ConceptDries Verhoeven

Orgasmagoria

Orgasmagoria is an ongoing film about sexual pleasure in the digital age. Dries Verhoeven created the work in collaboration with a group of international (cyber)sex workers, porn actors and their friends. In front of the camera, they close their eyes and imagine a future in which desire is inextricably linked to technology, money and power.

While in offline life we tend to approach sexuality and power with caution, the internet offers a space for extreme fantasies and forms of sexual power play. On platforms such as Chaturbate, users can remotely control the sex toys of webcam models. It is no coincidence that many of them live in the Global South. Colombia, the Philippines and Romania are home to large studio complexes, while a significant share of the profits flows to Silicon Valley. A colonial power dynamic can be recognised here, but many models consciously play with the Western desire to dominate. They skilfully turn these underlying social dynamics to their own advantage.

Orgasmagoria unfolds as an endless series of personal stories, fables and dystopias. In a realm saturated with explicit imagery, imagination is brought back into play. During IDFA, the film will be shown daily from 13 to 22 November, between 11:30 and 17:30, at sex theatre Casa Rosso. There is no fixed starting or ending point. As in an old-fashioned porn cinema, visitors can enter and leave at any moment.

Visitors are advised to come early in the day and allow at least an hour. Refreshments may be taken inside. Not suitable for viewers under 18.

The Fortress

[:en]Performer Jana Jacuka. Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Performer Jana Jacuka. Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Performer Dengling Levine. Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Performer Dengling Levine. Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]The Fortress, 2026, Dries Verhoeven. Interior view of the Dutch pavilion. Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Performer Diane Mahín. Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Performer Diane Mahín. Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Performer Maarten Heijnens. Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Performer Maarten Heijnens. Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Performer Jana Jacuka. Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Performer Jana Jacuka. Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Performer Maarten Heijnens. Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Performer Maarten Heijnens. Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

For the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Dries Verhoeven, in collaboration with curator Rieke Vos, presents The Fortress. The work begins with the Dutch Rietveld Pavilion in the Giardini: an idyllic park of national pavilions that reflects a world order from a bygone era. Western powers still occupy the most prominent positions. Nations that, in reality, are fortifying their borders, rearming themselves, or attacking one another stand side by side here with open doors, in apparent harmony.

Designed by Gerrit Rietveld and completed in 1954, the Dutch Pavilion reflects the optimistic ideals of the post-war period: clarity, transparency and accessibility. It presents the Netherlands as a proud representative of the progressive free West. The Fortress destabilises this legacy. The work focuses on the instinct of self-preservation: the urge to safeguard borders, peace of mind and an untroubled self-image in times of uncertainty.

Six times a day, the pavilion undergoes a transformation. A limited number of visitors are admitted to the almost empty building, where they encounter the sunlit modernist space alongside cracks, stains and other signs of decay. Scattered throughout the pavilion are Biennale catalogues from the past 120 years, cast in epoxy resin like fossilised relics of a lost era – preserved, yet rendered inaccessible.

Steel roller shutters descend across the façades. Over the course of 25 minutes, the modernist monument transforms into its antithesis: a darkened bunker. What was once open and accessible becomes sealed off, opaque and impenetrable. As this unfolds, one performer breaks away from the audience. They express themselves through a vocal performance built around death metal grunts, a vocal technique in which the false vocal folds are used to produce a deep, guttural sound. As the space grows darker, the figure clings ever more stubbornly to a sequence of optimistic slogans and self-affirmations: “You are great,” “Love yourself,” “Keep going,” “Enjoy,” and so on. Appeals such as “Care” and “Engage”– once the language of solidarity and collective responsibility – are reduced to hollow phrases.

As the end of the Enlightenment announces itself, the performance suggests, irrational impulses begin to prevail. Armed with desperate resolve, a rasping voice and a petrified book in hand, the figure resists the encroaching darkness. Art is presented as a weapon: an instrument for protecting the illusion of the innocent bystander.

La Biennale di Venezia runs from 9 May to 22 November. From Wednesday to Sunday, the pavilion is accessible at 11:00, 12:00, 13:00, 14:00, 15:00 and 16:00. On Tuesdays, the work can be viewed as a closed sculpture.

Do not go gentle into that good night

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

An arm protrudes over the edge of a building. The arm (a cast of the artist’s own) holds a megaphone from which Dylan Thomas’s poem Do not go gentle into that good night resounds. At times defiant, at times audibly exhausted, Verhoeven’s voice shifts between urgency, despair and quiet resignation.

