This door is too small (for a bear)
Washy washy washy
Round and round
And makes nice sound
Never be dirty
Always be clean
That’s why we have a washing machine
Radical poetic images in a grotesque world
“This a fact: there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand in the Sahara desert. Imagine that everything could speak. What a noise! Cosmic soundscape! Unbind your mind! International absurdities, universal illusions, cosmic disorientation. That’s what we need to keep mother earth spinning!” – Grace Ellen Barkey.
The productions of Grace Ellen Barkey are surreal and permeated by absurd humour: grand failure, the tragedy of a clown, the clumsy barbarity of sexuality. Her increasingly intensive cooperation with the artist Lot Lemm resulted in the Lemm&Barkey label. Together, they seek out radically poetic images in a grotesque world.
After the Saturday 27/2 show: party with DJ Lula S. Fortuna (free entrance, at the Kaaicafé)
Lemm&Barkey
Grace Ellen Barkey, who together with Jan Lauwers founded Needcompany in 1986, is an established performer and choreographer. Since 1992 she has created her own performances within Needcompany. Her work is a cross between theatre, dance, performance and visual art. As a result of their close artistic collaboration, Grace Ellen Barkey & Lot Lemm started Lemm&Barkey; they designed costumes for Isabella’s Room (2004) and created the concept, set and costumes for Chunking and The Porcelain Project. In 2007 they created a museum-oriented porcelain installation based on The Porcelain Project. This was exhibited in various museums including Bozar (Brussels) and the Benaki Museum (Athens). Then the curator Luk Lambrecht invited them to participate in the group exhibition, I am your private dancer (2008), at Strombeek Cultural Centre, they created work for Het spel van de waanzin, over gekte in film en theater (2008), a group exhibition in the Dr. Guislain Museum in Ghent, and were invited by the curator Hugo Meet to participate in the ‘contemporary ceramics’ section of the Down to Earth (2009) exhibition.
concept Lemm&Barkey | choreography, direction Grace Ellen Barkey | danced by and created with Misha Downey, Julien Faure, Yumiko Funaya, Benoît Gob, Sung-Im Her, Maarten Seghers | set and costumes Lot Lemm | music Rombout Willems, Maarten Seghers | production Needcompany | co-production pact Zollverein (Essen), Künstlerhaus Mousonturm (Frankfurt) | in collaboration with Kaaitheater | support Vlaamse Gemeenschap
