 talks here at the Modney Siegel Theatre Center, the Graduate Center CUNY of the City University of New York, we are Manhattan, and it's a Memorial Day Monday, a Memorial Day and Memorial Day weekends are important markers in the life of everyone in America, but also of a city. It is when people pack their cars and if they have any and go out for the first time to the houses, the country houses, there's some kind of early hints of summer in the air and that the cold, especially harsh winter months that we often do experience in New York are behind us and that better things are coming. This, of course, is a Memorial Day weekend to remember. And next to all the wars that have fought, of life's loss, there are lots of them, many, many a fight for freedom and for liberty and for making the world a better place. And this is a weekend we'll be remembered. Most probably it's the Corona Memorial Day weekend and it's still a devastating state here in the United States, close to 100,000 deaths, official ones. So we don't really know how the real numbers are, most probably double or two or three times more when nobody will really know. And we don't really know what will happen there. Outlooks in Latin America are grim, Brazil and other Argentina, they're just getting to hit. There's so many connections to the city here in New York where four or five million people take a subway every day and it's a busy town where people get together and enjoy company, community, talking, singing. I think it's a town of theater and life and everything is closed. The restaurants were closed, I think the rest of America perhaps is opening up a little bit more, we will see what it will bring and they're dangerous, but especially for us who are working in the field of theater and performance and the audiences who are listening to us, people who go to theater and just say, something has been taken away, we are confined to our small spaces, the world has gotten smaller, smaller in a sense that we can talk to Chris now today in Belgium, to Hong Kong or South Africa, but also smaller where we are. And we all have closer to ourselves, we are forced to ask existential questions. What is life about? What does it mean? What does art comes in? What is, what we really want to do? If there ever was something we wanted to do or think about, now is the time. Not now, never will be something take place and perhaps it is a time to think about changing. Forms that do not work have to go. New forms, whether it's in government, whether it's in community or whether it's in the arts, you know, if they should, we need change as it becomes obviously clear. Things are not working, which a checkmate quoted a friend of his who said it's a nuclear reactor exploding. The top has been blown up and we look at it. Everything is exposed, it's closer. And we need in these times to hear from artists, great artists, especially artists who have been closer. Of course, to the search for meaning of life, to their experience, their research, we are participating in what it really means to be alive when a stone is a stone and black is black with love, it's love and death, it's death. And artists have been on the right side of history, the right side of justice, but also always have a deeper inside and often anticipate a future. One of those great artists, contemporary artists on this planet Earth, that's flying through the universe. As someone said in our Segal talks, those 10 meters above us and the 10 meter below us, these 20 meters that really, really matter. And in those 20 meters, he has been someone who really was asking questions about theater performance and is looking for new forms and has found new forms. Christopher Donk, welcome first. Thank you for joining us. He's a visual artist. He studied also architecture and was close to theater and he operates out of Brussels. He has a company, the two dogs company in Brussels. And I hope we will get a little insight in his work. Many of you might know about him, others might not know about him yet. I think he's supposed to come to Skirbel at a certain point in NYU. So Chris is a permanent feature on many, many festivals in Europe and all the interesting places. So Chris, I apologize for speaking too long and too much. The entire hour is really about listening though. This will be the most I will be talking, I hope. And first of all, really, really welcome. Thank you for taking time out and for talking to us. Where are you now? What time is it? It's now Brussels, around six, sun is shining. This is a bit like the weather report of David Lings. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's a bit of wind and if not, there's a bit of a disease going on. If not, all of us, we are all fine, I guess. Where are you at Brussels and what neighborhood and where's your company located and all that? My company was located in the Kaiser Theater. That's one of the main theaters in Brussels. There we have a residency. So you have an office space and your own rehearsal space there or? Yeah, and next to it, I have a small rehearsal space. What, small? It is 100 square meters just to rehearse and then that's quite something that the rent here is still affordable somehow. So I've been lucky enough to have an atelier where you construct all the installations and I can do my work. And we are more or less five in the company for the moment. So the theater gives you an office and established theater says, we like you guys, he has an office, you work, you pay rent or it's. You know, rent, use their phone and that kind of stuff. Fantastic. So tell us, how is it in Brussels at the moment in Belgium, how is the Corona situation? In Belgium, well, we, it's, well, I think first of all, politically they did, first of all, something really interesting is that the biologist Mark van Rans, so he's kind of the main responsible and they gave most of the power just to him. They said, what do we have to do now? And we'll follow. So I thought that was a very interesting and courageous thing that the government did. And they really followed them. There was not so many discussions about what to do and what not to do. But we had no real government like Belgium never has a government. We have nine governments really, but that's the whole complexity. The regions, yeah. And regions and the whole explosion of governments. But so this idea to keep, to give the doctor a kind of carte blanche that he could decide almost everything was quite something. And also something that it was, it still goes on now, is that every morning at 11 o'clock, three doctors, three virologists, they announced all the figures and then it was very, very precise. They tried to name what is going on, how many casualties, how many disease. These kind of, they give a, it's not political. And that's what we forget sometimes is that of course, there is a policy behind a medical system, the European medical system is to save everybody. So it has a policy, there is a politic idea behind it. And that means saving people no matter what. So this is a, it's a, we didn't do, so and that's what Van Hans did. We were not in complete lockdown. We did it a bit the Belgian way or he did it a bit the Belgian way more responsible for yourself. But I guess we are, we, we, I think we avoided the big catastrophe. We didn't have Italy or these kind of enormous explosions of casualties. A strange thing here is that they count every, every casualty that is suspected. The corona related, they count with casualty. And