This temporary public intervention, commissioned by debate centre De Balie, was presented in the context of the Forum on European Culture. The work is a troubled call for resistance in times of geopolitical and ecological uncertainty. Passers-by are interrupted in their daily routines by a disembodied voice echoing across the square, prompting reflections on artistic resistance and social despondency.

The work adopts the visual language of protest: raised fists, slogans, chanting crowds. Yet instead of a forceful demonstration, it presents ambiguous gestures: a vulnerable arm, a poem and a wavering voice. In doing so, the work balances between a sincere call to resistance and a monument to a cause that seems already lost.

Verhoeven: “As artists, can we do anything against dictatorial rulers, tech billionaires and genocidal warlords? Sometimes I feel discouraged, and the very suggestion strikes me as ludicrous. Taking a political stance in the arts today is not only urgently needed; it is also fashionable—and that carries its own dangers. It risks becoming gratuitous. After witnessing such positions, the contemporary art viewer may feel they have performed a good deed and leave the art institution morally purified. But do these positions genuinely confront tyranny, or do they mainly serve to reassure the cultural middle class about its own virtue? And—and this question concerns me most—what about ambiguity? Art thrives on ambiguity. If resistance is what we seek, is art, precisely because of its ambivalence, truly the right medium?”

Do not go gentle into that good night is both performance and object: a small yet inescapable intervention that probes the tension between activism and spectacle, protest and poetry, militancy and resignation.

Everything must go

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

Everything must go is a performative installation investigating the moral tensions of late capitalism through the lens of the shoplifter. For this work, Verhoeven interviewed 24 individuals who occasionally “forget” to pay—ranging from professional thieves to people who frame shoplifting as an act of resistance. Their testimonies became the foundation of a text that shifts between confession and accusation, where activism and opportunism blur and intertwine. As in his earlier projects, Verhoeven uses a clandestine act to probe broader questions about human behaviour. The work suggests a striking contrast between public self-image and private conduct: “In public, we tend to present ourselves as ethical and socially aware, yet when we believe we are unseen, our behaviour often reveals far more ambiguity.”

The performance unfolds in an exact replica of a supermarket aisle, complete with fully stocked shelves and surveillance cameras. Within this narrow space, an anonymous performer occupies the scene. Dressed in a pig mask and a Snow White costume, she embodies the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the contemporary shoplifter: predatory yet innocent, criminal yet political. Her inner monologue draws on interviews conducted for the project, as well as on texts by Jean Genet, Karl Marx, Slavoj Žižek and others who have examined the ethical dimensions of theft and consumption.

Visitors cannot enter the supermarket installation. They can only look in from the outside—through gaps between the products on the shelves or via CCTV monitors mounted along the corridor. Like guards in a panopticon, they observe the shoplifter in all her contradictions.

With dark humour and meticulous staging, Everything Must Go transforms one of the most ordinary places—the supermarket—into a sharp allegory of a disillusioned society. “Why be virtuous when the world is going to hell?”

“An impressive allegory of modern capitalism… The attention to detail borders on perfection. The audience stands there, chuckling bitterly.” — Theaterkrant

Work work work

[:nl]Time Clock Piece, Tehching Hsieh.[:]

[:en]Time Machine, Studio Julian Hetzel | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]Time Machine, Studio Julian Hetzel | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]One Year Performance 1980-1981, Tehching Hsieh | | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]One Year Performance 1980-1981, Tehching Hsieh | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Body in Resistance, Gosia Wdowik / Frascati Producties | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]Body in Resistance, Gosia Wdowik / Frascati Producties | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Songs for Thomas Piketty | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]Songs for Thomas Piketty | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]One Year Performance 1980-1981, Tehching Hsieh | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]One Year Performance 1980-1981, Tehching Hsieh | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Broeders verheft u ter vrijheid / Brothers exalt thee to freedom | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]Broeders verheft u ter vrijheid / Brothers exalt thee to freedom | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Time Machine, Julian Hetzel | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]Time Machine, Julian Hetzel | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Employment Contract, Pierre Bal-Blanc | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]Employment Contract, Pierre Bal-Blanc | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Workpiece, Anna-Marija Adomaityte & Gautier Teuscher | Photo Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:nl]Workpiece, Anna-Marija Adomaityte & Gautier Teuscher | Foto Jaap Beyleveld, Willem Popelier.[:]

For Work Work Work, Theater Frascati in Amsterdam was temporarily transformed into a performance art museum. Open eight hours a day—the length of a full working day—the exhibition explored the working body in the age of automation.

