Kris Verdonck

Kris Verdonck was trained in visual art, architecture and theatre. These three disciplines return in his work: he walks the borderland between visual art and theatre, between installation and performance, between dance and architecture. ICK recognized a highly individual interpretation of the body in revolt in his work, particularly in his fascination with the relationship between man and machine. Verdonck stages intimate relationships between living beings and cold machines. Kris Verdonck is to make an adaptation of I/II/III/IIII in 2017 and a new creation with the dancers of ICK in 2018.

As director and visual artist he has wide-ranging projects to his name, such as END (2008), a big-stage production which shows the possible end phases of human society in 10 scenes; Actor #1 (2010), a walk-through performance with three variations on the theme of 'chaos into order'; K, a Society (2010), a pathway of installations inspired by the work of Franz Kafka; M, a reflection (2012), a performance with texts by Heiner Müller, performed by Johan Leysen and his digital double; and the musical theatre performance H, an accident (2013), a creation for the big stage, inspired by the work of Daniil Harms, with nine actors and a robotic orchestra on the stage. He recently made UNTITLED (2014) about the tension between object and body, ISOS (2015), a 3-D video installation which takes the apocalyptic science fiction novels by J.G. Ballard as its starting point and IN VOID (2016), an installation circuit about human absence.

A symposium on the artistic practice of Kris Verdonck was organised in the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center (City University of New York). In BOSCH BEACH (2016), an opera directed by Verdonck based on a libretto written by Dimitri Verhulst and composed by Vasco Mendonça, the false paradise of the resorts and the Bosch-like hell on earth merge seamlessly together. Kris Verdonck is artiste associé at the University Paris-Sorbonne.