that makes it sometimes top of the world that we didn't miss nobody. Even somebody who just died from normal disease. So that means that sometimes the figures go up but I have the impression that it's in the frame of being reasonable that we didn't have this enormous wave of problems. Incredible. So a virologist is acting as a president for a country that has no central government. Seems to be working the approaches, the opposite of Russia or perhaps but we also suspect a bit in the U.S. Instead of undercounting, it is over counting and just, I mean, what other numbers? More or less. Ooh, I didn't, I think there are 8,000 casualties but I'm not very sure. I don't know. I didn't know the figures by itself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still it's... Today, I think 27 people went into hospital today. Yeah. So I don't even know we have casualties. Something seems to be working as anybody has ever doubted why politics are of importance, why it's a significant that the form of government you had and the forms they choose to do, as you would say, try to fight for the life of everybody. It makes a difference. It's gigantic that we heard that from all our talks around the world, Thomas Oster, Oberender from Belgium, from Berlin yesterday, the day before also talked about that. He said, I'm kind of happy that we have this participatory democracy in Germany. We didn't feel it was imposed. There were discussions, things are working. I think we all are used to be so skeptical of governments. He also coming from the East, one who demonstrated us who helped to make the opening of the wall happen in 89, also a writer curator. And meanwhile here in America, I think we're numbers of 15% trust in government before even coronavirus. It's a shocking we have, 35 million people out of work, also only the official number, not the numbers, shadow numbers within four weeks. It's a shock in the system. A car has come to a halt, it's flipping over and we are still in the air, I think. And we don't know where we land, maybe on four wheels and it might go, but we don't know. Chris, you were such a significant worker in the field of the contemporary theater, your contributions towards use of language, images on stage, the mechanicals, the idea of the presence and the absence, objects. You have made such a contribution already and your work is still evolving, coming up. As an artist in that room where you are in now and Brussels, I looked at the calendar at your two docs company, it was super full in February and there's something in September. So how do you experience this? I think one of the, how do I really experience it is, I think Mr. Nick Cave wrote a beautiful letter and he said, well, the first days we, with the bad seats, with this group that is around him, they said, oh yeah, we're gonna make a quarantine CD and we're finally going to make this, the soundtrack for that movie and we're gonna do this and we're gonna do that, that was the first couple of weeks. And then they said, well, let's do nothing. And they didn't do anything, they're just waiting somehow in hibernation, that's what you feel. So the, I did do some things, I had my goals in the beginning, I said, okay, I didn't do classic gallery work and this is a time to think about things I've never thought. It's also, for example, Van Bendingen, a quite important philosopher here in Belgium. He said, well, this is the time to think thoughts you never dared to think because you have time to think them. There's no pressure. There's a little disadvantage of that idea is that you can go too far and go mad, but if you don't go mad, this is the time to think things that you never thought. There's no reason not to think things. So this is more or less the, so I'm also, everything just slowed down incredibly. I had a friend, we Skype every day and the first thing was, what did you do today? And it was quite fun because, well, I got up, I had some coffee and then I, nothing happened those days. Days and days of sheer nothingness. And it's interesting how a body reacts to that, how a mind reacts to that, everything slows down. But about all the shows being canceled and I think one, there's something new. So everything is insecure, as you just said. It's like a car, but we don't, but the main thing what is really new is that there's no security whatsoever, no certainty about next months, but nobody knows, not politicians, not nobody. I think that's something we really don't know, the idea that we can't plan anything. And this is, even if I talk now with my technicians or we try to plan things that are, I'm just gonna stop my mail, my apologies, there we are. You still hear me? Yes. Yep, perfect. So the, we are in full insecurity. We try to plan things, but we know that, oh, so full conversations then go, oh, we might play there and that we might do. And Chris, do we have an idea what we will do then? And yes, I've got an idea, shall we do it? Well, maybe yes, maybe not. So this is for me, one of the most striking new feelings that is coming towards us. There's no way of projecting ourselves in the future of understanding for the moment, trying to even understand the consequences. Economically, socially, politically, we can't see anything, it's just black. It's even more than ever the angel of history of Mr. Walter Benjamin, where we really are in unsecure times. And I think, I'm not in the position to project anything or try to read what will go on because I really feel like the fish in the water talking about water. And that's always a very difficult one. I read the newspapers and I think, well, all these analysis, they're nice, but tomorrow they can say something else because we don't know, but it's the we don't know thing that is for me the most impressive new feeling. This is, you can't, what will you do next year? Will you open? Will you not? It's so strange to have a school, for example, and you don't know how to organize lessons. It's just a, so this, I think this is, and probably the work that is produced at the moment will, if we look back to those works that are created now, they tell about confinement and they tell about things, but for the moment it's so difficult to read, it's impossible to read what is going on. And this impossibility is striking. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of, I think that's actually my, if you're on the, when we would compare it to the beginning of the Second World War, you have intellectuals all around Europe and artists and politicians and some surprising ones, they stayed and said, oh no, actually there's nothing, there's nothing really horrible going on and other ones just flee and made it. So I feel in the same kind of impossibility to read the world, it's of course impossible, I've never been able to read the world, but now it's almost a total blank. You can, I can only see what is going on and almost write it down as a documentary much more than giving form or giving an interpretation of what is going on, except for the insecurity. Yeah, I think you've discovered well that kind of warm blanket of civilization of Western, so the security is put away and the ice of civilization is a bit cracking. I mean, we still walk on it and but for the first time, perhaps at least in my lifetime also, we have that feeling that we do not know what might happen, what might happen, might not be good at all. Colleagues, we talk to, you know, whether they are from Palestine, Lebanon, Africa, or South Africa, they said, you