In a Second
2022
The performance was ongoing and had no limits to the duration. The audio used had a complete duration of 00:04:40.
The registration has a duration of 00:05:41.
‘In a Second’ is a work/performance made for the site-specific exhibition: In Limbo. An exhibition made by the first year MA students Scenography about a building “waiting to be demolished”.
Text of the ‘In Limbo’ exhibition:
‘The Gans Studio will be demolished after our exhibition. But instead of going carte blanche, we took the route of highlighting the history and aesthetic of the building in its current stage. Limbo is a temporal state of being in between places. This place could be the one in between the world of the living and world of the death. The past and the present or, the future and the here-and-now. Limbo is amidst the known and unknowing. Between Gans Studio and us’.
The work started at the entrance of the exhibition. Audience was seated on green chairs, and asked to listen to a pre-recorded audio about 'what happens to us when we die'. This audio talks about the stage in between: the few second after being declared 'clinically dead', but, before being considered as 'brain dead'. During the duration of the audio, Madelief slowly walked in front of the audience, and carefully passed through a little door, hidden in the middle of the big garage doors. After the audio is finished, the garage door slides up and revealed the exhibition space.
In the second part, the audience was guided by Thijs Baselmans, and asked to lie down on a stretcher while being pushed inside a little room/sculpture. In this room another audio played. This audio was accompanied by light coming from the side, that highlighted an maquette version of the exhibition space, above your head. The shadows in the maquette, showed how light passes through the building. This part was in collaboration with Thijs Baselmans and, coincide with his work: 31,536,000.