Dries Verhoeven invited six artists to explore the dynamics between employer, employee, and (art) consumer. Highlights ranged from Tehching Hsieh’s Time Clock Piece (one year performance 1980-81), in which the artist clocked in every hour of the day, to Pierre Bal-Blanc’s Employment Contract (1992), reflecting on his time as a GoGo dancer in a Félix González-Torres performance. More recent works included Julian Hetzel’s Time Machine (2014) and Anna-Marija Adomaitytė’s Workpiece (2021), alongside two new commissions: Ahmet Ögüt’s Labour after Pay (2024) and Gosia Wdowik’s Body in Resistance (2024).

At the heart of the exhibition was Verhoeven’s performance Brothers, Rise Up for Freedom (2021), in which Bulgarian seasonal workers sing a historic labour song for eight hours a day under the conditions that apply in the sorting centre of the e-commerce company Bol. The lyricism of their singing stands in sharp contrast to the numbing reality of the work, questioning the value of the working body today.

Other works by Verhoeven on view included the documentary The Recruitment, the video installation To Perform, and the installations Songs for Thomas Piketty (2016), Burger (2021), and Painkiller Dispenser (2021).

Critics particularly praised the presentation for blurring the boundaries between visual art and performance, between exhibition and work protocol. Occupying nearly every space within the Frascati theatre, from offices to technical storage rooms, the exhibition foregrounded the building itself as a workplace. In doing so, it inevitably prompted visitors to reflect on their own role as art consumers.

“The complex relationship between work and human dignity was exposed in contrasting way,” according to critic Marijn Lems.

Dear beloved friend,

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Stills Studio Dries Verhoeven, Kininso Koncepts.[:nl]Stills Studio Dries Verhoeven, Kininso Koncepts.[:]

Dear beloved friend, is a live film presented in a European theatre in Lagos, Nigeria, at the very moment of its creation. While the European audience watches a live stream in silence, Nollywood actors in Lagos perform before the camera. A webcam in the theatre transforms the spectators into participants: the Nigerian actors can see them and respond in real time. The audience’s presence is thereby embedded in the performance, turning the stage into a transcontinental interface between distant lives.

In the film, we witness a group of Nigerian actors dismantle the caricature of the helpless African refugee. Through sophisticated satire, they invert a long history of stereotyping and scrutinize the European self-image. The focus shifts from the spectre of African mass migration to Europe’s fear of a changing world. Europeans are portrayed as insecure former rulers, clinging anxiously to their comfortable lives.

Intimacy, mockery and confrontation alternate throughout the performance. The audience is never merely a spectator—viewers are themselves observed, and their reactions are immediately incorporated into the live film. This reversal compels the viewer to reconsider the roles of observer and observed, the host and guest, the centre and margin.

Dear beloved friend, was described in the press as both disorienting and urgent: “a mindfuck more than a performance.” Verhoeven was praised for his ability to unite form and content. “By placing European audiences face to face with their Nigerian counterparts, the work stages a dialogue that is humorous, incisive and deeply human.”

In 2023, Dear beloved friend, received a Golden Calf for Best Digital Culture Production at the Netherlands Film Festival. The jury highlighted how the work digitally breaches the fourth wall and its inventive use of live streaming to connect different worlds.

The NarcoSexuals

[:en]Photo Alwin Poiana.[:nl]Foto Alwin Poiana.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Photo Alwin Poiana.[:nl]Foto Alwin Poiana.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Photo Alwin Poiana.[:nl]Foto Alwin Poiana.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

The NarcoSexuals explores the hidden world of chemsex. The audience moves around a single-family home, glimpsing an abstracted portrayal of a sex party through the windows: men who meet in private homes, finding and losing one another amid sexualized drug use. Their monologues, spoken in unison, reveal a shared hunger for excess, intimacy, and separation from the heteronormative outside world. The six-hour performance is structured like a seemingly endless sex marathon.

With his voyeuristic work, Dries Verhoeven captures both the euphoria of sexualized drug use and the ache of unfulfilled desire. He asks whether chemsex represents a continuation of the sexual liberation of the 1980s, or a symptom of neoliberal hedonism. Forty years after ‘gay liberation’, are we heading toward a ‘narcosexual revolution’ or have we abandoned our sexual ideals, leaving the so-called revolt comatose on the sofa?