know, you guys now have a slice of our daily existence, 400,000 people die of malaria each year don't even have the money for vaccinations or Hong Kong colleagues that, you know, the real fight is working coming towards us and we just learned how that will be. So the corona is not the real thing, the corona fight on the Ukraine with a force in six years. On the other hand, we are experiencing this moment and we are struggling to make sense. You said, it is a time to think about what you have never thought about. What do you think about you haven't thought about? Oh, that's a dangerous question. No, it's exercises, it's the same thing as the book that is too large to read but you always push, say like, oh no, I'm not gonna do just 2,000 pages and suddenly you have time to sit down and think about them. And it's some installations I made a year ago, I made a piece called Detail. Detail is a 650 kilos heavy rock that is suspended, the little engine that is turning the rock around and the engine is connected to a, the electric motor is connected to a solar panel. And when the sun shines, it goes fast. When there's a cloud, it stops for a second, et cetera, et cetera, it's very, it's very close relationship with the sun or the elements outside. At night, it stops and in the morning, it starts to turn together with all the rest. So that was this piece, Detail. And then I never had time to really think about what this installation and the flaws and what it means and try to continue reflecting on one part of an installation and solar panels. So the basics of this installation was actually of Detail was to use energy as a organic form and not as a stable form. What I mean with that is all our machines, everything is made on a stable and stable platform. Energy basis, you have a solar panel or wind or even radioactivity, why not? But then it goes into a condensator or a battery and then stable energy comes out and this is what machines love. All our machines are made on this kind of stable feeding of electricity. But what if we take it as an organic form and use it as an insecure form also, it would be the same as the same, it would be the same as going to the supermarket and you don't find bananas because they're no bananas. They just didn't arrive. And it's this kind of insecurity or this taking it as it is, that I try to work on and try to understand what it is. What is it? This is the question. I remember I was in Cuba, I was with a group salsa, whatever, I can't play music, but I was with them, whatever. And when the electricity drops out, well, they just had to wait. And this is kind of very strange waiting time and we are in exactly the same position. There is this invoice, there's the waiting and being uncertain about the outcome. And I think that will be the new daily, yeah, this is our new thing and we have to deal with it. And about, well, yeah, the whole of Africa, Congo, Rwanda, in some places, they didn't, that AIDS didn't exist because, well, people got sick. And if you're 30, you die. So you didn't really have to take it, it was just another disease. And indeed now, we are, we're in this new thing and we have to deal with it. And the question is, what will it produce this insecurity? More extremism or more social behavior. But the outcome is, but the outcome is uncertain. It can go both ways for, it could go for the good, it could go for the bad. This is, yeah, for me, it's impossible to predict. I really can't say now, that's our specialty, I think, as human beings. We do things or there are things that come, that fall upon us. And actually it's impossible to announce how, what the outcome will come, how it will, how will we react. If somebody shoots at you, will you shoot back or will you hide? Well, it's only the moment itself that will, then you will see what you did. But during the point itself, it's something else that takes over. And that's the feel I have. I'm very afraid, of course, that we will have the wrong reaction. Knowing human beings a little bit, we will have some wrong reactions. But it might be good for us. That's the feel. The impossibility. And of course, I'm lucky that I have a substantial support of the government. So they're still right on the table. And again, already there, I have to admit that for a lot of people, I'm telling complete nonsense now. People, there are so many workers that go to work every day with a risk. Or lots and lots of artists who really fundamentally have no money anymore. So I can also only tell this nonsense. I just told to have time to think because there is a salary at the end of the month. But if not, that would be, if money would be an everyday issue, you don't have time to think what you would love to think. So there again, it becomes immediately very, very personal. And the situation I'm in at the moment. But I wouldn't have the pretension whatsoever to project this on the government. I wouldn't have this on so many other people. I wouldn't know what I had, if really going to work outside every day in the supermarket, that would be something, a completely different experience of what we are experiencing right now. And I think once you said that Planet Earth already is a Bosch-like help, it's something, isn't working, isn't right. What do you experience now? Do you see a strong connection to what you want to communicate, the meaning you create for your theater work, what you want to happen to the heads of the audiences? Well, I can't say, I told you so, this is stupid. Just do so, yeah, say it. No, it's, well, yes, of course, apocalypse. I don't believe in the apocalypse at all. I mean, I'm very sure. But ecological disaster, if you look at my last piece, something out of nothing, was based on the angel of history of Walter Benjamin, where if you could, again, this example of Jean-Paul van Bendingen, the philosopher. At one point, Christophe van Baal, my dramaturg who was also at the CUNY for some time, he asked, Mr. van Bendingen, he asked, well, now you're old enough and please tell us, what is changing in the world from your position as this kind of big question? And Mr. van Bendingen, he told something very beautiful. He said, well, it goes, I have an idea that we don't really change. It's the landscape that change. We manipulate the landscape while we're living, by pollution, by doing good, by doing bad. It doesn't really matter. It does matter, but we don't know what we're doing. We have an idea, but we'll do it. We will fly. We will, we will, we want to do progress. We want to invent things. We will do it. We want to invent things. We want to invent things. We want to invent things that are human kind. We can't invent. We can not invent nothing. We have to invent it. And, but the consequences of what we do in this, in our lifetime now, the consequences are for our children. And the generation. After that. So we're always in delay. We are doing something and the next generation will bear consequences. And that is by law. This is something that is out of the idea of it has nothing to do with hope or going good or going bad, that's just the law on how it is. We can see something, learning is a difficult thing, especially when it's generations, but we inherit the world that we're born in and we will manipulate it for our next. And if you look at, well, this is also what's where all environmentalists are having so many troubles on trying to predict something because actually damage done, it is already done. It was done 10 years, 20 or 30 or 40 years ago