Residencies

• 08.04 > 20.04.2024
• 01.05.2024

For Dark Habits Simon Van Shuylenbergh works fur­ther on his fas­ci­na­ti­on for ​‘Moral Ambiguity’ or the impos­si­bi­li­ty to be pure in a moral sense. 

Dark Habits will be built with artists from the net­werk in Brussels con­nec­ted through Ne mosqui­to pas. Instead of making solo’s they will make a series of group-acts, that they will show in dif­fe­rent com­bi­na­ti­ons on dif­fe­rent per­for­ma­ti­ve events in the coming year.

As a the­a­tri­cal ele­ment Simon wants to focus on the figu­re of the nun, and the ima­gi­na­ti­on around a monas­tery down­hill in the comi­cal movie Dark Habits (1983) by Pedro Almodovar. Not the nar­ra­ti­ve of the movie but the sort of nuns, and their dark habits speak to his ima­gi­na­ti­on. You have nuns who tame a tiger, have les­bi­an affairs, deal drugs, wri­te pulp or walk in glass. 

A second main refe­ren­ce in his research are the ​‘sis­ters of per­pe­tu­al indul­gen­ce’, a group of queer acti­vists who held mee­tings dres­sed up in self-made nun-cos­tu­mes. They held cere­mo­nies in which they decla­red gay men, infec­ted with AIDS whom no one dared touch, as saints. The faith of the­se nuns cen­te­red on the society’s noti­on of the ​“dir­ty,” infec­ted body, as oppo­sed to the ​‘pure’ body, descri­bed within the Catholic faith. For them, a pro­cess of sanc­ti­fi­ca­ti­on was con­si­de­red an anti-nor­ma­ti­ve form of canonization

What inspi­res Simon is the way they build an ​“ima­gi­ned” (fic­ti­o­nal) com­mu­ni­ty that simul­ta­neous­ly exists in rea­li­ty and direct­ly affects the rea­li­ty of its mem­bers. What is stri­king here is the way their own poli­ti­cal agen­da is trans­la­ted by pro­pa­ga­ting the oppo­si­te and by per­ver­ting a (con­ser­va­ti­ve) known form. Imagination, per­for­ming acti­ons, sce­nes and cere­mo­nies is the fuel for the acti­vists’ acti­vi­ties. Their acti­vism mani­fests itself in con­stant infor­mal and expe­ri­men­tal dis­cus­si­on, through the cre­a­ti­on of poe­tic acti­ons and happenings.

Through re-enac­ting church ritu­als, and cre­a­ting their own ver­si­on of the figu­re of the nun, the nuns per­vert the ritu­als. Perversion offers a grey zone within which, in my view, much is pos­si­ble. We could pos­si­bly fuse oppo­sing moral posi­ti­ons with each other, rethin­king our own moral values.

The artists will start from their own noti­on of artis­tic faith, and what they con­si­der from ​‘high impor­tan­ce’ to our prac­ti­ce and on the other hand signs of Evil. They want to dis­cuss uns­po­ken mora­li­ty, and fake open­ness within our own prac­ti­ces, the prac­ti­ces of our artis­tic saints and devils and within insti­tu­ti­o­nal practices. 

Can we still talk through ambi­guous belie­ve-sys­tems and per­ver­si­on, about what we actu­al­ly stand for and belie­ve in?