The audience, peering through the windows, becomes a silent witness. Spectators are never invited to join the party, reflecting the way society views queer subcultures from a distance—mesmerised, anxious, or disdainful. Moments of unabashed pleasure and vulnerability alternate, leaving a lingering sense of wistful longing for collective rebellion. The party mirrors a society struggling with intimacy in an age of hyper-individualism and the pharmacologisation of the mind.

The work was selected for Het Theaterfestival (Belgium, 2023) and nominated for the VSCD Mime/Performance Prize (Netherlands, 2022/2023).

Gently Down the Stream

[:en]Still by Dries Verhoeven.[:nl]Still door Dries Verhoeven.[:]

In the summer of 2021, Dries broke his hip socket in a cycling accident. For six weeks, he could barely move. Walking slowly on crutches, he created the video report Gently Down the Stream. Filmed on a smartphone, the video shows Dries attempting to identify with the slow-moving animals and other entities in his garden.

Gently Down the Stream is a cinematic meditation on fragility and the passage of time. The work was developed as part of Slow TV Cinema, a 24-hour programme of slow film curated by Anna Chrtková and Petr Dlouhý. It was screened at the Slow TV Cinema Marathon during SPRING in Utrecht, a programme inviting artists to explore film as a medium for reflection. By slowing down time and stripping the images of conventional narrative, Gently Down the Stream becomes a light-hearted vanitas still life.

Brothers exalt thee to freedom

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Photo Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Photo Wouter van Elderen.[:nl]Photo Wouter van Elderen.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Photo Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Photo Wouter van Elderen.[:nl]Photo Wouter van Elderen.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Photo Willem Popelier.[:]

In Brothers exalt thee to freedom, human labor confronts mechanical efficiency. Ten Bulgarian performers, seasonal workers themselves, sing the historical workers’ song of the same name, surrounded by the ceaseless motions of robots in an automated distribution centre. For eight hours a day, their voices soar above the robotic rhythm, and even their breaks follow the schedules used Bol’s e-commerce distribution centres.

By juxtaposing robotics and singing, the performance interrogates the value of the working body, the labour movement, and the legacy of socialism in an age of automation. As humans are set to compete with machines, precarity becomes inevitable. The continuous, frictionless flow of goods we are used to is made possible only by vulnerable workers, whose songs carry the memory of solidarity, struggle and hope.

The work extends beyond the live performance. In 2021, visitors to art institute West Den Haag could also enter the workers’ and performers’ living quarters. Two video works were created for the exhibition, foregrounding the performers’ personal perspectives. In To Perform, a three-channel video installation, they reflect on the contemporary workplace and its possible futures. The documentary The Recruitment traces the development of the project in Bulgaria and reveals the painful realities of the international labour market that surfaced during the creative process. Together, these works compose a portrait of individuals caught between personal dignity and systemic exploitation.

The jury of the VSCD Performance Award 2021 wrote: “In his multidisciplinary diptych Brothers exalt thee to freedom on capitalist globalisation, Dries Verhoeven reveals how the human spirit of workers from low-wage countries can endure and resist, even as their bodies are exploited.”

Happiness

[:en]Photos Willem Popelier, Hilde Harshagen, Derk Stenvers.[:nl]Foto's Willem Popelier, Hilde Harshagen, Derk Stenvers.[:]

In Happiness, Dries Verhoeven installs a small concrete structure in a public space—half public toilet, half clandestine pharmacy. Inside, a humanoid robot presents and explains a wide range of psychotropic drugs, from antidepressants and painkillers to recreational substances. She speaks about XTC, Ritalin and Fentanyl with indifferent, matter-of-fact precision. With measured gestures and a mechanical demeanor, the robot shows how we can deliberately manipulate our serotonin and dopamine levels.

The humanoid’s appearance is at once clinical and oddly familiar. Her movements approximate human fragility, mimicking the sensations of the body. She embodies the blurred boundary between artificiality and the living body—a reflection of a society in which ‘natural’ feelings are increasingly induced through pharmaceuticals. By combining robotics and drugs, the work explores the space where humanity and artificiality intersect, where artificial means can help us feel human again, enhance our humanity, or temporarily step beyond it.

Set within the everyday urban environment, the ambiguous architecture—half toilet, half pharmacy—makes visible both the ubiquity of psychotropic drugs and the taboo that surrounds them. It suggests that the pursuit of happiness often unfolds in secrecy. Happiness belongs to a body of work in which Verhoeven examines the political and social response to the subversive. As in other public-space projects (Sic transit gloria mundi, The NarcoSexuals, etc.), he takes a familiar social phenomenon—in this case, the pharmacy—as a point of departure for wider ethical inquiry.