and now we just see consequences, but it's so extremely difficult to do something now that in two generations time, it will be better. And in this time, in this impossibility of there's this Bush kind of hell that we don't know what we're doing. So I don't think Bush has to do with horror and with, of course, there are all these pictures, but lots of characters in these Bush paintings are just bored. They, if you look at them well, there's no hardcore sex going on. They all just look at each other and they're just, so they just wait. It's much more Godot than it's, so if you try to, I tried always to look at what happened 10 years ago and try to see like G.J. Ballard, I really love in that sense the British writer who says he really tried to hit on the tectonic plates of society. I can't, and that is right as he was, but trying to understand these big movements and big consequences, and they will have big consequences, but trying to predict what will go on is actually just a matter of trying to understand fundamentally and we can't. But as an artist, you can take the liberty to take an element and project it into the future. And I rather do that like Mr. Ballard on the future of the next second and not of the 10 years because I don't know, but the one of the next second that is very close and very sociopolitically feelable that it is, so it's interesting now to see also all these countries said we weren't prepared. Well, no, of course you were not prepared, but it's almost impossible to prepare because this time we needed respiration machines, but the next one will be maybe something else. So you can't prepare for all the diseases coming up, you just can't. At one point you just have to hope for the best while you're in this upside down car as you said. So the only thing we could really say is that we weren't prepared, but will if this goes down, if this will we say, all right, from now on we always have these masks ready. We forgot in 10 years time, we forgot that it happened and it will not happen. So we are just a very interesting specimen that is, I think it's much more the pretension of thinking we know that's a problem. There I do, and also not to this pretension, this being very pretentious, I mean, to think we will solve it especially through machines and mechanics, and every invention has its black side. The devastation of the electric car in Congo, the produce of batteries is just horror. But we said, or we are saying now that the electric car will say the world, but it's not. So, but suddenly we go in, suddenly we do it, and then we bear or not bear consequences. And in this, my characters and my machines like to point out that state of being. And the consequences, the last piece we made or I made was a text for nothing of Samuel Beckett, full confinement, a man sitting alone in a sitting and waiting and thinking. And that's the consequence, and it's quite strange to be in the same position as my characters in. Another question that I think is much more interesting than I said so, because that's personally, I think it's a bit boring, question is much more what to do, what to do next. And there was a beautiful little interview on the BBC website with Mr. De Niro, and the question first politically, and we know his state of mind politically, but then he said, and then the next question was, will there be films made about confinement, about quarantine? And he said, yeah, probably, but I don't know if that's interesting. I would love to play in them, but I don't know if somebody wants to see them. So for me, a big question is now much more, not even talking about the medium we should use, because that's a big one, of course, but first of all, content, what do we want to see somebody in confinement now? Is that the thing that will comfort us? Is that the classic idea of tragedy so we'll see the horror so we feel better? I'm not sure, and this is the main thing I'm trying to, as I am in my own situation now, or in a situation that my characters are in, the question is much more, for me personally, what to do? What's the story to be told now? And this is, is it, I personally, to just continue, I personally do not believe in, in, no, I have a lot of problems with theater companies that go now making Zoom things. And it just feels, it makes me just feel very, very lonely, because I'm in front alone, and seeing people talk like I do every day now through this new device, Zoom Skype, it's kind of mobile phone thing, but we don't know what this is still. I feel our body is not being ready yet to read. You cannot read what I feel, and as we would do in daily life, because it's a transformed image. And I'm not sure that this is the way to go. I miss much more, the ritual that actually theater is, getting together, having a drink, yes, seeing a show, but that's nearly not necessary. If it's interesting, okay, if it's not interesting, well, bad luck. And then we eat or then we drink again and bathe in our own, in each other's sweat and flirt along. The social weight of the ritual is, I think, the thing I miss most, and until now I don't see any medium yet to, that can kind of ever has a proposition to solve it. Film and video, Netflix, the whole, this whole, these media are so well made for this machine, they know how it works. They know how to make ourselves cry, et cetera, et cetera. They're perfecting, but we as people of performance, we don't know how to deal with it. We love too much sweats and dirty stuff, I think. We love the ritual. And so it's, this is my biggest, even I try to erase the actor lots of times, owning machines on stage. I know. The ritual state. But I can't make machines, machine theater, and put some machines in the theater that watch machines perform. The fun state, the fun stage that we have to be in, that we have to see what they do. That the machine on a performance stage implies the absence of a human being or in history times, the ghost, the mechanical ghost, and so death, and we love to see that. But we have to be present to see it. And this time, the audience disappeared. It feels like these, everybody did it already, these uphill parties of Zoom and you get drunk and suddenly it's finished. And there you are alone in your room drunk. A horrible feeling. While the front part is to be drunk and not feel it and to wiggle home and that sits more or less. It's such a, the confinement is a very lonely thing. And I think our ritual, the ritual aspect of theater is the thing to, and I don't see any proposition or I can't formulate a proposition at the moment because I can't get near to people. And I'm afraid that if we would be, we're gonna do the theater festival now. We're selected for a theater festival now in August with the Beckett piece. And we'll do it in a big hall for 900 people, but we allow 120 people in something there. In Brussels? In Brussels, yeah. But people will sit two, three chairs from each other looking to somebody talks about being confined. The idea of being alone in, in these seats and being emptied, that will be the biggest theatrical experience what this piece will produce. What is it to be alone on these, in this empty, empty sad medium that is theater at that very moment? And all pieces that will, that will be played now in front of an audience that is nearly there will all talk about probably the same thing. They will talk about, I don't know, what a love affair, but what you will feel is you'll sitting, you're sitting alone watching this love affair going on. So