‘Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine’

Mette Edvardsen’s “living books” first appeared in Brussels in 2013 at the Kunstenfestivaldesarts. Since then, this astonishing proposition, called Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine, has turned into a long-term project on the incarnation of books. After having learnt and recited by heart for several years, the performers are now going one step further by putting down on paper the books as they exist in their memory. These editions are new versions of existing works, texts rewritten through a process of learning and forgetting, with all the transformations that occur along the way. The festival is opening a reading room in the Galerie Ravenstein: a place where this permanently changing project is being documented and set in motion. The traces of a lengthy working process can be seen there, new “living books” can be consulted and we can even have a go at it ourselves. The practice is made tangible, everything is shared. Time is still suspended.

With Alexandra Napier, Bruno De Wachter, Caroline Daish, David Helbich, Elly Clarke, Irena Radmanovic, Johan Sonnenschein, Katja Dreyer, Kristien Van den Brande, Lilia Mestre, Mari Matre Larsen, Marit Ødegaard, Mette Edvardsen, Moqapi Selassie, Philip Holyman, Rhiannon Newton,Sarah Ludi, Sébastien Hendrickx, Sonia Si Ahmed, Tiziana Penna, Vincent Dunoyer, Wouter Krokaert & special guests Victoria Perez Royo, Jeroen Peeters, a.o.