Towards a Ruined Theater

Together with architect Sébastien Tripod and graphic & floral designer Deborah Robbiano, choreographer and researcher Sara Manente is creating an installation around the fertile ruin, based on fungal imagery. Having previously created architectural fungi columns, they now aim to imagine an entire theatre in collaboration with fungi and molds. 

The theatre turns into a compost in which process equals products and things are not stable but rather in constant decay and regrowth. A situation creating space for questions, metaphors and images around contamination and finality. Is every encounter a form of contamination? Is every performance a ruin that could bring fruit?

Manente invites makers and thinkers at a number of moments to activate the installation in different ways. Clara Lévy's and Victor Guaita's concert takes place on 17 May and further programming will be announced in the spring. 

Together with Pilar and VUB Crosstalks, Kaaitheater presents this exhibition as part of A Series of More-than-human Encounters. This project highlights different ways of being and alternative forms of knowledge. With the forest, the mountains and the deep sea as our thinking partners, we invite you to come and discover what is hidden behind the horizon of human knowledge.  

Towards a Ruined Theater is also part of Pilar's KunstxScience programme and VUB Crosstalks. 

• Sara Manente studied dance and semiotics before coming to Brussels, where she works as an artist and researcher. Her projects start from the images and matter of living cultures and fungi in relation to performing arts. In different formats, she reflects on the possible contagion/transfer between pedagogy, research, performance and publication.

• Deborah Robbiano is a multidisciplinary artist who works with found objects, both natural and man-made, to create vegetal sculptures, sets and installations. In her work, she lets chance encounters and the longevity of plants guide her process. Each element is abstracted from its original form and purpose. This shift allows her to celebrate the ephemerality in the many stages of vegetal transformation.

• Sébastien Tripod graduated from the Joint Masters in Architecture of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland and the Luca School of Arts in Ghent. He collaborates with various groups for projects in residence, advocating environmental and social ecology. Closely associated with the knowledge of craftsmanship, interested in traditional building techniques and the use of low technology, he works as an independent architect, based in Lausanne since 2018.