WIPCOOP: Work in progress 2023

Programme 19 October  

On Thursday 19 October, get to know the works in progress by Hafsa Aqqal, Nabil Ennassouh, Mikael De Geyter & Eyas Almokdad. We welcome you from 9.30am. The programme in detail will follow here soon!

10u00: HELLO SCHATJE, ADIÓS AMOUR – AUGUSTO PEDRAZA 

Hello Schatje, Adiós Amour seeks to understand the origins of love from a rational and historical point of view.
Augusto Pedraza starts from the hypothesis: To feel complete, we must love and be loved. Through personal testimonies about love and his own love story, he creates a dialogue between scientific and emotional approaches.

Augusto Pedraza is a theatre and filmmaker, performer and historian who lives in Mechelen. In 2020, he graduated from RITCS as a director. His first short film Violence premiered in 2021 and was selected for several festivals. Through dance, theatre, film, visual art and music, he speaks about themes as origin, identity, love, pessimism, violence and hope. The adventure and desire to broaden his imagination and ideas led him to seek out places other than Mexico City, his hometown. He embarked on a journey that took him along different paths all the way to Brussels, where language, climate, relationships, nostalgia and encounters with others led to a constant redefinition of his identity. "I am under constant redefinition, I am part of a diaspora, I am part of a minority, I am a collector and treasurer of stories and I am a person with a pluricultural history. A history that motivates me to speak about those chapters of my life."

_{Play and concept: Augusto Pedraza / Director, dramaturge and producer: Lorena Pires / Technical assistance: Jamy Hollebeke / Dance assistant: Alexandros Anastasiadis El Greco / Production: 2 Options vzw / With the support of RADAR Mechelen, Mestizo Arts Platform & WIPCOOP.}

10h30: Artist Talks 

11h30: AN ATTEMPT TO MAKE MY BODY AND ITS POWER A HOSPITABLE UNIVERSE – NABIL ENNASSOUH

In An attempt to make my body and its power a hospitable universe, Nabil Ennassouh wants to travel through stories, systems, people and previous generations imprinted on the skin. All those stories collided at some critical point and created a terrifying chaos in the span of his life. From there, images, flashbacks, mixtures of colours and smells [on their own] began to set up this Saturnian but revealing multi-sensory piece in the back of his mind.

Nabil Ennassouh is a self-taught movement practitioner interested in urban dance styles with rhythmic roots in North Africa through his background. In his artistic practice, he questions possible positions of bodies, their emancipations, their legitimacy and their vulnerabilities. Ennassouh considers himself a dedicated practitioner of exaltation through movement. From 2022, he began exploring his performative potential and immersing himself in dance. He has collaborated with a.o.: Anthea Hamilton (Mashup/MHKA-Antwerp), Deena Abdelwaheed (Read The Room festival curated by Mophradat), Marco Torrice (Melting pot) and Fallon Mayanja.

_{Supported by: There is nothing wrong with people (Johanna Couvée & Bouchra Lamyseh) and ISAC (Institut supérieur des arts chorégraphique ARBA ESA), Citylab/Pianofabriek, Mestizo Arts Platform / WIPCOOP.} 

12h00: artist talks + soup lunch 

13h30: Omar ibn Saïd et nous – Hafsa Aqqal

With Omar ibn Saïd et nous, Hafsa Aqqal sets out on a journey grafted onto the life story of Omar ibn Saïd. An 18th-century black academic who was enslaved in the United States but refused to remain silent. He speaks in Pulaar and writes in Arabic. Through his autobiography, he shares with us his own story, his life, his emotions and his faith. While reading, Aqqal felt the urge to tell the stories that spin the web of history, those forgotten in the folds of time, and to legitimise them through representation. Stories, emotions and multiple identities are interpreted through language, one of the common threads in this creation. Aqqal wants the languages, which stand for her and Omar, to resonate.