Happiness resists moral certainty. As one critic observed, Verhoeven’s robot guides us “through the twilight zone between comfort and addiction, freedom and restriction”.

Guilty Landscapes

[:en]Photos Willem Popelier, Christopher Hewitt.[:nl]Foto's Willem Popelier, Christopher Hewitt.[:]

[:en]Photo Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu[:nl]Foto Pieter Kers | Beeld.nu[:]

[:en]Photos Willem Popelier, Christopher Hewitt.[:nl]Foto's Willem Popelier, Christopher Hewitt.[:]

What initially appears to be a pre-recorded video of a troubled place in the world is revealed to be a live internet connection. Upon entering an empty museum space, the viewer encounters a life-size projection of a ‘guilty landscape’: a setting defined by human suffering. A resident of that location, visible in the projection, looks back at the viewer. Without overt moral judgement, the protagonist mirrors the behaviour of the museum visitor. The person in the image appears unaffected, or only faintly touched, by the presumed suffering, subtly challenging the notion of victimhood. A fleeting connection arises where distance and intimacy, apathy and empathy merge.

The simple encounter makes the comfortable outsider position, so common in museums, impossible. Rather than focusing on the specific issues of the location depicted, the work turns attention to the act of viewing itself, questioning the assumptions and implicit power relations behind the gaze on ‘the pain of others’. The people on the screen invert the asymmetry: they are not passive representatives of circumstance, but actively engage with the situation in the exhibition space. The work reminds us that spectatorship is never neutral—to watch is to become involved.

Guilty Landscapes consists of four episodes: episode I Hangzhou, episode II Port-au-Prince, episode III Homs, episode IV Pattaya. Each episode evokes a connection between people across the globe. No explanation or commentary mediates the viewer’s encounter with the subject. What remains is the encounter itself: unadorned, uncomfortable, and inescapable, leaving the viewer in a state of lingering uncertainty.

Homo Desperatus

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

In Homo Desperatus, Dries Verhoeven transforms the museum into a living diorama of catastrophes. Forty-four display cases showcase meticulously crafted scale models of disaster sites, from a collapsed garment factory in Bangladesh to Guantanamo Bay and the destroyed Fukushima nuclear reactor. Each miniature landscape bears the marks of disaster, collapse, and human cruelty.

But the ruins are not empty. Each display case houses a colony of ants—over 70,000 in total—carrying out their daily routines with relentless precision: tirelessly digging through rubble, nesting in prison cells, and foraging across radioactive terrain. Tiny cameras embedded in the scale models transmit live images to a screen in the exhibition space, allowing visitors to zoom in and out: shifting between analytical distance and emotional engagement with the suffering of the human species, represented by the ants.

A peculiar intimacy emerges: visitors project compassion onto insects that remain entirely indifferent. As in Guilty Landscapes, Verhoeven interrogates how mediated images can cast subjects as victims without their consent. It reminds us how easily the camera can turn a catastrophe into spectacle, and how empathy is the result of projection.

The tireless diligence of the ants reflects how humans, sometimes with the courage born of despair, attempt to mitigate their suffering. Yet the contrast between ants and humans is also significant. Where humans despair, ants persevere: they are unburdened by ideology or fear, and the individual is effortlessly sacrificed for the survival of the species. By framing political and ecological crises through the lens of non-human resilience, Homo Desperatus offers an unexpected sense of hope: life always remains possible.

The once-inhabited display cases are now part of the permanent collection of the Verbeke Foundation (Kemzeke, Belgium). The video recording of the installation is currently presented independently.

The Silent Body

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

[:en]Photo Michiel Devijver.[:nl]Foto Michiel Devijver.[:]

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

In The Silent Body, naked performers sit motionless behind a glass soundproof wall, speculating about intimate encounters with the viewer. The glass renders their words inaudible—the performers seem silenced–but speech-to-text software translates the words into a projection on the back wall. Visitors are close enough to sense intimacy but separated by the glass, making direct communication impossible. The work expresses a desire for physical closeness, presenting viewers as objects of sexual attention, while immediately rendering that closeness unattainable. The glass seems to censor the words, restraining the sexual impulse.

The Silent Body is an exploration of distance, between flesh and language, perception and projection, technology and emotion. The words, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes mundane, reveal an unfiltered monologue. Language becomes mechanical, stripped of the body: a flawed translation of thought into source code. The body is present but voiceless, while the voice is visible yet detached from its source.

