In Allah 99 – the debut novel by Hassan Blasim – a writer travels around the world to interview ninety-nine people from the Middle East. This is the premise of Enkidu Khaled’s new performance. Three performers and a DJ play a series of the characters in the novel. You meet a young woman who is looking for her beloved who left to be a resistance fighter, a weeping Iraqi taxi driver who collects stories about illnesses, and a DJ who used to work as a doctor in a Syrian hospital during the ISIS occupation.

Just like theatre, interviews often toy with the border between appearance and authenticity, and it is precisely this border that Khaled explores in his Scheherazade-esque story marathon.

Watch the teaser!
Read his latest interview with Brakke Grond! (NL)

Eleven seconds: that is the average time we spend on a work of art. In 11 seconds, Charlotte Bouckaert and her audience watch one photograph for a long time: an exterior view of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. On the stage is a work table with paper, scissors, paint, etc. The workshop of a bricoleur. A video camera projects what is happening on the table onto the back wall. The performer continuously manipulates the photo and makes our reading of the image shift. For Charlotte Bouckaert, the photo of the Guggenheim Museum is the starting point of a playful exploration of our way of looking at art, of the relationship between art and reality, of the museum as an institution, of photography and transience, etc. 
Watch the trailer!
 

In the collection of heroic stories, Gilgamesh, who is often accompanied by his friend Enkidu, experiences mythological adventures. For example, he goes in search of eternal life, or he fights a duel with supernatural creatures sent to Uruk by the gods. In addition, he confronts himself with existential questions concerning, among other things, the awareness of mortality.

Together with Mesut Alp, archaeologist and expert on Mesopotamia, Mesut Arslan rewrote the epic of Gilgamesh and excavated a number of contemporary core themes from it. Arslan and Alp treat the encounter between Enkidu and Gilgamesh as one that puts nature against civilisation, Homo Sapiens against Neanderthals, and time against space. Read more...
 

For three days, Beyond the Black Box breaks out of boxes and dares to colour outside the lines of the classical genres. During this transdisciplinary festival, you will discover artists who go off-grid, presenting work that goes beyond easily categorisable disciplines. For this Antwerp edition, we bring together artistic practices that manoeuvre on the cutting edge of disciplines, exploring their boundaries and forging new connections. 

We present work of Dan Mussett, Laurent Delom de Mézerac, Sophie Guisset, Clement Layes, Par Hasard, Tiran Willemse, Evelien Cammaert, Benjamin Vandewalle & HYOID, CREW & K.A.K., ...  Beyond the Black Box invites creators and the public to experiment with form, space and time. The festival challenges you to look at things differently. Be surprised by works in unexpected places and moments. 

Following the traces of the Amsterdam edition of Beyond the Black Box (Brakke Grond, SoAP Maastricht en C-TAKT), four Belgian organisations (C-TAKT, Monty, Platform 0090 and wpZimmer) breathe life into an Antwerp version of the festival. More info...