maybe a proposition is public space, but that's the only environment where we can gather a bit safe somehow. Yeah. That's a good question. How will that really feel like with masks? I mean, we all like coffee houses because we can be in solitude, but we are in company. So I think also in theater, we might go alone while we're in company, this has been taken and is that still, then theater? I love what you said about the tectonic plates as perhaps as an idea for theater that they are the interments pressure and sometimes something cracks and an explosion happens in theater, perhaps is in a way that second, that moment where something comes out for a moment of time and then you go back, but it shakes the world, you see it differently. Yeah, you work with the machines on stage who often destroy themselves. I remember that beautiful piece in the camera went down a skyscraper of someone who most probably jumped to death and we hear her thoughts, your idea that you wanted to have the audience hypnotized and sleep and dream in the audiences and bring their own pillows and for people in water tanks, not really able to breathe. You have dealt perhaps more than contemporary theater because I know with that apocalyptic end of the world with trying to make it visible and make us reflect, did that work? Do you think audiences connected? Did they understand the meaning you put in? I don't know about, I'm not there to, I don't, I personally am not there to get an audience to make them conscient about problems or that's not my, it's, there's no more, I try to, well, there is a morale, et cetera, but I'm not very interested in it, nor that I think the world will end at all. But I do think that by working on these pieces for myself at least, to try to understand these tectonic plates and try to understand what confinement is and try to understand how we will, how, what our condition is if I read somewhere that there's a lot of people without jobs and in the same paper I read that there's a robot that is now making walls that we don't need workers anymore that they're in the same paper. And I'm like, well, yeah, I don't have to imagine anything, but there still was always an exercise of, again, I have the feeling that I'm now myself in the jump or in this aquarium thing and it's, it's actually a very boring place to be in. I would love to be much more to being the one that reflects on or predicts this kind of future catastrophe coming up than being in the catastrophe because then it's even so much about all my people and all my pieces to be here to breathe and to stand a bit and that's it and to see how time passes and just to wait is a feeling that is on stage very interesting but to be in is just a boring thing. I want to go out and play. That's the feel to wanting to go out and play to see the ritual and to be in and so that, again, my concern is not what I made and it's much more, we're gonna play now this exit, the sleeping piece, we're gonna do it again because confinement, my people are already separate from each other in the hall and I think that piece could be interesting although very lonely but it's also a very comforting piece. You sleep a bit, you doze off, you wake up, you doze off again and it's very, very comforting. I tried to make theater that in that moment or at least for exit, there's no tread to the going on there's no conflict, the only conflict is in your head sleeping yes or no but if not it's a, I really want to do a presence for the audience in much more comforting than confronted and I think somehow that's also what is necessary much more a comforting story than a look what we did thing. This is what I experience more that, yeah, that was also the, well, when Milo Rao went to Syria the main question was, well, what do those people need? That was for me the big question when he was there. Do they need to see a piece about war yes or no? And maybe yes, maybe not, I can't, I can't say anything about it and maybe for some people it worked, maybe for some people not but this time as a maker I'm struggling with the question, what would I love to see? And then the craze, I don't want to, I don't care what I would love to see, I just want to go to the bar and drink together with everybody. So this is a, to tell something about insecurity we feel it already, we're in. So this is the whole not, I'm experiencing right now. One little prediction I dare to make is that on time the world will get big again as flying starts to be problematic. Well, it was already problematic for the environment long time but now it will get so expensive, maybe. And so the world will not be a village anymore and everybody will not be connected in a global network because that's impossible. So we will local production and it's, for this moment, at this moment, New York didn't feel as far as ever because we can't, you can't come here and I can't go, maybe yet now but still. So and I think globally that will, we have of course powers that will do everything to get that globalization back on track and maybe we would love to go back to the rat race. I don't know what we, will we, I also feel that would be, shall we not go back into the rat race and do it again? The craziness we did, but maybe it's impossible and then we, China or whatever country will be extremely far. We go on holiday in our own country suddenly. So and I think that will be, I might think that that will be one of the consequences that it will, shall we go to Australia for fun? No, we won't. And so Australia is far and we will not be interested anymore in the news of Australia because we have no connection anymore. So this local production with all consequences instead of the world as a village, an enormous world would be, would be something, I think. And therefore, and I think we feel that already starts, is local work and local consummation, local production is suddenly an essence and that could become important. And has enormous consequences. In a way like cooking, we cook at home and it's all of a sudden, it does taste good. Even you know, there might be that restaurant in Paris, New Orleans or LA that might have better food by why flying there and to connect it, yeah. I mean, I also remember your work, the projection work you did when you traced the outlines of houses, built them in small cardboard boxes, you know, and put people in actors or performer people or just people who I remember, sometimes slightly deformed big buddies with tattoos who were confined in that space. And then you projected it on the big houses. I know there were even controversies and naked body next to the cross of a church. But in the idea I saw the almost like Greek gods from the Pergamon Museum in Berlin all of a sudden they were, but they were the people, they were us, they were people you can see on the houses. And we had a circus performers also here, you said, you know, we just once did it, one piece on stills, we wanted to do something for people who were in their windows, they can look out and see something different. You know, I think that idea you did was projection, perhaps also that is a way to create something that you foresaw something, you anticipated a future and enlarging of that confinement. I like your idea of saying it's about waiting. Perhaps we have to give comfort now, you know. The projections on the houses again there, public space is different medium than this machine medium. And I think and theaters performers have a tradition of having an understanding of public space to