As in works such as Guilty Landscapes and Your Kingdom Come, The Silent Body dissects the mechanics of spectatorship, revealing how distance shapes intimacy. The performers’ immobility transforms them into bodiless portals—embodiments of what remains unspoken when technology claims to connect us.

In previous works such as Lifestreaming and Wanna Play?, Dries Verhoeven examined how we approach intimacy in today’s screen-mediated reality. The Silent Body continues this exploration of language, technology, and physical connection, employing minimal means. Silence becomes a form of speech—calm, deliberate, and shaped by the presence of the performers.

Sic transit gloria mundi

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

A construction site in the centre of the city serves as a model for a world in transition, where ideas about power and control begin to shift. A billboard announces the construction of a “monument to the fall of Western hegemony”. Tall wooden fencing separates the building site from the city. It’s an invasive gesture, the city’s people are shut out. A feeling that is amplified by posters in Arabic, Russian and Chinese.

From the visitor centre on the building site one can see the purported building plans. The design, a monumental marble statue of a fallen Caucasian male, ties in with the discussion about historical statues as a symbol of Western imperialism. The only tangible indication of the monument is a gigantic white hand that is continually moved around the site.

Phobiarama

The work examines the impact of the ‘politics of fear’ on today’s society of the spectacle. Conceived along the lines of a funfair ghost train, the installation triggers visitors’ fear receptors by seemingly sensational effects. Taking their seats in a fairground car, they rattle through a series of spaces. Flickering TV screens illuminate the space, which booms with the apocalyptic rhetoric of politicians and terrorists. A troupe of sinewy performers, men of color, invades the installation; individuals who are subject to ethnic profiling in daily life. At first, they flaunt the familiar attributes of this fairground ride—costumed as a grizzly bear or clown—but their appearance and intentions become progressively ambiguous. The boundary between real life and theme park increasingly blurs.

Ceci n’est pas…

[:en]Photos Willem Popelier en Volker Schimkus.[:nl]Foto's Willem Popelier en Volker Schimkus.[:]

For ten days, an ‘unwelcome representation of things’ is shown in a glass booth in the city centre. The exhibition of ten living ‘statues’ features individuals who, to varying degrees, are considered social outcasts. Behind soundproof glass they are presented as rare relics. Hinting at La Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images) by René Magritte, the work analyzes the tension between a word and a representation of that word in an image. The work explores the reasons behind different forms of social unease, and the need to show and discuss that unease in the public domain.

Wanna Play?

[:en]Photo Willem Popelier.[:nl]Foto Willem Popelier.[:]

In Wanna Play? (Love in the time of Grindr) Verhoeven questions the changing nature of love and the influence of the smartphone on life in the public domain.

From a glass room placed in city centers, Verhoeven interacts with users of online dating apps like Grindr and Tinder about the nature of intimacy in our era, and asks them to visit him to satisfy his non-sexual desires. He proposes, for example, to wash their hair, to sing together in the shower, or to hold hands for an hour. Verhoeven’s life and search for connection is visible to everyone for 10 days, 24/7. The new public space, the internet, is made visible in the analogue public domain, the street. Digital becomes material. The screen of Verhoevens phone is constantly projected on a large screen; the chats can be read by everyone, but have been made anonymous: you cannot identify the person chatting with him.

With the emergence of dating apps such as Grindr and Tinder, a new revolution is underway: a date is available ‘on demand’. If we know how to sell ourselves, with the right slogan and right selfie, we have access to an endless supply of available men and women. Are we allowing the apps to seduce us into consuming each other’s attention and sexual potential or do they simply enable us to connect with each other much faster, while retaining the level of interaction?

One of the consequences of the phenomenon is the gradual disappearance of the Queer Village, places where homosexuals have been meeting since the 70s, and which as a result revealed deviating sexual preferences in the hetero-normative public space. For many homosexuals, the dating apps are becoming the most obvious meeting place. The ‘sexual deviant’, the ‘other’, has a distinct place in the online world. Does this also mean ‘queerness’ will be less visible on the street of the future?

For a ten-day period, Verhoeven goes in search of answers together with the people he meets. His findings are posted daily on a public blog, simultaneously providing the archive and contextualization of the work.

