Thomas Ryckewaert
wpZimmer resident in 2018
Thomas studied biology and philosophy at the KULeuven and dramatic arts at the theatre academy Dora van der Groen. Thomas’ work balances on the borders between theatre, dance and installation. In his recent productions he explores the dramatic potential of everyday actions. His work has been described as poetical, radical, visual and ritual. As a freelance actor he frequently works for theatre, film and television.
projects
Golem
A group of researchers is eager to carry out what seems to be a groundbreaking experiment. They are determined to find the holy grail of science: immortality. But at a certain point in the progress, the attempt to crack the code of life is taking over there own lives. They start to see monsters in objects, in the other, in themselves…
In Golem, Thomas Ryckewaert thematises Maimonides and homunculus, two characters from a 14th century Jewish legend. In this legend, the scholar Maimonides is in search of the secret of all creation in order to defeat death. Golem is a moving performance dealing with juxtapositions such as creation and destruction, reason and fear. A stilled, filmic imagery commingles contemporary scientists with ancient human ambition. The longing to create an eternal life is associated with a fear of something that overrules us. It is a theme that inspires people since the beginning of mankind: from the mythic Golem about Frankenstein to artificial intelligence.
credits
Script & direction: Thomas Ryckewaert
Cast: Efrat Galai, Rosie Sommers, Jef Stevens, Kurt Vandendriessche
Scenography: Erki De Vries
Light design: Giacomo Gorini
Sound design: Senjan Jansen
Costume design: Andrea Kränzlin
Direction assistant: Sibran Sampers
Scenography assistant: Maria Anastasiou
Production: Worff vzw/Hiros
Coproduction: deSingel, Kaaitheater, Vooruit, TAKT Dommelhof, Platform 0090
In association with BUDA, wpZimmer
With the support of the city of Antwerp
Move 37
In 2016 AlphaGo, a deep neural network developed by Google’s Deepmind, challenges the world champion of Go, Lee Sedol. Go is the oldest board game in the world and despite its simple appearance, the number of possible board positions in a Go game exceeds the amount of atoms in the universe. It is won by the presumed exclusively human skills of intuition and creativity, so no one expects a computer to be able to beat a human player. But the implausible happens: AlphaGo beats Sedol 4 – 1 and hits the front page of Nature.
AlphaGo’s 37th move in the second game is crucial and hits like a bomb. The computer comes up with a solution no human being could have imagined, Sedol leaves his chair and returns pale as a ghost. The live commentators fall silent and the image seems to freeze. In this moment of defeat and wonder the radical weirdness of AI stares us in the face: highly intelligent, creative but also completely alien.
In ‘Move 37’, Thomas Ryckewaert takes this moment as the starting point for a lecture performance about phenomena that are beyond human imagination. With cosmologist Thomas Hertog he presents an unusual lecture performance on the radically weird. They join on a trip through the dark, cool horror of the intelligent machine, the beauty of fading conventions on what is human at all, through time and space warped in black holes. In this lecture performance nothing is what it seems, human becomes alien, the computer intuitive, perception is deceived and the robot dreams.
credits
Directed by Thomas Ryckewaert
Cast: Thomas Hertog, Thomas Ryckewaert
Dramaturgy: Kristof Van Baarle
Scenography: Erki De Vries
Light: Jürgen Deblonde
Video: Paul Van Caudenberg
Assistant Director: Sibran Sampers
Internship: Margarida Ramalhete
Production assistant: Charlotte Cornelissen
Management: Karen Feys
Coproducers: Platform 0090, Institute for Theoretical Physics (KULeuven), deSingel, Internationale Kunstcampus, Het Laatste Bedrijf
In cooperation with: wpZimmer, BUDA
With the support of the Belgian Federal Government Tax Shelter system, Gallop Taks Shelter and the Flemish Government