other words, play out their fantasies with images and search for meaning. Sometimes bored anyway, they fiddle and try on, thinking in meandering languages and constructions.

Do they really understand each other? Can they trust each other to sail into the sea together?

Oef! lasts about 35' and afterwards there is some time for the audience to swim freely on the stage around and about the installation.

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With Oef! the team explores how to make language and mutual understanding tangible.

Language is wonderful. Language is terrible. Language helps us see and navigate the world. But language is also matter in itself, rooted in the world,  and when we think about language, we have to use language for the purpose. Language is also always languages, even within the same language, because we play different roles and constantly switch in language use, even within the same sentence. Comme ça.

We exchange ideas and pass on knowledge through language. Language shapes feelings (just think of declarations of love and baby language). Language builds the politics that describes our entire work and life from cradle to grave: think of laws, instructions, promises, etc.

Language is a rain, a forest, a mountain of poetry and language is also manipulation, abuse of power, exclusion. And sometimes language is emptied by the negligence of daily habits and then it means nothing anymore. Language users often risk falling into the abyss of incomprehension. One word can suffice.

Thud.

—

concept, director Enrica Camporesi concept, play Line Mertens, Andreia Rodrigues space, scenography Bert Serneels costume Elif Korkmaz production Robin Appels, Valerie De Visscher thanks to Mesut Arslan (inside out), Koen Haagdorens (outside in)

production Platform 0090 with the support of C-TAKT, wpZimmer en hetpaleis

Oef! builds on the material explored during Oertaal: oefeningen