tool, but something that moves us, unsettles us, or prompts us to act? What if a puppet looks back at us, a robot hesitates, or a softly moving object suddenly seems to call for our care? This evening brings together two artists who give objects a sense of life. Not as perfect machines, but as vulnerable, strange, and sometimes deeply moving beings. Artist-researcher Laura Vandewynckel works at the intersection of film, theatre, and visual arts. The Parliament of the Pitiful is the culmination of her doctoral research at RITCS School of Arts and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). In this exhibition, she brings together mechanical puppets, robots, and kinetic sculptures. Her work draws on stories of scapegoats, both ancient and contemporary, but turns the perspective around. It is not the majority that speaks, but those who are usually denied a voice: the scapegoat, the animal, space debris, or another excluded being. Ugo Dehaes also explores moving bodies, but from the perspective of dance. After working with dancers for twenty years, he began building robots. He describes himself as a choreographer of things. In Soft Tissue, created in collaboration with VUB, Dehaes combines dance, technology, puppetry, and humour. As the audience sits around a large table, they watch from close by as soft robots move, search, fail, and perhaps even reach out to touch us. Together, these two artists reveal a different side of technology. The focus is not on the intelligent or efficient machine, but on the moment when an object acquires a presence of its own and seems to ask something of us in return.
What if could move us? @ FTI FESTIVAL
Location: Boulevard de la Plaine, 2, 1050 Ixelles