Hafsa Aqqal started with theatre at the academies of Saint-Josse and Schaerbeek. She took several courses in words, drama, diction and more. In 2019, she joined theatre company Ras el Hanout. She debuted in “Chuuut: les femmes musulmanes ont des choses à dire”. She also currently works for Ras El Hanout as an actress, stage manager and presenter. Omar Ibn Saïd is her first creation. Aqqal was born in Italy and moved to Belgium at the age of six. Her Moroccan heritage embraces her being, where cultures and languages merge in a joyous and sometimes disturbing chaos.

_{Projectleider – Hafsa Aqqal / Performance – Hafsa Aqqal & Oumoul Kairy Diallo / Director – Aïcha Cissé / Dramaturgy – Mohamed Salim Haouach / Partner – Ras El Hanout. With the support of Mestizo Arts Platform / WIPCOOP.} 

14h00: Artist Talks 

15h00: UNFOLDING THE BODY – EYAS ALMOKDAD

Almokdad questions how we can transform the reality of tyranny and brutality at the time of occurrence into literary, artistic, and intellectual connotations. Unfolding The Body does not focus on the emotional impact of disaster images. Eyas Almokdad, takes it further and digs into the memories of both the space and the dismantled bodies, the individuals who once inhabited the ruins, and taps into the collective memory of war victims. Almokdad seeks insights and addresses the grey zone between wars in the present and the past. A simultaneously gloomy, neutral, detailed, and flat image of devastation. An exploration of life through the ritual celebration of death.

Eyas Almokdad is a Syrian Belgian multidisciplinary artist. A filmmaker and choreographer with a bachelor in ballet and modern dance (The Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts Damascus – Syria 2005), a master in audiovisual arts (Transmedia, Multimedia Arts, Art and Technology Luca School of Arts – Brussels 2013), and a master in audiovisual arts (Film/KASK – Ghent 2021). Almokdad made various fiction and documentary films about: the war and revolution in Syria and the political and humanitarian aspects of immigration.  Through narratives and magical elements of reality, his films address contemporary human issues. His choreographies attempt to comprehend the extent of human suffering and bring images of war victims to the scene. Through experiment, ritual theatre, dance and new media, he voices the natural and the politicised postmodern body.

_{Concept, Direction and Choreography – Eyas Almokdad / Sound Design and Music – Ioana Mandrescu / Cinematography – Daniel Demoustier / Video editor – Erik Parys / Motion graphic – Pablo Diartinez / Outside Eyes – Hazim Kamaledin, Stijn Demeulenaere, Zoë Demoustier, Nedjma Hadj, Pablo Diartinez / Residencies at ZSenne Art Lab, Gouvernement, Meyboom – Artists run space and Moussem Cities.}

15h30: Artist Talks 

Programme 20 October 

On Friday 20 October, in addition to a work-in-progress by Justine Theizen, we will for the first time present work by artists from Amsterdam, Berlin and Barcelona, namely Melisa Diktas, Wang Ping-Hsiang, Sara Manubens and Ves Liberata. We welcome you from 9.30am. The programme in detail will follow here soon! 

10h00: WIPCOOP TALKS 

10h30: SEASONS – JUSTINE THEIZEN 

How can we deconstruct a lesbian relationship through movement in a society where relationships are often represented in heteronormative terms? In SEASONS, Justine Theizen and Isabelle Audoan look at love, passion and its evolution, as well as the representation of female and queer bodies. Their work is inspired by their own past relationships and loves. Although these were lesbian relationships, many of them turned out to be heteronormative.  Question: how can this schema be deconstructed?

Justine Theizen is a 25-year-old dancer, choreographer and hip-hop artist. She first trained in hip-hop for several years, then in krump for three years. She grew up in an urban culture, with battles, choreographic competitions and music videos. For Seasons, she received both the 1000Pieces Puzzle award (2019) and won the Brusssels Bijou (2020). Between 2019 and 2022, she performed in: Chikara by Ronin, Solomon x Sheba by WANP, La Ave by Nina Munoz, Ruupture by Mercedes Dassy, Categoreez by Yassin Mrabtifi and Free Dance Espace by Lorena Spindler. She also appeared in several short films – such as “Tarot” directed by Alice Khol – and films – such as “Rebel” by Adil and Bilal. In June 2022, she created her Dragking character @Zack and performed at Sassy Cabaret, Mama’s Open Mic, Fame Festival, Crashtest and Playback. In early 2023, she organised a Queer Battle during the Rendez-Vous Get Down at the CC Jacques Franck.