perform there, to project on buildings, et cetera. So there's certainly something to, that's a medium we could do things in, yeah. The way thing as it becomes also a thing on itself as we all know now, suddenly we bake our own bread because we have time to do it. And if it's necessary to see the sourdough going up and down, well, let's do it. So it doesn't, a small world is also a world. And with also a lot of excitement and the whole spectrum of feelings is also there. The projections with the tattooed bodies was in mid crisis, in economic crisis in Athens. And yes, it got a little controversy, but I don't think it's what's very interesting. They stopped nudes and I was like, well, this is Greece, how can you stop nudes? But the controversy was not very interesting, but I really wanted to do paintings for the city and comfort people a little bit, although they're quite confrontive, I guess, I'm not sure. So but again there, I think we could try to understand indeed, as you said, try to give form to waiting and try to understand it much better dealing with time and space in a complete different form. I remember a little poem of Daniel Herrams at one point he says, well, I have this balloon at home, which is halfly inflated, not completely full. And I imagine it's a wooden ball and I push it up and then it goes slowly down, but I think it's wood. And I walk around a bit, I sit in my chair, I go to my desk. And just before then it hits the floor, I push it back up and I call it a time machine. So this is, I thought it was very convenient, or very, very talking about the world at this very moment, or just Kafka saying that he saw somebody walking in the streets and that's it. So this kind of stop of speed is absolutely something that's there in the arts for a long time. But we told that story of slowness, at least I did, because everything is going so fast. So now I maybe have to talk about speed or something to, see, there's once you're in, it's difficult to talk about the water you're in. Yeah, so this is, so for me, the big question is, content-wise and medium, what's the proposition we need now? How's the, how to give this, what do we need? I think all these, I saw some video captations of theater pieces like we all did as just a sad thing. It's in different medium. So yeah, this is a. I know from the great book that performance research brought out just this spring, actually we're supposed also to do a book launch at the Segal's Theater, You Couldn't Come. Peter Ekassal put it together so beautifully and it's like, so these kind of dark pages in between the emissions. But the interviews are striking and often you do refer also to, you know, culture. I know you traveled to Arktika. What are you looking for there? What is there? What's interesting or what do you find? Well, I'm reading now quite a lot of Val Klumwood. The eco feminist died in the 80s, Australian. And she takes, her big statement is we are food. We are part of the cycle. We get, have to really get ourselves out of the center. And with all these indigenous or I have to say, non-European arts, and I really like them a lot because first of all, the status of the object is different. The status of the arts are different. They have a social political ground. We can't do anything with it, but I like to, I enjoy to see it. And I love the Inuit story, well, it's not really a story. At one point, there was somebody who wanted to note down all their stories about how the planet started or how Earth had the beginning of life, how did it grew or how did it started? And people, the Inuit people said, well, we don't know. We weren't there at the moment. What can we say? And then this Dutch writer, he said, yeah, but you have to have an imagination about it. And they talked for a long time and then they said, yeah, maybe you have to talk with this priest. Maybe he knows, but we don't know. We weren't there. And I think it's such a relief to finally somebody tells the truth about how life on Earth started and what we are, how we started, how we don't know. And I think there's a relief in, Valplemwood puts it that being part of the worms is a relief. It's something we can, it helps us. Instead of being horrific. And so she, Valplemwood was attacked by a crocodile. She was quite famous for that. She was attacked by a crocodile and he pulled her under water three times and she survived. She had a, of course, a near-death experience, but then she experienced it to be food, to be part of the cycle. And I think that exercise, that exercise is that that's also something I can somehow read in these objects. What objects do you mean? The indigenous objects, the comics. Yeah. From North America to South, everybody except the Europeans, they just want to paint a rich their work and a bit of religion. That was the only thing we wanted to paint for centuries. If you look at the Met now, you come in and you have this beautiful oceanic art that is so filled with energy and beauty. And then the rest of everything we painted, this king was painted at that point and look how beautiful, well-painted he is. What an idea. Well, actually, the whole world was looking at European art, I think. Like, what the hell are they doing? Why would you paint somebody so naturalistic? These beautiful, the whole continent's African sculptures are just extremely beautiful because they had the technique of perfects doing perfect sculptures, but they were not interesting. Why would you? And I, again there, I think there's hope or something, hope is a straight road. Yeah, some comforts. And that's why I really like all these, these, for example, these Inuit stories. At one point, just another part of the story was that a human being feels that he's sitting on sand. That's more or less it. It's pitch black, he can't see, and then he feels something in his hand and he doesn't know what to do with it, so he puts it in the ground. So the story there, at that side of the story, starts. Somebody in the dark who doesn't know what to do and puts something in the earth, and so it starts to grow. But it is an absolute, there's no pretension of human being to control the environment nor to, and of course it's much more living with the elements than against them or try to manipulate them. And if we would, it would be so interesting now if the convict 19 would be the result of pollution. Wouldn't that be interesting? And then the next question is, will we pollute less? And there we are again. So that's why I love the whole indigenous stories and arts because for centuries they were talking about abstract forms and ritual and not talking about Europeans in a way of thinking. Well, also the whole different concepts that we killed, of course, or as much as we could. Yeah, this is what the indigenous arts, that is beauty in them. And that stones in a way do have a consciousness like your stone who you are turning quite a great idea in a theater. We have a massive structure. I don't know how it holds up with the ceiling, but anyway, and it's turned by the samba that perhaps that stone has a conscious and we'll just look at what we look at. We have to, and this kind of idea of the minimalist, the material of it. And we are the ones who have to process and we watch ourselves processing instead of getting sugar candy things and entertainment and saying everything is okay and it can go on. And we think it's time to look at work that tells us something is very, very wrong and you are not seeing reality. Yeah, the stone is a