XYZ Outlet #6: “Ten Weyngaert" | A video by Harald Thys & Jos de Gruyter, 2007 (Duration: 20 min) | Tuesday 1 March, three screenings at 20.00, 20.20 & 20:40 | Perdika 8 & Achilleos, Metaxourgeio
For its 6th outing, XYZ Outlet is presenting the video Ten Weyngaert by Belgian artists Harald Thys & Jos de Gruyter.
Ten Weyngaert (2007) - “vineyard” in archaic Flemish - is the name of a community/youth centre in Brussels. The video presents the everyday bureaucracy and microcosm of the centre - a would-be utopian and creative haven gone a bit wrong - transposing it into a world ruled by a spider, with robots as intermediaries between the minute monarch and its subjects. Odd situations and hilarity ensue, in a tragicomic, allegorical study of group psychology and dynamics, especially when under pressure.
The collaborative work of artists Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys is rooted in a folksy, tragicomic sensibility honed into an experimental dramaturgy. Their video and photographic work use simple, symbolic sets, including the paradigmatic spaces of home, battlefield, urban periphery and community hall. They have engaged a recurring cast of nonprofessional actors as well as invented or adopted personae spanning the forms of puppets, dummies, plush animals, makeshift robots and rejected toys. These characters continually rehearse power dynamics and emotional entanglements, creating worlds not unlike our own, yet more focused, bizarre and bleak.
The artists seek ways to confront marginal, incapacitated, lost and alienated subjects without defining these ‘others’ in sociological terms. In this sense, and especially in their novel use of a ghoulish humour, De Gruyter and Thys broaden the scope of reflection on socially produced behaviour.
Jos de Gruyter (1965) and Harald Thys (1966) are based in Brussels and have been working together for over 20 years.
XYZ Outlet #6: Harald Thys & Jos de Gruyter | "Ten Weyngaert"
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