ESCAPE GAME. civic integration course for European given by a migrant
Inburgering in… is a series of site-specific performances that incorporates elements of escape and role-playing games. Inburgering is the Dutch term used for the civic integration courses and exams that migrants have to undergo in order to prove their ability to adapt in the Netherlands. Inburgering in… takes place in basements of art spaces and is built with leftover materials found on the spot and a surveillance camera system. The dramaturgy changes depending on the conditions of each venue and the context where it is presented. In collaboration with performer Matteo De Blasio, who would play the role of the native boss in the game, a fictional language was created. The players were supposed to learn it through the interaction with him during the game, where he would hire them to clean the space, or to serve him food.
Concept-creation: Thiago Antunes
Direction and dramaturgy: Thiago Antunes
research-performer: Matteo De Blasio
fictional language creation: Matteo De Blasio and Thiago Antunes
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presented at Zsenne Artlab in Brussels, in August 2017,
ENTER Festival, in April 2018,
BANG!, November 2018,
Bewogen Festival, in February 2019
Thiago Antunes, about his own work:
"Crossing the borders of theatre, game, and ritual, my practice interrogates how identities and territories are intertwined. Language, appearance, documents, are all elements that display privileges and restrictions, and are commonly taken as definitive in people’s lives. I want to make room for playing around other possibilities of social interaction, by exaggerating, distorting, and displacing power structures. Therefore, I am not afraid of being extremely explicit in my works. I reject a clean aesthetic, embracing noise, precariousness, and excess, as strategies to disrupt the art economy and its standards. I am intrigued by the promiscuity of cultures, habits, and traditions that I have the privilege to experience as a non-European artist in Europe, thus I cannot refrain from transiting between artistic genres and communicating in languages that I barely master. As I am constantly confronted with the European projections about the Global South, the indigenous, the non-white, the mestizo, the latino, the queer, or just The Other, my work aims to create narratives that give back to Europe grotesque and monstrous representations of itself. Inspired by the cannibal approach of some native American tribes, my goal is to make the One experiment how the Other tastes like"
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