conversations in ten questions 55: Silke Huysmans & Hannes Dereere
©Bart Dewaele
If there is such a thing, probably it lies in people being together, exchanging thoughts and images, challenging ideas and practicing new & other ways of looking at the world. A place to briefly escape, and experience the world in a different way.
Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?
Yes, and no. No, because it would be silly to think theatre can change the world. However, people will. And those people can visit a theatre building. So theatre for us is one way - among many others - to pull at the fabric of collective consciousness. To interact with the way people look at and interpret the world around them. So step by step, yes.
When you are working on a piece, what sources inspire you?
The main source of inspiration is the people we talked to during our research, and the conversations we had. Apart from that we don’t really watch a lot of other shows or films, or visit exhibitions while we are working on a piece because we want to stay focused on our own work. We do listen to music a lot. Our latest piece ‘Out of the Blue’ ends with a piano piece by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou called “The Song of the Sea”. We find it very beautiful.
When do you decide to give a title to a piece you are working on if it already does not have one?
When theatres want to print their brochures, and we still don’t have a title. Somewhere around that time. We are always very late with titles.
Is there any artist or person whom you think influenced your art most? And if there is such an artist or person, who would that be?
Many people, but not any one person in particular.
When you consider the current state of the world in every sense, what is the most important and urgent issue for you as an artist?
To not continue with business as usual, but be aware that the world that surrounds us is yearning loudly for things to change. For us this is the most urgent issue to address as an artist on many levels: ecological, economical, social, post-colonial etc.
What are the advantages and challenges and of working as a duo?
The advantage is that we know each other really well, and we don’t need a lot of words to feel what the other person feels / think what the other person thinks. We are also compatible as a duo. So if one of us is less good in something, usually the other person is a bit better at it. The challenge is that you always share everything: when something is going good, you’re both happy; but when something is going bad, you’re both down and cannot count on the other to motivate you since you’re both going through the same thing.
What triggered your interest in focusing on mining and excavation for your trilogy, one of which is the Pleasant Island?
Silke grew up in a big mining region in the South of Brazil. We started working around mining, after a big mining dam burst and destroyed several villages close to her childhood home. This led to our first piece ‘Mining Stories’ in which we talked to many people affected, and continued in a more long term research around mining and resources of which ‘Pleasant Island’ is a part.
Your works require a field study / research phase, could you tell us a bit about how you prepare for this phase and how it usually develops?
The field research is the part of our creation process that takes the most time. This is why we don’t make a new performance every year. It requires a lot of preparation, both in getting to know more about the subject and reaching out to people for interviews. It’s a lot of organising as well. Only when we feel that the research is done, we take the first steps to think about how we will translate it artistically to a theatre stage. So the research always comes before we even enter a theatre space.
Could tell us a bit about your future projects?
We don’t have any future projects in line at the moment, but we’ve just finished a new project called ‘Out of the Blue’ which we are touring. In this piece, we look closer at the future of mining. More specifically, we focus on a company from Belgium - the country where we live and work - that is currently one of the world leaders in the exploration of deep sea mining: a new form of mining that wants to extract metals in the deep sea. The industry claims they are needed to make batteries for the green transition (eg. windmills and electric cars) but in doing so risks the destruction of one of the last untouched places in the world. This piece is the final part of our trilogy and long-term research around mining and resources.
[The Turkish version of this conversation was published in unlimited.]
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