Industrial estates are weird. They lie souring on the outskirts of one city, only to seamlessly morph into the same site on the outskirts of another. Once they were A-locations, places of visibility and the incarnate dream of reconstruction. Now they are low-grade structures, halls with a front door, a visible office for the Dirk and a pathetic conifer between entrance and car park. The neighbouring building is always empty. The car park is overgrown, the upstairs glass broken.
Between Den Bosch and Engelen, 15 minutes of this ugliness awaits the return of the old economy. We pass through it on our way to For The Time Being, Boukje Schweigman's latest project. The bus journey to the secret location (spoiler: one of those abandoned neighbouring properties) winds along deserted streets. At night, probably the domain of street races.
Grasshoppers
There is no finer example of humanity's locust behaviour. We dig up land, make it ready for building, put up halls which, as soon as the site becomes too full, become empty and decay because the motorway 5 kilometres away offers a better view. After which the whole party starts all over again. Accelerated in stop-motion, it would look like a shockwave sweeping across the country. Typical material for Schweigman, whose visual movement work is always looking for the relationship between us, people and the world around us.
For The Time Being, made in collaboration with Slagwerkgroep Den Haag is a rather bare piece for Schweigman's standards. No huge technical installation, no world more powerful is than us, as ever that white tunnel in which you lost any sense of space and time. More than ever, though: contact.
Social experiment
Above all, what we experience is a social experiment that, in the hands of anyone other than Schweigman and her movers, would be a little scary. Indeed, everything about Schweigman's work exudes eager love for fellow human beings, childlike fascination with who we are and with how close we can get to each other. It is never threatening, yet Schweigman allows her dancers to get much closer than we find acceptable in everyday life.
Telling more about what happens in this installation would be a shame. Even telling that you get out unscathed actually detracts. Or reporting that I might have expected more percussion. Because is that actually the case. Wasn't what happened next just beautifully timed? And at the performance you attend, how long would it take the audience to take that last step? Fine questions, with which I'm happy to send you to Beaver's Spikes.
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