Out of the Blue // Performance

Sun 06/09/2024 | 8:00–9:15 pmTickets
Mon 06/10/2024 | 8:00–9:15 pm Tickets

The performane on June 9^th will be followed by an audience discussion. 

Following their acclaimed performances of MINIG STORIES and PLEASANT ISLAND (guest performance at the Freiburg Festival in 2022), Silke Huysmans and Hannes Deere present the final part of their trilogy about mining. This time, they focus on a completely new industry: deep-sea mining. As resources on land become increasingly scarce, mining companies are turning to the sea.

In spring of 2021, three ships gather on a remote patch of the Pacific. One of them belongs to the Belgian mining company DEME-GSR. Four kilometers below the sea surface, its mining robot scrapes the seabed in search of metals. On another ship, an international team of marine biologists and geologists monitors this process. A third ship completes the fleet: the Rainbow Warrior, on which activists are protesting against this potential future industry. 

From their small apartment in Brussels, Silke and Hannes are connected to the three ships via satellite. Each of the ships represents a pillar of the public debate: Industry, science and activism. The result is an intimate and precise piece somewhere between documentary, multimedia installation and video essay, which restrains itself from expressing loud opinions. It is an attempt to capture a potentially decisive moment in the history of the earth. How deep can mining companies dig and where are we as humanity actually digging? 

"'Out of the Blue' (...) navigates live through a complex knowledge space and shows the limits to which knowledge and science are pushed when they are interpreted by stakeholders. This space is so precisely designed in terms of multimedia that the audience is filled with deep-sea silence. An atmosphere of attention in which quiet inner voices can be heard instead of quick answers." 

- Astrid Kaminski, taz

06/09/24 | 8:00 pm

06/10/24 | 8:00 pm