_{Choreography: Justine Theizen / Performer: Justine Theizen and Isabelle Audoan / Set design: Camille Colin / Production: Atelier 210/ Distribution: Get Down Agency / Music production: INSK/ Singer: Clelia Guendouzi}

11h00: Artist Talk with Eli Mathieu Bustos 

12h00: NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR – SARA MANUBENS & VES LIBERTA

Two trans-lesbian vampires, condemned to wander around a ruined theatre. They seem to play at burying themselves, at condolences for the punishment of carrying their bodies. They recreate their deaths, they fake them again so as not to forget that in life they are already dead. One says to the other: ‘Give me your love’. And the other replies: ‘There is none left. I just can’t help it, my nose is bleeding a lot, a lot, what’s wrong with me, I don’t understand, I was only thinking about you, I haven’t done anything else, why is my nose bleeding?!’ NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR is a performing arts project that aims to revisit the original German film Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922) from a QUEER and trans-lesbian perspective. The project relates the expressionist vampiric phenomenon with the transfeminine and estrogenated body, updating the original film’s questions about sexual desire, terror to the body, social hunting and reproduction of the monster. This research is an exercise of re-appropriation of that which has always been ours: the horror film genre, for Queer liberation.

SARA MANUBENS is an artist, choreographer and transvestite in Barcelona. MA in Performing Arts Practice and Visual Culture (Museo Reina Sofía, ARTEA). Her work moves between site-specific, performance and dance and focuses on trans corporeality and its impact on reality. She has been developing her own creative processes since 2015. Symphony of the Seas is an artistic project that begins its journey in 2017 and aims to take transvestite practice and identity from a choreographic, experimental and borderline viewpoint. Her artistic goal is to cross the methodologies of Live Arts Performance with trans topics and presences, placing a Queer logic in the choreographical production. These narratives are related to transition, violence on the transfeminine body, the transvestite image as a space of resistance against the institution, trans performativity as a political action, and horror as a process for collective liberation. She has designed and executed Queer educational projects in different institutional programs and public schools, among them DRAG KIDS (2020), a family cross-dressing session, or TEEN HORROR (2022), a horror film with teenagers.

VES LIBERTA (Teresa Liberato) is a dancer and performer. She studied at O Corpo Da Dança – Torres Novas, ESD (Lisbon), and ECD course at AHK (Amsterdam). She followed the advanced program PACAP5, curated by João Fiadeir. She has participated in durational workshops with, Marcelo Evelin, Radouan Mriziga, Emmanuel Huynth, Antonija Livingstone and Emma Bigé, Vera Mantero, Yael Karavan, Nadia Beugré, Eleonora Fabião, Luara Raio and Acauã Elbandido and Liza Nelson. She studied the BioChá, Shirin Yoku and ZaZen methods with the author Zélia Sakai. As a creator she has developed work in the areas of performance and dance, she has presented her original pieces in Porta 6 Gallery, Museumplein (Amsterdam), Virgínia Theatre, TANTANTANN festival, Teatro do Bairro Alto. She participated as a performer in projects with Ana Borralho and João Galante, Clara Andermatt, Raimund Hoghe, Pedro Barreiro, Eduardo Batata and Dinis Machado.

_{CONCEPT AND CHOREOGRAPHY – Sara Manubens / IN COLLABORATION WITH – Teresa Liberato / CLOTHING AND ASSISTANCE – Feña Celedon / DRAMATURGY COLLABORATOR – Charlie Benedetti / PRODUCTION SUPPORT – Nau Ivanow / RESIDENCIES – La Casa Encendida (Madrid) and Forum Dança (Lisboa).}