very special one because it's so big and so it's dangerous for the building even. Yeah, how does that work? How many pounds does it or kilos of stone have? 650 kilos, hanging on one thread. Well, it's engineer-wise it's okay, but don't hang it in the wrong building. Then you will have them. But the stone, it's so massive that it's also just turning and it turns without being plugged in the net. So it has its own policy and it doesn't really care about who sees it and who not indeed. And Peter said something very, Peter Eckersl said something very nice about it. I thought it was very nice. He said, well, less is more but sometimes less is also just less. And not to say something bad but to say that at one point you're just standing next to this stone and it says in which time it lives. It defines time and it's not you that is defining time. And I like to be pushed in that position as I do very slow theater pieces just to be pushed in this kind of timeframe of what the hell am I doing? This is so boring. And suddenly you think what's going in yourself. Yeah, like that black snow falling down this ashes that slowly fills a stage and covers everything instead of the back of the play where you see the face already outside of the, of the Berkeley, you show that process. Yeah, and the inevitability of it. It will happen and you can see it. A good Japanese detective story is where always in the beginning you see the murderer committing the crime and then it starts. You know already who did it and then there's this very long story about will the detective find the killer? It's, I mean, just to be, this is what the future is. You will go under and now we have to spend time while you still have it and the question is how you will, how we will spend time. And this is also what we are feeling this very, very moment. I saw always like the idea of, if I understood it right also Christopher Fambala talked about the idea of the mono reading that you go to an author. I don't know, like maybe I know you did work on Kafka and you guys try to read everything that was written and then you let go of the text and you come up with like, did I understand that right? Yes, we're doing Kafka again now. So tell us a little bit about this because it also has a different form, you know, and it perhaps connected to the time where we can read and do things. But then we also don't do karaoke theater which we say, you don't really do something what's been done before you create even from that rich material, what more can you get if you were having Kafka's entire work but then you still create something new. What's your idea behind this? Well, first of all, I think I just need time to understand what's being written down. No, I think it's just wonderful to, first of all, you have to have a writer which is consistent of, which is something where you have to be, and then to, I think it's a matter of trying to egoless reading, trying to forget about what I think about a writer or have an opinion, but just really every week now we reread Kafka and if there's something we don't understand then trying to understand it and no matter how, if it's reading the biography and of course you make a wrong interpretation because you think he fell of his little blue bicycle and then he writes about blue later on by a matter of speaking, that would be, so but suddenly you really have the feeling as maker that you have a third person around the table, the writer and you can almost go in dialogue with this person and that's such a, I really like it. For now, for example, I always tried to, if I read Kafka, I didn't really like the psychology part of it and now suddenly I say, okay, let's go, let's read the letters to my father, let's read it, let's do the psychoanalytic research, let's just do it and maybe we'll get something, maybe we don't get something. And after a while, after a year, and maybe it's, I will not even use it, but after a while you're so drowned in the material that you start to think like the writer and I think that's the goal. And so from then on, you could do with other material, you could try to do what they would have done. I think, for example, now a project, this is a call, a project for where Beckett stopped with Quatt and some other television plays and his monologues with the talking heads. I think those ones, if we would go deeply down in the reasons why he did them, that would be a proposition to make Zoom pieces because he was already dealing with a screen in a private environment. So I think if we mono-read it enough that we could do new propositions with a structure, with a bright mind, helping us to invent completely new things that are maybe not even Beckettian anymore. For example, I read that why Beckett said that you just can't put people in a theater space or make their television play of it. He said, well, it's very simple. You are in a social environment in a big box with small little human beings doing things. Suddenly you are in a private space with a small box with small human beings. That's a completely different environment. You just can't mix them like that. So I think if we would work on television plays, Beckett, I think there's a thing to make Zoom pieces now. So that's the thing of the mono-reading and taking time to really digest the content. The problem of it is that the writer is in a dangerous position because if you are with three, four, five people really going down on one writer and the writer isn't insecure sometimes, you think like, what did this person write? So it's not always fun for the writer. If you work on a text, some texts of, I don't know, and after a week, mono-reading one little poem, you think maybe it's not good enough. Good enough is a strange sentence to say now, but the material goes, it gets thin while others, they just grow per text you read and they become monsters. And then it becomes very interesting. So the mono-reading is fun. It's just slow, digesting things. How interesting. And in a way, also somehow connected very much to the time where we are. I mean, so often also in New York, plays are written so fast, produced so fast, shown so fast, three to five shows. The next thing is in the moment doesn't exist. It's a vehicle for the future. You said already in your thing, mono-reading, slow down. Let's take the time, you read. But as an idea for theater maker, then you take it by something new. How would Beckett then, since you know no Beckett, if he had to do Zoom, what would he do? And so, and perhaps as Haramudal said about Brecht, using Brecht without criticizing, without modifying is treason. You haven't understood anything about Brecht if you do that. And I think this is again, something in your work, that foreshadowed or anticipated, as Hans-Hia said about great art, it anticipates the future, makes us comfortable with it, understanding it. And while we imagine it in the right way, we come to terms with it, but also get warnings of things that, yeah, that stone can fall down. It's dangerous and it's something we don't understand it perhaps even on a conscious level and there were great art perhaps, we shouldn't understand it. We understand it, why even look at it, why even understand it, and you could write it down on an article. So I think these are just fantastic and brilliant things as a final question or close to that. Did, are you changed? Are you different, Chris Verdunck than two months ago? I will tell you in a year. I don't, I don't, this is the, so I feel that I try to