SAT 15/03
NATIONAL PREMIERE * AUDIOVISUAL * FLEMISH GUITAR QUARTETInterview — 20:00 A.J.H. Dautzenberg
Concert — 20:30
Venue — Savelsbergkapel, Heerlen
An audiovisual trip
Merijn Bisschops transformed the complex structure, suspense, characters and stylistic choices of the book De Vijf into a self-contained concert experience with dance film. Bisschops: ‘On first hearing, The Five is a brutal piece of music with influences of drone doom, metal and indie rock, but just as the book has several layers to peel off, underneath that rough exterior is my signature rich emotional inner world, instrumental sophistication and challenging microtonality. Where the music can be seen as an associative concept album to the book, the dance film is an artistic response to the book, focusing in particular on the female and male gaze.'
The Five
With his novel The Five, A.H.J. Dautzenberg explores freedom of expression in the current era, and in particular the role art plays in that discourse. Four teenage girls share a diabolical lust for sex and violence. They indulge completely in an underground work of art, pulverising not only the limits of prevailing morality but also those of language. Dautzenberg: ‘In a way, the novel constitutes a pharmakon, poison and medicine at the same time. In art, and certainly in literature, we tend to show only the sublime of man. With my book, I mirror above all the abject; we must be prepared to see the potential executioner in ourselves, the beast. The impulse of the perverse, to quote Edgar Allan Poe. Sex and violence are primal drives that need no motive to manifest themselves.'
Collaboration
For the premiere of The Five, Intro in Situ is collaborating with Schunck Libraries in Heerlen. As part of Boekenweek (12 - 23 March), A.H.J. Dautzenberg will be interviewed prior to the concert.