12h30 WIPCOOP TALKS 

13h00 Artist Talk with Sara Manubens & Teresa Liberato 

13h30 Soup Lunch 

14h30: RETINA MANEUVER – PING-HSIANG WANG

After completing his military service ten years ago and being discharged from the military, Wang rarely contemplated his status as a reservist. However, when the Chinese Communist Party surrounded Taiwan with a frequency unprecedented in history and conducted military exercises on a large scale, the artist began to consider whether, in the near future, he would have to prepare to annihilate the advancing enemy as a soldier on the battlefield, rather than following his vocation as a theatre director. Ever since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, China has been exerting increasingly intense military pressure on Taiwan. The international community is thus focused on this swirling centre of Indo-Pacific geopolitics. The Economist has conducted an in-depth investigation into Taiwan as the “most dangerous place in the world.” Since 1949, Taiwan has been in a potential state of war with China and has had a long-standing conscription system. As a professionally trained theater-maker, director Wang Ping-Hsiang, like most men in Taiwan, is also a reservist who can be called upon to go to the front line at any time. As soon as he graduated from college, he was drafted into the army and spent a year in military training.

Ping-Hsiang Wang is a theatre director from Taiwan. His work focuses on how human behaviour is being disciplined and modified through the evolution of materiality, the internet, systems, machinery, the environment, and commerce. Wang’s signature aesthetic is honed on the transference of normal daily landscapes into fantastic digital realities. He views theatre as a perceptual vehicle for enabling new means of communication and combines multiple performative elements using text, spoken language, sound, movement, live-streaming video, objects, and scenography. His work posits narrative as a full sensory experience. In recent years, he has worked with diverse international theatre companies, including Agrupación Señor Serrano, Rimini Protokoll, and cmd+c company. Many festivals throughout Europe and Asia have presented his works, such as Romaeuropa in Italy, Grec Festival de Barcelona and TNT Festival in Spain, Festival de la Cité in Switzerland, and ¡Viva! Spanish & Latin American Festival in the UK.

_{Concept – Wang Ping Hsiang / Dramaturge – Dan-Dan Liu / Visual Design – Yi-Ju Chou / Director Assistant – Kang-Hua Chang}

15h00 WIPCOOP Talks

15h30: Artist talk with Wang Ping-Hsiang

16h00: THE UNTAMABLE CREATURE WITH THE FLOWERED DRESS – MELISA DIKTAS

The Kurds’s say: It is dangerous for us to speak, so we dance. Kurdish dance is a way of fighting and starts from a specific need, motor, power, resistance and hope. In THE UNTAMABLE CREATURE WITH THE FLOWERED DRESS, Diktas wants to explore this engine within herself. What emerges from it? Where does it take her? Govend* is about the collective, making a fire together while moving repetitively. But each one matters in this. Diktas wants to create a base rhythm of her own, a repetition in the movement rhythm of govend. So it can build out into a new dance idiom. Together with her dahul (drum), Melisa will explore the different layers of the timeline to become a true Çîrokbêj (“storyteller”). With govend, by govend but in her own potential.

*Govend; is a Kurdish dance style that stands for the abbreviation of “goden” (sound) and “venden” (moment).

Melisa Diktas is a mover of Kurdish/Indonesian descent. After her graduation, 7 years ago she started as a dancer in the commercial field. Meanwhile she danced for diferent events and productions, choreographed TV shows and videoclips and works in Theaters. Today she is mainly engaged in her own research. Although Melisa grew up with the folkloric dances, she is driven to specialize in the core of the movement. In order to get 

this new dance idiom she is creating a fundamental ground to build on. She took folkloric dance classes in Holland. And in 2022 she went to Istanbul, to take govend courses from Erhan Zaza. Followed by a fulltime course at Govend Instandbul Arjen Brusk dance school. She travelled through 8 cities in Northern Kurdistan to research Kurdish dances. She travels back and forward to Istanbul to do research. She participated in an research in Amsterdam in collaboration with ART& Amsterdam, Cheroney Pelupessy and Gi Au-Yeung. During a residency in Sweden she deepend her research into govend in collaboration with director Marit Shirin Carolasdotter with whom she co-choreographed the project ‘No friend but the mountains’.

_{Outside eye, coach and dramaturgy: Right about now / Decor: Melisa Diktas / Costume: Melisa Diktas / Choreography: Melisa Diktas}

16h30 WIPCOOP TALKS 

17h30: Artist talks with Melisa Diktas