understand what it means to be uncertain for the next month. What, how is it to think about, how is it to try to imagine things that probably will not happen, but to find comfort in that just by thinking them or something. So this is the, so I feel the, how to relate with this insecurity. And of course it's, of course as an artist you're always insecure about financial stuff, et cetera, but it's, but this one is different. It's another silence and it's another insecurity. And I feel myself dealing with that from the moment I get up in the morning or not. Shall I go up or, well, I have this meeting and this meeting, well, yeah, but still, and then this meeting is about, well, maybe we do something. And I feel myself dealing with that. And that's one thing. And of course fear somehow, much more feared and fear for a future and fear for the unknown because we kind of knew, we kind of knew that extreme rights in Belgium was coming up, et cetera, et cetera. You could see it happening, but now you can't see it. Can't, it's unknown. And this is something that I'm trying to, I feel myself trying to deal with it. Also what we just talked about, to be comforted in a waiting zone, to be comfort, to feel comfort in a zone where you just wait. So this is chemically, but I think it's not me as nurses, I think everybody is dealing with it. At least the people who don't have to work, et cetera, or cannot work. So this is, I remember these trees outside when the lockdown confinement started, they didn't have leaves yet. And I kind of hoped that if they would have, that I wouldn't see them from confinement blooming, but now they are in full. And there's a second wave coming up as everybody predicts. And so that means in my situation or in a theater situation that imagine that we have it, that in autumn there would be a second wave that would mean that we December, January, May before something will, that we can do things. And I'm quite scared of that long periods of time. And, yeah, I'm afraid for all other artists who, yeah, you'd see this kind of desperation on people's faces, yeah. The future is so uncertain that it's, and I do understand that people from the outside world are used to that, but we don't. So this is, I feel that being, yeah, and I feel myself trying to deal with it. Before we close down, for young artists, if you would have to talk to the young Christopher Donk who is studying architecture, what do you think is of significance? What's to keep in mind and what should we do? How can we use the time best? I don't think I would say do not become an artist although it would be a tempting thing to say, do something, go, run, no, I think it's to be conscient, try to be conscient about the tectonic plates, try to understand them as, try to feel or to read to look at the outside world try to understand what to be understood and then try to give it form, no matter how. But I think first of all, is to look outside and then I think that would be the still definition. You look outside, you take it in and you do something with it. So I think that would be the definition. You look outside, you take it in and you do something with it. But to looking outside now is even more complex. To taking it in is even more strange because you're learning yourself to adapt to a situation where you didn't choose to be in. And then the next step to give form and you don't know the medium because you can't invite people. So it is, in that sense, there's more work, internal there's more work than ever to be done to give form to this because that's finally fine. That's the job of an artist to try to give form about of the outside world. And there's just more work now than ever. Yeah, that's important, yeah. So we'll really, Chris, thank you for that snapshot you know, out of you being in confinement in Brussels close to the Kai Theater. And I think your work has always been significant your reflections and we'll see as you say where it all comes in, the reminder that we're all waiting and that perhaps there's something back at talked about and Kafka talked about and the inner stories of the send so this is something ancient. I like your, in a way, these kind of return to writing, to reading. I think Bonnie Merankam on PHA performing art is also things, you know, this is a time perhaps, you know, we're writing in some way in the post-traumatic world where we live in where there was one part of the many elements that perhaps it shines tiny bit brighter, perhaps again, you know, that we were looking at words and trying to find the words, the language for the theater. So this is just a real contribution and I think you gave us comfort listening to you and your reflection and we are less alone and we know that forms of intelligence like yours are looking at the situation and come to terms with it, but also live through it as we all do and we care about the world and us and we do care about you. So this is a great, great contribution really. Thank you and to our listeners also thank you for taking time out. If you listen today on Memorial Day, Monday, a special day and I hope you got something out of it. It is important to have the audience and this is what is all about as Chris just said, it's not what's happening on stage. It is about people in there, people thinking, they're processing what comes out of it and having that glass of wine or tea or whatever, which you might now have to have do with yourself, but ultimately this is about you, the listener or in performance, it also the viewer. So I hope you will be able to join us this week, Anaina Tour from Salah Beckett speaking about Beckett from Barcelona. We'll talk to us about the situation in Barcelona and things she is a director and writer is grappling with. We will hear and Bogart, the great American director who also has a career and work to look back on decades and to see how she creates meaning out of this situation. We will have an Australian playwright of Patricia Cornelius who also has worked for a long time and is looking at theater as a form of being part of society, community and to interject and talk through stories and interweaving reality into it to help us to get out of our own VR headset, how we look at things and then Huy Faiwek from Hong Kong will tell us, it will have a new importance since these are drastic measures that are suggested by China last week. I will here look forward to hearing from him what that will mean to him, but also how the coronavirus is now influencing the minds and lives of daily choreography, the social choreography of our existence. So thank you for staying in Chris again, really. Thank you for taking this so serious and for answering us, I think it's something that I will carry with me and think about. So hope to see you one day again and here in New York at the Segal Center or in Brussels, which is an epicenter of contemporary theater for everybody who does not know, it is really Belgium is a significant place in the mental landscape of theater, something to explore and which perhaps was a bit more occupied by the Berlin scene for a long time also, but Belgium always has been perhaps not with a little bit less light on it, but it's a significant contribution to the contemporary work. So Chris, thank you so much and I hope you will have a good dinner and to all our listeners, thank you. Thanks to Hal, Rahm, Sia, Vijay, Travis and of course my Segal team, Sanyang and Andy. So thank you and Chris, bye-bye. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.