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RHIZOME

 

The earth is exhausted. We humans, living in the prosperous West, need to radically rethink our way of living and acting. To do so, we must adjust the ideas and value systems that underlie this action. How do we do that? How do we install a different, more embodied thinking about ourselves in the world?

RHIZOME is a nomadic work of art with which we travel along abandoned and overgrown industrial sites and urban fringes of cities in Europe. These places are alive with the vestiges of time past, and the convergence of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, like glimmers of a possible future. Inspired by the proliferating life force that we find in these places shaped by capitalism, we search for a new and different conversation with the people and things around us.

In the places we visit with RHIZOME, we are inspired by rhizomatically growing shrubs and plants. We delve into the way their roots branch off, connecting everything tot everything. And we pay attention to the way we too are woven into everything. In an attempt to think like a blackberry bush grows, we look for a different way of being in the world.

With RHIZOME we invite you to join us in a Driftage  through challenging terrain. Based on a simple set of principles and a few magic spells for the journey, we take you into a challenging physical thought game and tempt you to different ways of relating and experiencing. After the driftage, we serve a hearty soup and conclude with a Conversation.

‘We need to think, think, think’, says philosopher Rosi Braidotti in one of her lectures, in response to the question of what we should use theatrical space for today. RHIZOME does just that: creating space to think, contemplate and reflect, but in combination with plants, animals, things, microbes and our own bodies.

RHIZOME premiered 20 November 2021, on the site of a former starch factory in Ter Apel (Groningen) during Jonge Harten Festival.