Double Lives

During the Periferia Festival 2019, I presented a lecture performance in which I reactivated the Zenne Atlas (a work that I created in 2015) and talked about the river as fringe and backside of the city and society. The presentation took place in a beautiful orchard close to the farm and artist studio of painter Felix De Boeck (1898 – 1995), in Drogenbos.

The work consists of a lecture (about 45 minutes) performed around a wooden table (roughly 400 x 100 cm) in the form of a river meander on which the Zenne Atlas is presented. People could gather around the table while I talked about a river story by Tjalie Robinson, a Dutch-Indies writer; the history of the Zenne in the city of Brussels; ideas on hygiene and urbanism; and the figure of Hendrik Freerk Tillema, a pharmacist, hygienist and philanthropist who made a fortune in the East Indies by bottling and selling his Hygeia mineral water.

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Installation and lecture performance at Periferia Festival 2019 in Drogenbos.