Pieter De Buysser: Spatial perspective

For its 22nd edition, the interdisciplinary, multicultural Kunstenfestivaldesarts focuses on borders. Six artists who are presenting their work at the festival talk about frontiers and how their creations connect to this theme. This part: theatre director Pieter De Buysser.

Brussels-based author, theatre director, and philosopher Pieter De Buysser has likewise never been held back by imaginary borders. This becomes completely clear in The Tip of the Tongue, a production for which he is leaving our solar system, and which will only be performed at planetaria.

“When I think about borders, I spontaneously think about the classic way in which we imagine things. I attempt to transcend that rigid way of looking at the world. By tampering with our grammar and reopening the discussion about problematic words like ‘worldview’ – we can only observe our world with the means that we have at our disposal in that world – or ‘cosmopolitan’ – a word that has almost become an insult in these nationalistic times – but which I would like to use in a less anecdotal and less political way.”

“My central concern in The Tip of the Tongue is amazement at the starry sky and the cosmic humility that this might inspire in us. Viewed from space, you undoubtedly get a different perspective on things like national borders, the nation state, or nation building. This is not relativism. When you see the humanity of the artificial borders that we create on Earth, you actually enhance the human sense of responsibility. When you zoom out, human discomforts wither and pulverise, and you can start exploring things.”

“To this end, we use original images from NASA and the ESO, as well as the stunning old mechanical Zeiss projector at the Planetarium in Laken/Laeken, a unique piece of heritage. And we do this with the full realisation that these artificial instruments distort the reality that we can see with the naked eye so that we can observe it nevertheless. This is where science and art meet. The entire cosmos is hyperreal and yet we are doomed to see it only in our imagination.”

> Pieter De Buysser/ROBIN: The Tip of the Tongue. 6/05 > 8/05, Planetarium, Brussels