Text: Jozef Wouters / Text editing: Jeroen Peeters
What remains of a place when its past becomes its only future? Voices, memories, and stories come together to form a collective “soft layer” over a historic building – a poetic performance about perception, community, and the interplay of space and time.
This performance is a continuation of “The Soft Layer” (Tunis), a site-specific work that took place from 2017 to 2019 in the historic building of Dar Bairam Turki in Tunis, as part of “Dream City”. Over several years artist and scenographer Jozef Wouters collected memories, stories and ideas from local residents who live and work around the building and its surroundings. Inside its courtyard a group formed of young architects, neighbors, actors and one science fiction writer. Together, they undertook the renovation of the beautiful 17th century Ottoman palace. A different kind of renovation, one that doesn’t remove but adds a layer—a soft and temporary layer made of collective memories, stories and opinions about the building. Part of the work was a text that turns the building into a score, to be read at sunset as an act of care and a collective meditation on a building. If the past is the only imaginable future, then where are we now?
Two years later, after invitations in Palermo, Brussels, Ghent and Ostend, Jozef Wouters continues to restage the text of “The Soft Layer” in different courtyards in various cities in Europe. This time in Berlin, in the courtyard of HAU3: four local actors come together and, using the score created in Tunis, and retell the story of Dar Bairam Turki and its renovation. In doing so, they explore the question of how much spaces, walls, and buildings remember—and what stories they can tell.
Team
Dates
Current
Price: 22 €, reduced 12 €
4.7.,18:00: English performance
Credits
“The Soft Layer” (Tunis, 2017-2019):
Production: Dream City Tunis, L'Art Rue, Damaged Goods. Co-production: Kunstencentrum Viernulvier. “The Soft Layer” (Tunis) was partly created during rehearsals with Fatma Ben Saïdane, Amira Chebli, Hichem Chebli, and Vladimir Miller.
“The Soft Layer” (Brussels, 2024):
Production: Damaged Goods, Kanal – Centre Pompidou. In collaboration with Dream City BXL.
