Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot: Crowd Simulation Room

Who are ‘WE’? And what would the world look like if we got rid of the supposed distinctions between humans, plants and things?
BVDS suggests we let go of our focus on the individual and instead practice forming groups in a technological playground. Inspired by the forest, the swarm and the herd, Crowd Simulation Room explores the possibilities for humans to playfully connect with the greater whole, a vast, multitudinous organism. In so called practice space surrounded by other humans, animals, plants and inanimate objects, visitors play ‘The Game of Life’, a simulation where not the survival of the fittest but rather co-existence is key.

Crowd Simulation Room is part of a new series called ‘Rooms for Transformation’, which BVDS will be working on in the coming years. In these rooms for transformation, the makers dream a new world into being together with the audience. They make playful, confusing, lighthearted, confrontational suggestions for a paradigm shift with respect to humankind and its role on this planet. The reality that appears is the one we give attention to. It is from this optimistic principle that BVDS creates spaces to practice this. Because, as humans, we might not be fully human yet. The current form of humankind is not the end of evolution. BVDS reflects on and builds on the question how we, as modern Western people, can and must transform in a way that would benefit us.

A new genre: BVDS opens the grey space

With the grey space, BVDS introduces a new genre. For some time now, the work of BVDS has been at the intersection of the white cube and the black box, with which it offers an experience that holds the middle ground between a visit to the theatre and a museum. In the coming years, BVDS will be exploring the purpose these public buildings serve and the role art can play in our gatherings at these places by playing with the rules and conventions of each.

Planning

Premiere: spring 2022

Credits

Concept & direction Suzan Boogaerdt and Bianca van der Schoot Costumes Lotte Goos Composer Wessel Schrik Lighting design Theun Mosk Video and spatial design Rodrik Biersteker Execution of spatial design Marjolijn Brouwer Technique Jaap Schledorn & Wout Panis Performance Tim van Dongen, Sjaid Fonce, Charlotte Gillain & Clara Ottignon Production manager Milou Smit Technical producer Siemen van der Werf Co-production Theater Rotterdam Made possible by Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Fonds21

Crowd Stimulation Room is a part of ACT: Art, Climate, Transition, a European cooperation project on ecology, climate change and social transition. In an era of climate breakdown, pandemics, mass extinction and growing inequalities, we join our forces in a project on hope: connecting broad perspectives with specific, localised possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we ACT. 

Contact

For more information you can contact Lene Groten, Bussines Manager Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot or Melih Gencboyaci TR/ ACT curator.