Songs for Thomas Piketty

[:en]Photos Willem Popelier, Jan Duerinck, Sander Marsman, Jeva Griskjane.[:nl]Foto's Willem Popelier, Jan Duerinck, Sander Marsman, Jeva Griskjane.[:]

In urban areas where begging has been banned, Verhoeven installs (aluminum replicas of) boom boxes that sing and beg for change. Verhoeven works with a large group of homeless people and, for a little while, returns their voices to the streets. The work explores the public space as a reflection of society—do we let businesses and security services decide what’s permitted on our streets, or do we also grant the inconvenient, sometimes wheedling or irritating voice of panhandlers a place?

Fare Thee Well!

[:en]Photos Colin Griffiths, Saris & den Engelsman.[:nl]Foto's Colin Griffiths, Saris & den Engelsman.[:]

Visitors look through a telescope and see a slow-moving text on a news ticker two kilometres away: a collection of things and ideas that we as a society have bid farewell or recently embraced. Händel’s opera aria Ah! Spietato plays on their headphones.

The work is a response to gloomy and apocalyptic future scenarios. Whether we should accept, lament or fine-tune these changes remains unclear.

The Funeral

[:en]Photos Willem Popelier, Jeva Griskjane.[:nl]Foto's Willem Popelier, Jeva Griskjane.[:]

Ten solemn funeral masses reflect on the doom rhetoric of politicians and cultural pessimists. The spectators mull over the ‘death’ of vanished ideas, values or social conditions: The idea of European ideal, Our belief in god, German collective guilt, and so on.

The ceremony is followed by a procession through the city and a funeral at a designated cemetery. By including visitors in the ritual, they are made complicit in the happening, which activates their position in relation to the alleged death.

In an installation, reminiscent of a hotel, each audience member will get their own bedroom. Here they are alone and anonymous, until they learn about the visitors in the other rooms. In its original set up the work functioned as a model for the anonymity associated with city life, where people simultaneously live similar lives. Due to the social implications caused by the current pandemic, the work will now also be a reflection on our time in self isolation, a time in which the proximity of strangers suddenly became a threat.

No man’s land

[:en]Photo Stavros Petropoulos.[:nl]Foto Stavros Petropoulos.[:]

[:en]Foto Maarten van Haaff.[:nl]Foto Maarten van Haaff.[:]

In the hall of a train station, twenty spectators wait for twenty former refugees. The spectator follows one of the migrants during a walk through the city. On their headphones they listen to different scenarios of their silent guide’s potential life. The aim isn’t to reveal the identity of the guide, but to disrupt the viewer’s gaze. The text speculates on the life of the migrant. And with this, the work questions the idea of authenticity in the lives of refugees: why share the truth when lies can garner you a better life?

Life Streaming

[:en]Photo Tim Mitchell.[:nl]Foto Tim Mitchell.[:]

Two internet cafés are connected. In Europe, twenty visitors chat with twenty performers in Sri Lanka on the beach hit by the 2004 Tsunami. What starts as an innocent chat evolves into a conversation about our empathic brain. The performers question their own victimhood and try to find out what pushes Western buttons.
Interventions in the space transform the conversation into a physical experience. The piece ends when the European internet café is inundated by warm water.

The Big Movement

[:en]Photo Dries Verhoeven.[:nl]Foto Dries Verhoeven.[:]

Reality is subtitled in The big movement. Spectators sit in a small custom-made cinema and see life as a film, as it is playing out at that moment outside the cinema walls. Unsuspecting passers-by play the main roles.

A Chinese voice-over describes life as it is happening outside; subtitled in the language of the country in which the performance happens. The audience hears what is exceptional about the everyday behaviour on a square in an average Western city, through the eyes of someone whose thoughts are determined by a collective mindset. For the Chinese voice-over actor, individual behaviour stands in contrast to the grand narratives about the origins of the universe, the earth and humanity. Through the Mandarin voice-over script, always using past tense as a dramaturgic device, the audience experiences a certain distance from the outside world.

After twenty minutes, the film stops, the filmed material is slowly rewound, the hasty individual movements change into a joint choreography. Shown ‘in reverse’, the passers-by appear to be aware of each other’s presence. Among the masses walking backwards, there is one person moving forwards. It appears to be the Chinese voice-over actor, a woman withdrawing from the group. The audience finally sees themselves in the film, they become aware of their own position in the collective human history.

God zegene de greep (For the love of God)

[:en]Photo Amange Shariff.[:nl]Foto Amange Shariff.[:]

God zegene de greep is a performative installation about the sense of community in times of predicted disasters. Do we move closer to each other if the catastrophic ecological and economic uncertainties materialise, or do we become more and more selfish and preservational if we see our demise with our own eyes? Twenty spectators take their place in a rescue capsule; they all have a small speaker around their neck.

