Dag 1 :: 25-03-2008 :: day 1

Video impressie onderzoek van de ruimte:

Video impression checking out location:

Video impressie van het brainstormen over concept:

Video impression brainstorming about the concept:

The first afternoon, after the general introduction of the Topicweek, students of group 20 met at their location. It was very cold and damp and most of the students did not know eachother, so to start was not easy, but after Bert managed to get the two oil-heaters working and the preparation of some coffee and thee, the space seemed more inviting.

The inspirator proposed an idea to speed up the introduction process: team up three persons of various art faculties in small groups, with roles as interviewer, someone who is being interviewed and an observer. In 10 minutes each person plays his part untill everyone is interviewed about a numer of issues. After that each person needs to introduce another person to the complete group. The focus of this introduction must be something one notices about the other person, which is either identical to or the complete opposite of ones own personal ideas and goals within this project. The emphasis was on a first exploration of possibilities to colaborate and an inventarisation of first drafts of possible concepts.

After that a brief introduction of the theme of Odysseus and the goals for this project followed: the emphasis on working together as a team and trying to explore the bounderies of your capabilities in thinking conceptually as wel as working interdisciplinairy. Also some pracical tasks were devided among the students such as book keeping and production.

After a short break the group picked up on the ideas and goals mentioned during their introduction. Based on remarks people made earlier about personal goals and ideas of other persons, in, what seemed like a few moments, the outlines of a concept where set. After intensive brainstorming, groep 20 came up with a cunning concept with some interesting details of possible elements.

Without any form of discussion really and very quickly, the group decided to go towards a theatrical set up, using elements of the Greek tragedie like the choir. They wanted and to work with actors, but more like personifications of ideas, ideals and situations rather than litterally representing the story.The choice for this theatrical set up also had to do with the fact that various students decided to take the challenge the inspirator set for them, to go to the limits or rather cross the borders of their discipline. Even the visual artists choose for that reasons not to solely concentrate on visual arts concepts but also (and one even mainly) to go into dance, perform and singing.

Since the number of performing artists (in the broadest sense of the word) within this group was much higher than visual arts, the decission to develop a performance might be not so surprising: the fact that a student of Circus Art spontaniously offered to dive into dance theatre and acting, and that dancers were willing to sing a capella was!

During the presentation of concepts of all groups at night group 20 could already produce a more or less outlined concept, which was introduced by Lucas Wiesner, who proved himself, through his frank introduction, as the perfect Odysseus, he later turned out to be.

Summary of introduction by Lucas Wiesner:

"We work in the KetelHuis Deprez, which was built in 1878 and first used as a steamengine factory.
Of course, this building has a distinct and strong atmosphere. Our working process started with brainstorming and we agreed that we were to use the unique atmosphere of this building as much as possible, visually as well as acoustically.

"Acoustically we will 'use the building as an instrument', visually we will give a lot of importance to the material and structure of the building and we will use video projections. And, the piece is going to be 'interactive'.

"We see the building as the head, the mind of Odysseus: we will highlight the psychological aspects of his adventures and present the Odyssee as a "psychological" journey. That means, the audience will experience Oddyseus rather as a 'moved' than a 'moving' subject.

Foto impressies van de locatie:

Foto impressions of the location: