Into the Big World
© David Weber-Krebs

PROJECT

Into the Big World

From the 18th until the 31st of August 2014 David Weber-Krebs works in wpZimmer on his new creation Into the Big World. The première will take place on the 4th of November in Stuk in Leuven.

In Into the Big World we experience a world where everything is observed, named, categorised and therefore domesticated. We become acquainted with different species, subspecies, families, genera and taxonomies. We get to know all the plants on the Island of Jamaica, the 24 species of short-tailed crabs in the Red Sea and the hermaphrodite aquatic plant known as water-lily. Gradually however knowledge becomes more complex as the world does not longer present itself as a stable unity but instead as a system where everything is connected to everything.

Into the Big World places the eighteenth century encyclopedic project as the seed of Modernity. A worldview where the world was seen as a whole that needed to be known through all its aspects and conquered; a time away from the obscure dogmas of religion and autocracy towards the lights of knowledge, positive sciences and democracy. Where has this worldview brought us? Can we still observe the world from a distance, when we are its main agents of transformation?

Première STUK kunstencentrum 4th, november 2014

David Weber-Krebs

David Weber-Krebs (BE/D) is an artist and a researcher based in Brussels. Departing from a specific context, David develops experimental processes, that question and challenge the traditional relationship between the work of art and its public, more specifically in the realm of performance and theatre. He creates situations engaging the spectator in a complex dispositive between getting absorbed or merging with an art piece and keeping his critical distance towards it. Be it by staging actors (Into The Big World), a donkey (Balthazar), a minimalist sculpture (Performance, Robert Morris revisited) or a public space (Miniature), the form is ever reduced to its simplest expression. It becomes like a projection screen, inviting the spectator into a mode of active contemplation where meaning is not given but produced by the spectator.

Credits

Concept, direction, text: David Weber-KrebsPerformance: Katja Dreyer, Noha RamadanLight design: Jan FedingerPrologue, room tones: Peter LenaertsDramaturgy: Jonas RutgeertsDramaturgy and research: Marie Urban Stage: Lotte BettingAdvice: Lars KwakkenbosProduction: Daria BubaloDesign publication: Stéphanie DesmadrylManagement: Ingrid VrankenDistribution: BoldWith special thanks to: Amsterdams funds for the arts, Anne Breure, Niki Hadikoesoemo, Maximilian Haas, Sandra Van der Hel, Olivier De Laveleye, Jan-Philipp Possmann, Jean-Baptiste Van Zeebroeck, Fridolin Weber-Krebs, Emily WiliamsAn infinite endings production in co-production with : kaaitheater, stuk and wp zimmerWith the support of: the flemish community, pianofabriek kunstenwerkplaats and kunstencentrum BUDA.