Together, the voices coming from the speakers discuss the need for intimacy and each person’s individual battle to survive, sometimes at the expense of others. The light in the cabin regularly goes out and the voices all together start singing songs. A feeling of connection arises without the visitors exchanging a word.

Dark Room

[:en]Photos Julian Röder, Kris Dewitte.[:nl]Foto's Julian Röder, Kris Dewitte.[:]

Dark Room is a performative installation about the power and powerlessness of the human eye to create intimacy. With a panoramic camera, six blind performers film the city they cannot see. This film material is projected all round the spectators in the performance space. In the performance, the groping human walking in the city is placed opposite the seeing person in the theatre. Visitors experience how the blind perceive the city, each other and finally, the visitors themselves and how that perception differs from, or is similar to their own experience. The performers talk about their desire for intimacy/sexuality and about how the lack of sight helps or impedes that.

The blind performers finally enter the theatre space with their cameras, there is no daylight left to film, so no projection either. The visitors and performers find themselves together in a dark room.

Empty Hands

[:en]Photo Kris Dewitte.[:nl]Foto Kris Dewitte.[:]

Empty Hands is a performative installation about the way we perceive the dependent generations. Two generations stand on stage, five people under the age of 8, and five people over 80. The spectators, usually falling between these two generational extremes, are sitting in their seats; they are ancestors and descendants.

There are 20,000 empty eggs lying on the ground. There are ticker tapes hanging, dispersed throughout the room. The projected texts question our notions of the dependent generations. When we take physical responsibility for someone, do we still see that person as a complete person? Are they also allowed to have dangerous ideas, or does that dependence make the person simple and submissive? Do we dare to project the complexity of an adult life on the young kids? Or do we prefer to see their appeasing smiles?

Thy Kingdome Come

[:en]Photo Christophe Raynaud de Lage.[:nl]Foto Christophe Raynaud de Lage.[:]

Two visitors are seated in a small space, separated by a soundproof glass wall. They both hear the pre-recorded voice of a performer. . This influences their behavior in the space and the perception of the other. The two silent visitors simultaneously think about the possibility of intimacy. Desires are shown as a construct; a random stranger can easily morph into a loved one or an object of desire.

Thy Kingdom come is translated in five languages (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish), enabling the creation of an international version allowing spectators talking various languages to meet.

In France, the performance was presented under the title, Au Milieu du gué, in Germany as Dein Reich komme.

Trail Tracking

[:en]Photo Dries Verhoeven.[:nl]Photo Dries Verhoeven.[:]

Spectators walk alone through a deserted train station. The visitor enters into a discussion with a performer on their mobile phone. They talk about the various routes the visitor has taken in their life. At the end of the performance, it appears the performer has incorporated the information in the story being told. Seemingly insignificant stories unexpectedly get an important place in the performance. The visitor finally leaves the station on a rolling bed.

By using a mobile phone, the performance questions the difference between the physical and mental spaces we find ourselves in: while our body advances in space A, our thoughts are often in space B. At key moments in the performance, the two spaces come together. A sort of ‘transfer’ room, which a station usually is, changes into a place for standing still and reflecting, where time appears to be frozen.

The performance of Trail tracking in France took place in a deserted harbour under the title Mobile/Immobile. In Maastricht, with students from the theatre school, Verhoeven made a version in the old Sphinx factory.

Hartstocht

[:en]Photo René Louman.[:nl]Foto René Louman.[:]

Hartstocht is a theatrical bus tour allowing the spectators to experience an inverted world. They are transported through the city in a VW bus with blacked-out windows and an open roof. Mirrors are attached at waist height of spectators, and produces the effect of a city ‘sliding by underneath them’. The visitors see the bottom of buildings, churches, trees and clouds passing by. A text delivered through headphones makes it an associative performance about releasing control.

driesverhoeven

Archive

Orgasmagoria

The Fortress

Do not go gentle into that good night

Everything must go

Work work work

Dear beloved friend,

The NarcoSexuals

Gently Down the Stream

Brothers exalt thee to freedom

Happiness

Guilty Landscapes

Homo Desperatus

The Silent Body

Sic transit gloria mundi

Phobiarama

Ceci n’est pas…

Wanna Play?

Songs for Thomas Piketty

Fare Thee Well!

The Funeral

You are here

No man’s land

Life Streaming

The Big Movement

God zegene de greep (For the love of God)

Dark Room

Empty Hands

Thy Kingdome Come

Trail Tracking

Hartstocht